Joe Dutra, left, and Martha and George Neale, with their daughters Chandler, 14, and Hadley, 17, stand on the Neale’s farm in Jamestown yesterday. The Pell Bridge to Newport is in the background.

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The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

JAMESTOWN — Huddled on a windy pasture overlooking Newport’s Pell Bridge, conservation advocates from the town, the state and the federal government celebrated yesterday their combined efforts to preserve two of the most scenic working farms on the island, as well as a landscape enjoyed by untold numbers of visitors.

Jessie and Joseph Dutra and Martha and George Neale stepped before the crowd and thanked them for raising the $9.3 million to buy the development rights to their farms, allowing them to stay in business. Dutra said, “I didn’t think it would ever happen.”

Combined with other deals the town has made during the last 20 years, Jamestown now has assured that about 1,000 acres in farms, wetlands and a golf course along Route 138 will forever provide a spectacular landscape for those driving by.

“It’s comforting to know now,” Dutra said, “that the farm will always be there.”

But several officials used the opportunity to sound a warning that Governor Carcieri has not proposed enough state spending during the next few years to keep up the state’s impressive track record of preserving farms and other open space.

“We’re thrilled that Governor Carcieri’s budget has some funds,” said Janet Coit, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Rhode Island chapter. “But we have a bunch of farms on the list [for preservation] and we really need more state funding. Please press the General Assembly for more funding.”

Conservationists lobbied Carcieri last fall to propose $15 million in bonds this year for open space and farm preservation. Faced with big budget deficits, he proposed $5 million, and another $30 million for water pollution efforts.

Coit and others said $5 million won’t provide enough to match expected federal grants to help protect farms.

They argue that in the next two years, $5 million is needed for open-space grants; $5 million for farmland acquisitions and another $5 million to buy land for state parks and management areas.

For open space, each dollar of state money matches an average of $3 more in contributions from communities, the federal government and organizations such as the Champlin Foundations and The Nature Conservancy.

For farmlands, the federal government has been providing $2.5 million to $3 million annually to Rhode Island. Those grants require a 1-to-1 state match. If the state doesn’t raise matching money for farms, the federal money will go elsewhere and local farmers would have to wait.

Some are urging the General Assembly to increase the bond issue to $15 million.

According to Rupert Friday, head of the Rhode Island Land Trust Council, the League of Cities and Towns and 11 communities have endorsed a $15-million bond issue. The towns are: Westerly, Exeter, Foster, Glocester, Jamestown, Newport, Middletown, Portsmouth, Barrington, Tiverton and Little Compton.

A total of 23 farms covering 1,918 acres have been approved for conservation funding and placed on a waiting list, according to the Department of Environmental Management.

“If this farm wasn’t protected, it would be houses,” Town Administrator Bruce R. Keiser said at yesterday’s event at the Neale organic beef cattle farm. Now, he said, it will forever remain an “intoxicatingly serene, agrarian landscape.”

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed pointed out that the farms have been worked for hundreds of years, “so we are recognizing good things here.”

W. Michael Sullivan, director of the DEM, said it is important to preserve the state’s farms, and its farmers. And if tourism benefits, all for the better.

“I don’ t know anyone who doesn’t come over the Jamestown or Newport bridges who doesn’t appreciate the landscape here,” he said. “The citizens of Jamestown ponied up. And today we celebrate the gift that keeps on giving.”

Roylene Rides at the Door, state conservationist with a federal agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, that provided $3.5 million for the two farms, said other states are looking at Rhode Island as a model for creating public and private partnerships to save land. She said she recently got calls from Oklahoma and New Hampshire, inquiring how Rhode Island raised the local match.

“Our mission at the agency is helping people help the land,” she said. “This is a great example.”

Joseph Dutra said about five years ago Robert. W. Sutton Jr., a Town Council member now who was then head of planning and development at the DEM, first approached him about selling his dairy farm’s development rights.

“I said yes, but I didn’t think it would happen,” he said. “It’s was always my goal to see the farm preserved, but you’ve got to preserve the farmer too.”

Sutton stood in back and smiled. The two farms were the latest chapter in a long story, he said.

He recalled the night last September when town voters gathered to vote on spending up to $3.5 million to help buy the development rights to the farms. (The federal government contributed another $3.5 million, The Nature Conservancy provided $1.08 million (including $750,000 from the Champlin Foundations), and the state provided about $1.2 million.

It took awhile to get the meeting started, because there was such a crowd.

But there was no debate. A total of 373 people unanimously approved the deal.

People in Jamestown, he said, have stepped up year after year.

“You have to spend money,” he said. “Nobody gives things away.”

plord@projo.com