Local agricultural enterprise has piqued the interest of Newtown’s Economic Development Commission (EDC) and not just because it’s hot and they’re serving ice cream at the Ferris Acres Creamery.

Last fall, the EDC saluted Newtown agribusiness in ceremonies recognizing the business and marketing innovations at McLaughlin Vineyards, Castle Hill Farm, and Shortt’s Farm & Garden Center. Recently, the commission followed up by convening a focus group including many of the same business men and women honored last fall and others to explore how Newtown might better cultivate the economic opportunities sprouting on its remaining tracts of farmland.

Making money from the land is not exactly an epiphany for Newtown. Like every other town in New England, farming provided the economic foundation for three centuries of growth and prosperity. The farmhouses, barns, stonewalls, hedgerows, and fence lines of our earliest agricultural enterprises are now the quaint emblems of New England, which have attracted visitors and ultimately whole populations of new residents to the Connecticut countryside.

In today’s competitive business climate, however, when it comes to making money, quaint can be quickly overwhelmed by expedience. In the face of pressures for commercial and residential development, the scenic benefits of agriculture, which accrue to us all, need some strengthened economic underpinnings. Quaint is not enough.

Fortunately, Newtown’s agribusiness men and women are smart, innovative, and adaptable to the changing marketplace. But occasionally, they need a little help from their community. For example, the EDC’s recent focus group underscored the need for signs pointing the way to the farm and garden center, to the vineyard, to the creamery. It is a simple request that should be within the power of a willing town to accomplish. While the town should not subsidize private enterprise, it should invest in the basic infrastructure that encourages the kind of economic development that the town wants and needs.

Beyond that, we as individual consumers have a role to play. First, buy local, especially when it comes to food and farm products. And when visitors come to town this summer, treat them to an ice cream cone at the creamery, a bottle of wine at the vineyard, and a home cooked dinner after a visit to the farmers’ market. Show them that we have a lifestyle here in Newtown that “quaint” doesn’t even begin to describe.