Maryland governor orders state plan implemented

Md. Gov. Martin O'Malley on opening day of the legislature (Source: Office of the Governor)

ANNAPOLIS, MD – Gov. Martin O’Malley signed an executive order in December directing state agencies to begin implementing a state plan finalized this fall and dubbed PlanMaryland.  The plan puts into place smart growth guidelines for state agencies to follow before approving state construction projects and to apply when working with local governments on projects involving state assistance.

According to the Maryland Department of Planning website, PlanMaryland “proposes to build on existing State and local plans and programs toward a new level of accountability from State agencies and local governments. The focus is not on new programs, more money or more State control. Instead, a new emphasis would be placed on the ways in which individual State agencies and local governments coordinate and work together on their respective responsibilities and actions.”

Gov. O’Malley at the start of this year’s legislative session that began Jan. 11, called the state plan overdue and said Maryland would no longer “finance sprawl.”

PlanMaryland has met with resistance, some of it vehement, from mostly rural counties whose elected officials claim the newly adopted policies will usurp their local planning and zoning powers. Two bills were introduced in the House of Delegates on the first day of the legislative session that would stop PlanMaryland from being implemented unless it is approved by the General Assembly. Some local elected officials have accused the governor of overreaching and believe that PlanMaryland is a power-grab by the state. The governor did not need legislative action to put the plan into effect.

The governor stated that PlanMaryland will not dictate local land use decisions, but it will funnel state spending to projects that meet the state’s definition of smart growth, and steer money away from those projects that are unnecessarily located away from existing infrastructure.

The governor called upon the Department of Planning several years ago to develop the plan that was authorized by the legislature in the 1970s but never put into motion despite a number of governors who supported growth management. The move expands the smart growth actions taken by former Gov. Parris Glendening, who joined O’Malley in announcing PlanMaryland. Former Gov. Harry Hughes also joined in the announcement. O’Malley and both former governors are Democrats.

Sandy Point State Park on the Chesapeake Bay

For decades, cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay has motivated state  leaders to seek restrictions on land use. Now, under EPA rules, Mid-Atlantic states are required to stem pollution going into the Bay by 25 percent by the year 2025. Funding the cleanup began in 2004 with The Bay Restoration Fund, referred to as “the flush tax”. It charges owners of private, residential wells and septic systems $30 annually and the revenues are used to upgrade sewage systems. The 2012 Maryland Legislature will consider legislation to double or even triple the fee. Local officials are still fuming over legislation that was introduced but then withdrawn last year that would have restricted use of septic systems by prohibiting large subdivisions in rural areas across the state. They have a second round this year with the bill’s reintroduction as the Sustainable Growth & Farmland Preservation Act of 2012 or SB 236. The bill put forward by the O’Malley administration is sponsored by legislators from Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties.

Maryland seems to be bucking a trend nationwide when it comes to state involvement in land use. Oregon led the nation from the early 1970s to the early 2000s with statewide planning that included a requirement for county exclusive farm use zones. These zones were rendered less restrictive by Ballot Measure 49 of 2007, but the measure headed off attempts to return many agricultural properties to their pre-1973 zoning and open up rural areas to widespread residential development.

Maine had statewide planning functions until late last year when a new administration began dismantling the Maine Office of Planning, moving some of its functions to other agencies and repealing others. State planning units in Washington and Hawaii have been restructured to a less regulatory stance in recent years.

Efforts by the Glendening administration a decade ago to channel state assistance into priority funding or smart growth areas was deemed to be largely ineffective. But PlanMaryland may now be the nation’s most extensive state-level initiative to curb sprawl and protect natural resources. While PlanMaryland does not create a zoning standard, its implementation may enable the state to delay or withhold funding to counties if development projects encroach upon agricultural or natural resource areas.

Preserved farmland, Carroll County (Photo by FPR)

Local elected officials have resisted adoption of PlanMaryland since last fall when a deadline for comments was extended because local officials complained they had not had enough time to review the plan. Commissioners in Carroll County claim PlanMaryland is an outgrowth of environmental protectionism whose principals are based on the flawed science that identifies human activity as causing climate change. They also claim the new state plan violates citizens’ 5^th and 14^th amendment rights.

PlanMaryland, said Carroll Commissioner Richard Rothschild, is “a bridge too far. We’ve embraced smart growth, but this plan shifts authority away from local officials and is based on flawed science.”

Rothschild said the plan will allow the state to withhold permits as well as financial support to capital projects. A number of local officials from rural localities rallied in Annapolis in October to oppose adoption of PlanMaryland.

Richard Hall, secretary of the Maryland Department of Planning, said PlanMaryland “does not create new law – it’s a playbook strategy that ties together smart growth programs that have been around for decades.” Hall said the plan is timely, in that tough fiscal circumstances require more careful spending and planning for public needs. “For decades now, we have been over-consuming our land, destroying farms and forests, harming our environment and over-crowding our under-invested transit ways leading to some of the worst commute times in our country. For decades, we have been moving in a direction that’s not sustainable, not cost-effective and imperils the very reasons we love Maryland.” Sustainability has become the watchword in the state’s lexicon.

According to the Dept. of Planning, between 1982 and 2007, total farmland in the state declined by one-fifth, or 500,000 acres.

Clustered subdivision adjacent to preserved farms, Harford County (FPR photo)

It is unclear whether the state subcabinet that has been charged with implementing PlanMaryland will consider agricultural zoning as a measure of a county’s smart growth practice. Agricultural protection zoning is widely seen as the most desired foundation for farmland preservation, which state leaders see as a vital component of smart growth.

If agricultural protection zoning were scrutinized by the state, only a few counties would measure up without difficulty. Baltimore County’s growth policies that date back to the 1960s served as a model for some of the thinking behind PlanMaryland. Baltimore and Montgomery County lead the state in smart growth and in protection of farmland and open space. Baltimore County has the state’s strictest agricultural protection zoning, allowing approximately one dwelling per 50 acres. Montgomery County’s transfer of development rights program in 1980 put in place a residual density, that is, if TDRs are not used, of one dwelling per 25 acres in the county’s designated agricultural preserve region.

But other counties may have some explaining to do under PlanMaryland. For example, Harford County’s elected leaders have long pledged not to revisit agricultural zoning that has allowed dozens of major subdivisions throughout its rural areas where many millions of local dollars have been spent on purchasing development rights since 1993. While Carroll County ranks 4^th in the nation for number of acres preserved in a farmland preservation program, its agricultural zoning may be on a par with Harford’s. On the books, Harford’s ag zoning allows one dwelling per 10 acres (1:10), and Carroll’s agricultural zoning restricts density to 1:20. But multiple-parcel allowances and add-ons referred to as conveyances and hangover parcels (parcels severed from the parent parcels by a public road) enable landowners to easily get beyond the stated density. All these allowances make for an on-the-ground agricultural zoning that is far less restrictive than stated. It is hard to predict how actual subdivision practice will be scrutinized under PlanMaryland.

Other Maryland counties have supported farmland preservation for decades, but just as fervently supported keeping zoning so permissive it compromised the investment of tens of millions spent on purchase of development rights.  Howard County, which was once a leader in farmland preservation, never enacted agricultural protection zoning, and housing density permitted in the agricultural area where the county paid to retire development rights on more than 20,000 acres, remains at one dwelling per 4.25 acres if clustering is used. Non-cluster subdivision carries a minimum lot size of three acres. Parcels over 20 acres must use the cluster provision.

While Maryland is seen as a leader nationally in land protection, many counties throughout the state lack zoning that restricts residential development to protect agriculture, yet those counties administer farmland preservation programs using millions of state dollars. Under PlanMaryland those counties may now be advised to scrutinize development projects and tighten regulations and policies or face scrutiny themselves when they seek assistance from state coffers.

PROGRAM BRIEFS

In Maryland … The owner of a 950-acre property in Talbot County on the Eastern Shore has donated the development rights to the state Department of Natural Resources. The property includes both agricultural and natural lands and is the first easement donation in the history of Program Open Space to include public access. Hunting, horseback riding, hiking, kayaking and fishing will be allowed on sections of the property. Grasslands and croplands on the property provide foraging areas for nearly 200 migratory birds. …..In Frederick County, a citizen group along with two regional environmental organizations filed a lawsuit in Dec. against county commissioners who reopened zoning decisions made by a previous board in order to allow affected landowners to reclaim building rights they lost in a downzoning that occurred in 2010. There were 193 requests for reverting zoning, with the potential for more than 17,000 new homes, according to county planners.  In Carroll County… County commissioners created a task force to examine the county’s farmland preservation program’s use of installment purchases as well as the potential for term easements and transfer of development rights. After four meetings, the group told commissioners in Dec. that term easements were a nonstarter, TDR had very limited potential, and the county’s innovative installment purchase program, despite requiring a yearly payment of interest from general funds, was a good deal for the county and should be continued “until it can be clearly demonstrated” that the annual payout of interest, now at $933,000, is beyond the county’s ability. The program, on hold since the commissioners called for creation of the task force at the end of May last year, will begin a new sign-up period in February, according to program manager Ralph Robertson.

In Pennsylvania … County farmland preservation programs are within their rights if they want to charge fees for reviewing subdivision plans on preserved farms or processing applications, according to an opinion issued by the Governor’s Office of General Counsel. Some counties had been charging fees but whether they had the authority to do so has been an issue for more than a year. The unresolved issue caused the state board to put county program recertifications on hold over the last year. Some counties, including Lancaster and Adams, charge fees for processing applications or reviewing plans for subdivision. Members of the Pa. Farmland Preservation Association last year ranked the ability to charge reasonable fees for administrative services 15^th in a list of 31 items of concern for county programs.

BOOK REVIEW

Strategic Conservation Planning has plenty of good advice

Ole M. Amundsen, III. Strategic Conservation Planning. Washington, DC: Land Trust Alliance. 2001, 312pp. (paper). $24.95 or $10 as a pdf download. Available at http://www.landtrustalliance.org/training/publications/publications-1

Farmland preservation, whether managed by a public agency or a private land trust, has often been criticized for being opportunitistic rather than strategic.  Ideally, farmland will be preserved in large contiguous blocks of 1,000 or more acres. This pattern not only protects farm operators from intrusive non-farm neighbors, but also helps direct development to appropriate locations with adequate public services. Yet, farmland preservation depends on landowners who are willing to sell or donate conservation easements. Some or many landowners may choose not to preserve their farms, making it hard to assemble large contiguous blocks of preserved land.   

Opportunistic means that a land trust or government agency literally works with any landowner that makes contact: the owner of a 40 acre farm with development on three sides or 400 acres in the heart of a farming area. The risk with the opportunistic approach is that mainly small, unconnected parcels will be preserved. If the zoning on adjacent land allows a fairly high density, such as one house (or more) per two acres, then the preserved land may act as a magnet for new development thanks to the “permanent view” it provides. The newcomers are likely to complain about the farming operation next door, especially if there are livestock, and make life difficult for the farmer.

So how can land trusts and government agencies be strategic in their land preservation efforts?

In Strategic Conservation Planning, Ole Amundsen offers several answers along with abundant good advice. The book is well-organized and clearly written in a step-by-step approach to integrating strategic thinking into land preservation programs. Amundsen, who works for the Conservation Fund, provides a wealth of examples that are useful to both large and small land preservation organizations.

Strategic Conservation Planning was published by the Land Trust Alliance as part of their Standards and Practices Curriculum for land trust accreditation. The accreditation process emerged in response to the need for greater professionalism and consistency in land preservation. To date, more than 130 land trusts out of more than 1,700 have been officially accredited by LTA.

Strategic Conservation Planning has a long range focus, which is reflected in the five chapters:  1. The Importance of Strategic Conservation Planning; 2. Preparing for the Strategic Conservation Planning Process; 3. Understanding Your Community; 4. Setting Land Conservation Priorities; and 5. Implementation.

The pay-off is that strategic farmland preservation will make the land preservation organization more effective and will result in more land under easement. Finding partners in preservation, GIS mapping, ranking systems, and prioritizing land preservation projects are all key, especially when financial resources are tight. The traditional, but crude, measure of success is “bucks and acres;” we spent x dollars and preserved y acres. But this measure has much less meaning on the ground where the quality of the natural and cultural resources being protected and the pattern of land preservation are paramount.

One of the main obstacles that land preservation organizations face is the lack of self-assessment: How are we doing in carrying out our mission and what could we be doing better? Amundsen combines examples and advice on how to incorporate strategic thinking into the self-assessemnt process. 

Even though Strategic Conservation Planning is aimed at land trusts, administrators of government farmland preservation programs will also greatly benefit from reading the book and sharing it with their boards. The emphasis on planning over the long term is refreshing. This approach does not detract from the urgency that drives land preservation. Rather, Amundsen estimates that it will take a year to a year and a half to fully implement strategic planning for land preservation.

My good friend, Jack Wright, Professor of Geography at New Mexico State University and a seasoned land preservation practitioner, once wrote that land trusts are de facto (in effect) land use planning agencies. The same is true of government land preservation departments. For too long, planning in the United States has meant planning for development. Now, land trusts, government agencies, and communities all across America are recognizing the need to plan for land preservation as well. Strategic Conservation Planning presents a workable process and a useful set of tools to do that.

Marin overtakes three county programs; Lancaster leads in survey

Click here for 2011 Top 12 County Programs table

A scenic western Marin dairy farm

A survey of the nation’s locally operated farmland preservation programs shows Marin County, Ca. having gained a large number of preserved acres and moving up from 11th to 8th place in the 12-place ranking conducted by FPR each Fall. It also showed Lancaster County remaining No. 1 in the nation, and Carroll County, Md. having the largest pool of local funding, at $11 million, to purchase development rights. Burlington County, NJ, has $10 million.

All 12 local programs together logged 14,580 acres, 1,404 acres fewer than reported in the last survey. The survey annually covers progress of the nation’s leading locally operated programs from Sept. 15 of the preceding year to Sept. 15 of the current year.

This year’s survey shows the 12 programs have a total of $52.6 million in local funds, which include county and municipal funds, and private support. That compares with $57.5 available last year. The 12 programs together, along with any help from land trusts and other local programs that preserve agricultural land in those localities, have preserved 687,807 acres.

The Marin program, operated by the nonprofit Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT), logged 2,290 acres since last Sept., a gain far exceeding the organization’s previous 12-month tally of 375 acres.  Marin’s move up pushed Harford and York Counties down one place in the ranking. But Frederick County, Md., which also would have been pushed down by Marin’s climb up the ladder, managed to retain its 10th place ranking by overtaking Harford County, Md.

MALT’s achievement results from two large deals completed this summer. One of those was on the 1,013-acre Thornton Ranch in western Marin County, a 10-year project that began with a big wait: the ranch family could not sell an interest in the property because the owner’s death triggered a 10-year waiting period to avoid the IRS tax penalty from electing the alternative valuation. Funding for the $2.3 million project came from a combination of state, federal and private sources. The USDA Farm and Ranchland Protection Program (FRPP) provided $810,000; the California Department of Conservation Farmland Conservancy Program provided $480,000, and the remaining $1,039,500 came from MALT’s donors and supporters.

The other notable event for MALT this past summer was a $2 million grant from the Lukasfilm Foundation, along with a visit from founder and filmmaker George Lukas. That grant was used to acquire an easement valued at $2.9 million on the historic Corda Ranch, a 1,214-acre property just west of Novato. That purchase, also, was assisted by a $950,000 FRPP grant.

MALT’s move up the ranking was the most notable movement in the chart for the past year. Lancaster County, however, tallied the most acres for the year (see table).

Carroll County preserved farm

Carroll County holds on to its 4th place position in the ranking, but the program is not on Easy Street despite its nationally renowned Installment Purchase Agreement (IPA) program that jolted the program forward last year with a whopping 4,178 acres tallied, to land its new total at 61,870 acres. Newly elected county commissioners allocated $5.3 million to the program, but the carrot came with a stick: prove the IPA program was really the way to preserve farmland, with interest payments accumulating and committing the county to an annual payout now at $933,000. The commissioners froze the program in early summer and told staff to establish a citizen task force to study the program and its financing. A few of the commissioners also charged the task force with studying term easements and transfer of development rights (TDR) as possible new tools. The task force has met three times and has one more scheduled meeting. Program manager Ralph Robertson said he hopes to hear from the task force that it endorses the IPA program. While Robertson has been operating the county’s Critical Farms Program, he believes the installment program has been a good fit for the county and a benefit for the county’s farm community. Robertson hired FPR publisher Deborah Bowers in July as a fulltime preservation specialist to replace Jeff Everett, who left in April to become easement programs manager for NRCS in Wisconsin. Bowers, who had been project manager for The Manor Conservancy, Inc. in Baltimore County, started Sept. 1.

The innovative IPA arrangement developed by Robertson and Everett offered a highly attractive six percent semi-annual tax-free interest rate in exchange for a discounted offer that equaled 40 percent of fair market value. The calculation upfront showed that landowners participating would receive 88 percent of FMV when combining interest and principal at the end of the 20-year agreement. Robertson said if the IPA program continues, the interest rate would likely be lowered by at least one percentage point due to increasing costs of zero coupon bonds.

Harford County preserved farmland along MD 146

Harford County, which also uses the installment purchase approach, was in 9th place last year, and in 8th place the year before, but is now in 11th place following several years of no funding. Dedicated revenue from a local real estate transfer tax, for a number of years, was held out to ensure payment of the interest on installment purchases of easements it has settled since 1993.

This year after accumulating about $3 million over the reserve, the program was restarted and a new round has approved nine farms and 1,200 acres. The funding will cover the upfront cost of $2.8 million for purchasing the STRIP treasury or zero coupon bonds to cover the principal amounts that will be paid at the end of 20 years. In addition the county will commit to paying annual tax free interest likely set at three percent to the program participants, according to program manager Bill Amoss, for a total cost to the county of $5.68 million for the 1,200 acres.

The setback has had its effect on Harford’s progress in farmland preservation. From Sept. 2008 to Sept. 2009 Harford logged 1,735 acres. But from Sept. 2009 to Sept. 2010 the program logged just 82 acres according to the FPR survey published at that time. This Fall’s survey shows a gain for the program of just 175 acres. Meanwhile, Harford’s real estate market has been showing plenty of new homes in the ag zone, spurred by the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Act, as new Aberdeen Proving Ground personnel set up housekeeping in Harford’s attractive rolling hills.

In neighboring York County, elected officials have been tight-lacing their farmland program for the last several years, funding it at just $200,000 or half that. But state funds of about $1.2 million have made offers possible, and FRPP has come through with $855,704 committed currently. “We hope to receive $587,198 additionally from the FRPP program on two more farms submitted in 2011.  The FRPP fund stream has become a big part of our program lately,” said program manager Patti McCandless.

In Montgomery County, where a maturing program has given rise to innovation in retiring residual development rights, the county’s most recent move is to retire the development rights left behind by the downzoning that occurred in 1980 as part of creating the county’s renowned transfer of development rights program. The downzoning in the Agricultural Reserve region in the county’s northern tier allowed retention of one building right per 25 acres (1:25) if a property owner did not transfer rights off site at 1:5, a result that has been recognized as less than what preservation goals intended. The new Building Lot Termination program (or BLT), will have its first numbers to report next year, according to program manager John Zawitoski. The BLT is designed to evolve into a TDR program.

“We had seven applicants for the first open purchase period, offering up 13 BLTs. With the funding we had allocated for the first opened purchase period, we were able to tender offers on seven BLTs, covering about 308 acres.  The good news is, while we weren’t able to purchase all the BLTs through the public funded program, we have been contacted by developers needing BLTs for specific development projects in qualified BLT receiving areas,” Zawitoski said.  “Because these applicants who weren’t able to get funding during the open purchase period met all eligibility requirements for the public program, they are prime candidates for private market BLT sales. We have provided developers the contract information for these landowners and are encouraged to see movement in the direction of privately acquired BLTs.”

Montgomery has kept its dollars where its policies are – keeping the designated Agricultural Reserve rural is an ongoing process that requires housekeeping along the way. The BLT program is the broom that could sweep away potential future dwellings, and $7 million in funding will keep new acres, though fewer in number, coming in. The value is in the payoff at the micro-local level – fewer houses built in a neighborhood with a whole lot of farming going on; additional value will have to await a cumulative effect, something Montgomery County planning commissioners, who have a knack at thinking big and thinking long term, had no trouble putting into a pipeline.

The money for the BLT comes from $2 million in general allocations and $5 million that was allocated specifically for the BLT program. Some county bond money is also available on a competitive basis to the program, Zawitoski said.

The county’s Agricultural Reserve zone consists of 110,000 acres including four town growth centers.

In Lancaster County, the nation’s premier locally driven purchase of development rights program, the Agricultural Preserve Board (APB) now holds 803 easements totaling 69,107 acres, including 28 easements comprising 2,103 acres held jointly with the Lancaster Farmland Trust. The Lancaster Farmland Trust holds an additional 21,173 acres bringing the total preserved farmland tally in Lancaster County as of Sept. 15, the cut off date for the FPR survey, to 90,280. Additional acres have been preserved since that date.

Lancaster County Amish farm

Lancaster County has a model working relationship with the nonprofit LFT. Under a cooperative working agreement formalized more than a decade ago, not only do the two entities collaborate on joint easements, but the county also makes a direct grant to the LFT for easements it will solely hold. Called a challenge grant, and similar to Chester County’s grants to municipalities, Lancaster awarded $1 million grants annually to LFT beginning in 2006. For 2011, however, the amount was cut back to $750,000.

Lancaster County is due for its recertification by the state board, which in Pa. occurs every seven years (every three years in Md.). Staff is reviewing the program for possible adjustments, according to director Matt Knepper, who says there will be “no major changes in the program, just some minor updates for consistency and to make [it] more user-friendly.” Staff continues to keep an eye on the county’s Rural Enterprise guidelines. Developed in compliance with the state Agricultural Area Security Law, the Lancaster County APB allows preserved farms to operate businesses compatible with agriculture. Among those is the production of renewable energy from sources including wind, solar and animal waste with conditions to be met; no-impact farm-based businesses; and bed and breakfast operation and other agri-tourism enterprises. Knepper said he is particularly keeping an eye on the renewable energy production provision in the guidelines and is considering possibly developing a new section to address agritourism/agritainment.

Last year Lancaster County asked the state board to enable the county to charge fees for reviewing subdivision or lot requests on preserved farms, but no action has been taken to date. The APB feels staff time on lot requests justifies charging a fee. The board charges a $50 application fee for a Rural Enterprise request and $200 for reviewing a Rural Enterprise proposal. The Pennsylvania Farmland Preservation Association, an organization comprised of county program administrators, has made approval of fees a priority.

Public – private partnerships for farmland preservation

BY TOM DANIELS, Senior Contributing Editor

Let me start with a proposition: we need all the money and cooperation we can get between governments and the private sector in order to preserve enough farmland to make a difference over the long run. Land trust personnel often like to point out that “we’re not government.” But land trusts would have a hard time existing without Section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax code, which allows for tax-exempt non-profit organizations and enables land trusts to accept tax-deductible donations of cash, securities, and land. In addition, Treasury Regulations 170(h) allow income tax deductions (and potentially estate tax deductions) for the donation of land and conservation easements. In other words, land trusts are an example of a public-private partnership.

For years, local, state, and federal government agencies have worked with land trusts on joint easement deals. These partnerships, both ad hoc and more formal, have been essential for increasing available financial and staff capacity necessary to get important preservation deals done. An interesting variation of these partnerships is when a local government donates an easement on government-owned land to a land trust to make sure that public land will not be developed at some future date by elected officials who lack a conservation ethic! But more important is how public-private partnerships are succeeding. FPR’s 2011 tally of the top counties in farmland acres preserved shows that the public sector and private sector are both important players in almost every county. In Lancaster County, PA, where I live, the county’s farmland preservation program has preserved over 65,000 acres and the non-profit Lancaster Farmland Trust has preserved more than 23,000 acres.

Private landowners enter into a form of public-private partnership when they sell or donate an easement to a government agency. These landowners are, in effect, relinquishing a part interest in the land to the government. In turn, the government agency is assuming a long-term commitment to monitor and enforce the terms of the easement. The tricky part in this relationship is what happens when the people who sold or donated the easement are no longer living or have sold the land. Second- and third-generation landowners often do not recognize the public-private partnership that exists. This means that a lot of face-to-face conversation, education, and even negotiation may be needed to maintain the partnership on respectful terms. Avoiding conflicts, legal action, and simple misunderstandings are all-important.

Finally, I want to offer the observation that the general public likes to see government and the private sector working together in public-private partnerships. The public is much more likely to support bond measures for land preservation that have the support of the private sector, and to elect public officials who support public-private partnerships for land preservation.

Walmart’s new regional food focus is opportunity for growers

BY BOB HEUER, Contributing Editor

Editor’s Note: The story below by contributing editor Bob Heuer outlines a new regional food sourcing and distribution strategy underway at Walmart, published online in Independent Banker. Heuer, who lives in Evanston, Il., feels farmland preservation as practiced in the East is a temporary phenomenon, and that profitability and production focused on supplying food to urban centers will better sustain agriculture in urbanizing regions. Heuer told FPR, “the demand for local food creates a comparative advantage for farmers near population centers and, thus, a strong economic rationale for public policies to help stabilize urban edge farm economies. Think market forces.  Wal-Mart is creating a national template for regional-scale food supply chains—the topic of my recent story for Independent Banker Magazine.”

Children’s book author Dave Sargent was nearing retirement a decade ago. He figured to stay busy by growing vegetables in the backyard and selling them to area farmers markets.

Today his vegetable produce company, Sargent Farms International Banker, generates $4 million a year in annual sales. Squash, okra, peppers and tomatoes are sold through various outlets—most notably Walmart. Early on, Sargent supplied a Walmart store near his northwest Arkansas home. The next year, three store managers were customers.

Now his company supplies vegetables to three Walmart distribution centers in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Sargent Farms produce is then sold to consumers at hundreds of Walmart stores throughout the Midwest.

Sargent, who lives less than an hour from Walmart’s headquarters, has become a model agricultural entrepreneur for a corporate strategy to diversify their food sourcing. Walmart, the world’s largest grocer, is not alone in fulfilling a rising demand for locally grown food. Other food chains are aggressively seeking vendors like Sargent to shorten the geographic distance between farm and fork.

With this demand comes an opportunity for community banks and their agricultural customers for greater rural economic growth and revitalization. As the farm and food sector begins to undergo a new market design, some community banks may want to consider and promote the agricultural lending and economic development opportunity.

The big picture

The nationwide proliferation of farmers markets—340 in 1970; 6,132 in 2010—reflects growing consumer interest in how food is produced, where and by whom. Demand for direct market-type products has moved into high-volume, wholesale channels like restaurants, grocery stores and institutional food services. Walmart is a retail industry leader in modifying its business to meet demand for food sourced from nearby farms.

In 2008, the Walmart Foundation awarded the University of Arkansas a $549,000 grant to convene national stakeholders interested in creating a sustainable food system that links small producers with large markets. This “Agile Agriculture” program—facilitated by the Applied Sustainability Center at the Sam Walton School of Business—explored how to create regional-scale supply chains that ensure profitability for producers and distributors, while enhancing local economies and delivering healthy products to consumers.

Two key obstacles impede market growth. Few small producers have the necessary insurance, product traceability and documented food safety systems required to meet the procurement standards of large distributors. In addition, smaller producers often lack access to aggregation facilities that can provide the scale of product volume needed by larger markets.

These findings mirrored Walmart’s activities in the field. Wholesale buyers seek relationships with farmers who can pick, clean, pack and drive their produce to one of the company’s 42 distribution centers within 24 hours. In 2010, Walmart officials reported that regional produce sourcing accounted for 4 percent of sales. The retailer’s goal is to double that number before 2016.

This year, Walmart is targeting three clusters for growing this model—the I-95 corridor in the Mid-Atlantic states, the upper Midwest and the Delta Region along the Gulf Coast.

Multiplier effect

Sargent Farms is putting dollars in a lot of local pockets through a business that generates a constant supply of produce for 20 weeks. Vegetables are grown on 400 acres with the help of eight tenant farmers and as many as 60 employees at the height of harvest season. Most of that land used to be in pasture.

“Cattle ranchers gross about $800 an acre, but I can gross $10,000 an acre raising vegetables,” Sargent figures. “The people I employ live in the area. So do the truckers who move our product.”

The nearest national chain hardware store is a 15-mile drive away. Sargent prefers to patronize his cousin’s hardware store located five minutes from the farm. Another cousin owns the tractor supply store. “It’s great to keep our dollars circulating in the local economy, helping small businesses and generating tax revenues for our town, our schools, county and state.”

Sargent takes pride in running a high-tech operation. “We’re very inventive and are always trying to modify equipment to better fit our needs,” he says, citing a permanent irrigation system as an example of where he reduces expenses. “I haven’t had to raise prices in six years.”

Sargent reports plenty of interaction with Walmart’s regional-produce-sourcing leadership. “Walmart realizes that better produce comes from smaller units of production. The bigger you get, you lose control. If I had 3,000 acres of vegetable production, I wouldn’t be that concerned about 100 acres not meeting specs because that loss would be only three percent of my crop.”

Community banks should look favorably on this type of locally centered agricultural production, Sargent says. “Vegetable growing is not a high-risk business for a good farmer. We insure our crops through a federal program for $750 a year. It is labor intensive. You have to be out in the field everyday inspecting the crops.”

Creating new value

Berni Kurz is a frequent visitor to the Sargent Farms. As staff chair for the Washington County Extension office, he supervises a team of employees who provide technical assistance for area farmers and gardeners.

“In 1991, I started a 13-year period working for Extension in neighboring Crawford County,” Kurz recalls. “At the time, the agricultural economy was quite diverse with almost every type of vegetable grown. … By the time I left to come here to Washington County, there were zero acres of commercially grown vegetables. Low transportation costs had made it cheaper to grow vegetables elsewhere. Now it’s local production that lowers transportation costs.”

Kurz works in Fayetteville—home to the University of Arkansas and a thriving Saturday morning farmers market that has become a tourist destination. Vendors there must produce their own food from one of four contiguous counties. He’s acquainted with 15 producers who sell their wares at the Fayetteville market, but doesn’t expect them to make the business changes required to sell wholesale.

He anticipates that resurging demand for crops sourced from nearby farms will “put farmers back into business or create another cash flow that they have the option to go to.”

Click here for the Top 12 Local Programs table. Find the table and the story in the Nov. 2011 post.

Farmland Preservation Report editor Deborah Bowers is now a fulltime employee of Carroll County (MD) Government, working with Ralph Robertson managing that county’s legendary farmland preservation programs, including one of the most innovative IPA programs in the nation, as well as the nation’s oldest Critical Farms Program. Farmland Preservation Report will continue to be posted, but there will be changes in frequency, cost, and content to be announced.

Proposed change in lending practices would help farm entrepreneurs

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor

Proposed rule change could help specialty crop producers like the Zilke CSA in Milan, MI (Zilke photo)

Andrew Klein’s grandparents opened their first supermarket in 1925 in a rural Harford County, Md. community. Since then the Kleins have built six more stores and over the decades have become known for low prices, community support and a focus on locally grown produce. Now the family is building another supermarket, but not in the type of community it has located in before. Their newest project is in a northwest Baltimore neighborhood that is predominantly African-American where the need for low prices and fresh, locally grown produce is critical.

Klein was among those invited to the White House July 20 by First Lady Michelle Obama who recognized Klein and his son and others from across the country who are locating new grocery stores in “food deserts” – urban neighborhoods that have been shunned by major grocery chains and especially lack fresh and whole foods.

“The commitments you are all making today have the potential to be a game-changer,” said Mrs. Obama. “Parents should have fresh food retailers right in their communities — places that sell healthy food at reasonable prices.”

Fresh food: a sight unseen in America's 'food deserts'

“Lack of access to fresh food has been a silent problem for years,” said Andrew’s son Marshall Klein, at the ceremony. “It is one of the single largest factors determining family health, and the Klein family is excited to be a part of the effort in helping to make a difference,” he said.

Michelle Obama’s tribute to companies braving food deserts coincides with a proposed federal farm credit lending policy that, if adopted, could also be a game changer in how food is produced, who is able to produce it and where. The Farm Credit Administration (FCA), which regulates the Farm Credit System, wants loans to stretch further in terms of what is considered a farming enterprise and who is a qualified borrower. The FCA, in a policy proposal, has concluded that the 84 borrower-owned and locally controlled lending associations aren’t doing enough to meet their federal mandate to deliver financing and “related services” to young, beginning and small farmers, many of whom want to enter the “fresh and local” marketplace, according to Chicago-based ag finance consultant Robert Heuer and Michigan writer Patty Cantrell who teamed up to write about the potential changes that could result if the new rule is adopted.

According to Heuer, “FCS is an indispensable industry asset. But outside of the industry, it is an enigma.  Many small-scale and potentially creditworthy producers don’t understand the System’s mission, let alone its statutory requirement to serve all segments of agriculture.

Heuer said FCS’ public purpose isn’t simply to supply credit; Congress also expects it to deploy “related services.”

“More and more consumers want to know how food is produced, where and by whom,” Heuer said. “FCS should view the demand for food sourced from nearby farms as more than just a new market and an opportunity to book new loans.  This is a teaching moment that could lead the general public to gain a better understanding of the importance of having agriculture around.”

In 2010, FCS institutions owned $231.3 billion in total assets and generated a $3.49 billion profit. Some of that money should be channeled to the entrepreneur-based local food networks that are struggling for a foothold in the mega-food world, Heuer said.

“Farming that can supply food deserts is a market opportunity that Farm Credit needs to link to.”

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition policy director Ferd Hoeffner says Farm Credit, which supplies nearly 40 percent of all U.S. farm financing, “has the capacity to bring badly needed capital to local food producers, and to leverage other sources of capital for the task of rebuilding our local and regional food system infrastructure.”

The FCA’s proposed rule states the Farm Credit System (FCS) must “commit to embracing diversity and inclusion in lending, employment and governance” or “risk losing…relevance in the marketplace.”  If approved by the FCA board, every FCS institution would be required to create plans to diversify their workforce and market services to all potential “creditworthy and eligible borrowers.” The public comment period ended July 25.

Former NY farmland protection chief Cosgrove investigated for corruption

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

ALBANY, NY – A report by the New York State Inspector General released July 7 concludes that former agriculture deputy commissioner Jeremiah “Jerry” Cosgrove directed his office to alter program awards to benefit a land trust that employed his wife Judith Anderson as a consultant. The report detailed the testimony of Cosgrove’s subordinates that Cosgrove compelled them to alter grant eligibility criteria in 2009 in order to award $100,000 to the New York Agricultural Land Trust (NYALT). The report noted that the grant funds “would have helped NYALT pay Anderson’s consulting fees.”

Cosgrove at an agri-economics conference in 2009 (Photo by Lee Publications, NY)

Cosgrove, who was fired in October 2010 when the allegations first came to light, was northeast regional director for the American Farmland Trust for 15 years beginning in 1992. He became deputy agriculture commissioner in 2007.

New York’s farmland preservation program operates by awarding grants to land trusts who initiate and process agricultural conservation easement purchases approved by the state. The grants in question were awarded through the New York Land Trust Grant Program, a separate program developed by Cosgrove as deputy commissioner that gives grants for land trust development including hiring new staff and increasing paid hours for existing staff.

According to the report, when Cosgrove was told by his staff that NYALT was not eligible to receive funds under the New York Land Trust Grant Program, he “pressured his subordinates to alter the agency’s established application review process and conduct a second round of scoring.” One witness said Cosgrove threatened to fire staff if NYALT did not receive a grant. Staff also increased grant funds for the 2009 round, under Cosgrove’s urging, in order to assure there was enough funding for the grant to NYALT.

The inspector general’s report also revealed that Cosgrove’s wife’s employment with a land trust was reviewed by an ethics panel at Cosgrove’s request in 2008 when he became deputy commissioner. But, according to the report, Cosgrove provided the panel with “inaccurate information and omitted critical details.” Cosgrove also “failed to disclose significant facts regarding his role in a contract between Agriculture and Markets and his former employer the American Farmland Trust. Further, Cosgrove omitted “crucial details” about his wife’s employment with NYALT, which had several matters pending in the Farmland Protection Implementation Grant Program, which was then under Cosgrove’s supervision. With incomplete information the ethics panel concluded Cosgrove’s employment as deputy commissioner and his associations with AFT and NYALT created no conflict of interest.

Cosgrove’s work with his former employer, the American Farmland Trust, “created, at a minimum, the appearance of impropriety,” the report stated “and at times presented an actual conflict of interest between Cosgrove’s state duties and his involvement with his former employer.” Cosgrove worked “on both sides” of a contract that paid AFT $50,000 for consulting services and he personally renewed that contract with AFT, the report stated.

According to the inspector’s report, Cosgrove admitted that he should not have been involved in the approval of separate legislative grants to NYALT. “Clearly…I shouldn’t have been signing off on the contracts,” Cosgrove told investigators. He said the contracts were sent to him in error as part of the agency’s contract management system.

In a statement on a land trust list serve, Cosgrove denied the allegations in the report, saying he kept his superiors completely apprised of his work and the nature of Anderson’s employment.

“I stand by the decisions I made. I deny that I ever threatened the employment of any staff member at the Department of Agriculture and Markets. As far as the decision to revisit the Land Trust Grant awards and increase funding for the program in 2009, I made that recommendation to the Commissioner for policy reasons. The Land Trust Grant program was designed to build capacity for those land trusts who were carrying out the state’s farmland protection projects, rather than the state incurring those costs,” Cosgrove stated. He further said that rescoring and increasing funding in the 2009 application round was a process that was reviewed and approved by his superiors even after his role in the process was questioned.

The Inspector General is referring the investigative report to the Albany County District Attorney and to the state ethics commission.

Pennyslvania amends program law to end buyback clause

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

Pennsylvania farm (FPR photo)

HARRISBURG, PA – Pennsylvania has joined Maryland in amending program law to erase its 25-year buyback clause. The amendment to the Agricultural Area Security Law will become effective 60 days following the governor’s July 7 signature. The law is not retroactive, so easements purchased up to that date will not be affected. The program’s first easements were purchased in 1989, making requests for termination possible in 2014.

“I believe repeal of the 25 year provision will help safeguard a vast investment in farmland preservation made by Pennsylvania taxpayers,” said Doug Wolfgang, director of the Pa. Farmland Preservation Bureau.

Pennsylvania program officials for many years believed the program’s legal foundation was strong and there was little chance the permanence of easements would be challenged. But following Maryland’s action, it seemed to make sense to follow suit.

In 2004 the Maryland legislature ended the buyback clause in its program law. Easement language up to that time stated “This easement shall be in perpetuity, or for so long as profitable farming is feasible on the Grantor’s land.” The language, part of the original law creating the program, was meant to soften anxiety at the time over the permanence of easements.

Pennsylvania’s clause allowing for termination differs from Maryland’s in that the provision enable’s the Commonwealth and a county, not the landowner, to seek termination with the approval of the county and state boards. Still, the provision has long been seen as problematic and out of sync with program goals.

If an easement termination in Pennsylvania was attempted, the request would go first to the county agricultural advisory board, then to the county governing body, then to the state board and finally to the governor’s office, rather than to the legislature, as in Maryland. The IRS would become involved when landowners claim charitable deductions. Most easements in Pennsylvania are bargain sales with the average donation of about 20 percent.

A Harford County, Md. easement was the target of an IRS inquiry in 2010 (FPR photo)

In 2010 the IRS filed in U.S. Tax Court a motion for partial summary judgment in the case of a Maryland couple who sold an easement and claimed an income tax deduction for a charitable donation. The IRS was not disputing the donation, but the quality of the easement, claiming it was not perpetual due to the buyback or escape clause. The easement had been signed two weeks before the effective date of the legislative change. The IRS claimed the clause created “a condition for termination of the easement,” but eventually withdrew its case (see FPR Jan. 2010).

Other states have some form of escape clause, including Delaware, Ohio and Michigan.

Delaware’s process renders the possibility of termination nil, in that a request for review for possible termination would be successful only if a Land Evaluation and Site Assessment (LESA) score rendered the property unfit for agriculture. Then, it would be the state farmland preservation board that would make the decision following a public hearing. According to former program director Mike McGrath, who retired June 30, the IRS reviewed the Delaware easement language and approved it when the program was established.

Easements under the Michigan Farmland and Open Space Preservation Program contain a clause that allows for buyback of an easement if the land is rendered not farmable. No attempts had come forward as of early 2010. The program began operating in 1980.

The Ohio Farmland Preservation Program’s deed of easement states it is in perpetuity but provides for termination if it is determined that “an unexpected change in the conditions of or surrounding the land” subject to the easement “makes impossible or impractical the continued use of the land for the purposes described.” The program began in 1999 and to date no requests for termination have been made.

Other amendments signed into law include the allowance for underground mining of non-coal minerals and the addition for a definition for ‘contiguous.’

Pennsylvania program law does not prevent preserved farms from entering into leases for oil and gas extraction. Dozens of preserved farms have done so in the Marcellus shale gas drilling regions of the state.

Lot rights issue crops up again in Maryland

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

A preserved Maryland farm (FPR photo)

ANNAPOLIS, MD – The Maryland Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation board of trustees in June approved the work of its legislative committee, which has been reviewing needed changes to program policy and practice that must come by way of the legislature. Those include eliminating the last remnants of the program’s District agreements, tweaking the process for easement termination requests that may come forward from the 25-year buyback clause that existed until 2004, and new recordation requirements.

But one aspect of the program the committee is not ready to bring to the MALPF board, one that has cropped up repeatedly over the years is lot rights. Following failed legislation in the 2010-2011 legislation session, the difficult issue of how to accommodate a farm family’s need for dwelling sites is back on the front burner for county-level program administrators who are wrangling with the issue.

Current law, enacted in 2003, allows landowners at the time of application to choose either one unrestricted lot right or up to three lots restricted to family members. A bill supported by MALPF in Maryland’s last legislative session, which passed the House but not the Senate, would have discontinued MALPF’s longstanding lot rights law that differentiated between family lots and unrestricted lot allowances. HB 209 would have allowed landowners to elect up to three unrestricted lot rights, with the number allowed determined by farm size, and with easement values affected.

Lot rights have caused administrative as well as legal headaches for MALPF, sometimes caused by continual changes in the law. In Dec. 2009 the Maryland Court of of Appeals ruled that a Kent County landowner’s right to subdivide a lot is governed by the deed of easement, and not by legislative changes affecting lot rights on preserved farms. The owner was not allowed to sell a lot to a third party, because his easement was settled prior to the 2003 change in the law that allowed landowners that option in lieu of family lots.

The bill would also have significantly altered MALPF’s handling of lot rights, in that lot rights approved would run with the land, and not be restricted to the original seller of the easement. The number of lots allowed was limited by the size of the property: one lot for parcels between 50 and 149 acres; two lots for properties between 150 and 249 acres; and three lots for properties of at least 250 acres. Reserved lots would have been taken into consideration in the appraisal of fair market value and determination of easement value.

Baltimore County preserved farmland (FPR photo)

Baltimore County and Montgomery County opposed the bill, claiming it favored large farms and could compromise the accomplishments of counties that have stricter agricultural zoning.

Fifteen county program administrators met July 7 to discuss the lot rights issue. A number of counties agreed the proposed change would be problematic. Others were more neutral about it.

“For a lot of counties it wasn’t an issue,” said Anne Arundel County program assistant Billy Gorski, who attended the meeting. The change wouldn’t affect Anne Arundel’s program by much, he said. Gorski said one change that would be beneficial, if the child lot law was retained, would be to extend eligibility for child lots to grandchildren. “It should be generational – it could be a grandchild that is coming back to farm.”

Eric Seifarth of Washington County said he could sympathize with the Baltimore and Montgomery County standpoint, that effective agricultural zoning might be compromised.

“Generally we are not impacted to the degree Montgomery and Baltimore counties are, since we have more lot rights than they do,” Seifarth said. “For Washington County there is no difference between a family, tenant or man-in-the-moon lot right. They are all the same. The lot reservation penalty is paid up front and we’re done.” Seifarth observed that lot rights under the MALPF program have been “endless hassles and administrative grief,” unlike in Maryland’s Rural Legacy Program, which concludes lot right negotiations up front, the outcome HB 209 aimed to achieve for the MALPF program.

Wally Lippincott, Baltimore County program administrator, said he and John Zawitoski of Montgomery County held an initial meeting on lot rights with other counties on June 1. According to Lippincott, “other counties did have concerns and [thought] it would be worthwhile to come up with an alternative that would maintain the flexibility of the current system, not discriminate against counties with restrictive agricultural zoning, reduce the number of lot rights proposed in HB 209, simplify the process, and reduce potential work load on state staff.”

Zawitoski said HB 209 “caught many counties by surprise and they didn’t have time to properly vet their positions.”

Central Maryland 2011 straw harvest

Legislation that will likely be drafted for the next legislative session will seek the elimination of the program’s District agreements has been underway since 2007, but some tweaks are needed to eliminate all reference to districts in policy and legal documents. Districts, which were a property designation, were long the first step to become eligible for selling development rights to the program. Six counties retain districts because they are providing property tax credits in exchange for the development restriction the district agreement secured.

The Foundation will likely seek legislation to require two appraisals rather than the current requirement of one, to be paid by any landowner who succeeds in having their easement terminated under the program’s former 25-year buyback provision. Termination requests for properties that were preserved before the legislature rescinded the buyback clause in 2004 require the owner to prove a property can no longer be farmed. The arduous termination process, if completed, ends with a vote in the Maryland General Assembly. No landowners have come forward with a termination request.

Still under discussion for the legislative committee is revising real property law to allow entities that hold easements to record notice in the land records about the easements they hold. According to a memorandum from legislative chair Bernard Jones, “the ability to record these notices in the land records will reduce administration and stewardship costs because these notices will help insure that landowners know if a property is under conservation or preservation easement.” It is thought violations will be curtailed by the change.

Battlefield farmland object of development truce

BY DEBORAH BOWERS

Cedar Creek Battlefield (Google Earth photo)

NEW MARKET, VA – A 174-acre farm platted for 218 homes, and part of the Cedar Creek National Historical Park near Middletown, Va., might get a new lease on life through the Shenandoah Valley Battlefield Foundation.

“We now have an option to purchase the property or to preserve it with an easement if we are successful and it will remain in farming,” at least for the foreseeable future, said John Hutchinson, Foundation director of preservation and planning. Hutchinson said one approach the organization may favor is to purchase the property outright, place it under easement and “roll it over to the private sector,” he said.

The Foundation is studying the feasibility of acquiring the property, known as Island Farm. Hutchinson said a change in town leadership in Strasburg now favors preserving the property. The former town council approved the development as proposed. A changed economy has given preservation another chance, Hutchinson said.

Haying in Shenandoah County, Va. (FPR photo)

“We’re looking at a lot of options and we have strong support from the localities and communities.” Applying for help from the federal Farm and Ranchland Protection Program could be one of those options, Hutchinson said.

The towns of Strasburg and Shenandoah County have each pledged $15,000 to help with the costs of the project. The owner has pledged $10,000 to help the project succeed.

Congress created the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields National Historic District, which includes the Cedar Creek Battlefield, in 1996. The District encompasses Augusta, Clarke, Frederick, Highland, Page, Rockingham, Shenandoah, and Warren counties and the cities of Harrisonburg, Staunton, Waynesboro, and Winchester.

The Foundation, which is the managing entity for the District, works with landowners and other partners to protect Shenandoah Valley battlefields and the historic character of the region, a tall order with Interstate 81and mountain-high signage running through the valley north to south. The focus is on the 21,000 acres that have somehow retained historic integrity on the 10 designated battlefields. The Foundation has collaborated with local governments and other entities in fee and easement projects. The Foundation also works with local governments to improve planning and preservation to insure the survival of the battlefields.

An early and great planner – William Penn

BY MICHAEL MCGRATH, Contributing Editor

Historical marker at Penn Farm (Photo-Mike McGrath)

In 1701 William Penn first laid out the farms surrounding his new town of New Castle. Then, it was part of his colony of Pennsylvania (later the Three Counties would become the new State of Delaware on June 15, 1776 – now known as Separation Day). Wisely, Penn planned for the resource needs of the colony by setting aside over 1,000 acres of land as a trust in common, as he stated in his charter, “to lye in Common for the accommodation of the Inhabitants of the Town of New Castle for their onley use and behoof forever.” And it wasn’t just benevolence that motivated Penn.

Penn, and his Quaker brethren, came to America to find freedom. Their brand of freedom was rooted in strong religious convictions, but they were also motivated by bitter experience. These religious dissenters had been hounded and persecuted in their native land. They knew that real freedom was necessarily rooted in more than noble words and stubborn opposition, but would have to be founded on true independence from that system of commerce and

William Penn

government that sought to control all the aspects of their lives. Penn, unlike other founders of American colonies, knew that resource independence was a vital component of colonial success. The “Common” he established for New Castle was to provide for that independence. In documents we find that wood was a vital resource from those lands for both construction needs and energy resources for heat and cooking. Later, farming would provide the food and fiber for the sustenance of the town. Recently I’ve been a part of a major project to rekindle the vision of William Penn in the 21^st century.

The Trustees of New Castle Common continue to this day as a vital force in the life of the Town of New Castle. ( http://www.newcastlecity.net/city_gov/trustee.html ) The last remaining farm of the Common established by Penn has become the focal point of a new project to update Penn’s vision for today’s world. In conjunction with Delaware Greenways, Inc. the Trustees are revitalizing the farm, restoring the old house and buildings, have opened a farm market (Tract 6 Market, after the survey number of the farm from 1701) and will be establishing a CSA and several cooperative programs of education and training with the local school district. In short they are bringing back Penn’s idea of farmland in support of the prosperity of an urban center.

And we all thought the trends of local food, supporting local agriculture, and linking farms to community were something new we had thought up! Not really – these ideas are more than 300 years old! There will be good, fresh food for the residents of New Castle coming from land preserved in common for their benefit. People can once again walk (or ride bicycles) out to the Penn Farm, talk to the farmers, enjoy the views – and take home dinner! But as great as all this may be, there’s more to the update of Penn’s plan than just some fresh corn! There’s the matter of independence.

In the last 10 years or so we’ve learned from bitter experience the costs of dependency. Most dramatically, dependence on others for our energy resources has cost us our wealth and the lives of our country’s youth. More importantly, our own belief system has been assailed and assaulted by those who hold us hostage by their control of petroleum.

We could stand on the verge of another pernicious web of dependency surrounding our food and agricultural products. As we let more and more of our country’s farmland slip away the specter of greater dependency on foreign food supplies becomes more real. William Penn would warn us sharply about such dependency. Penn would counsel that we set aside land, preserve it for the future health and happiness of our communities, for our “onley use and behoof forever.” Penn would tell us that if we want to pursue our own quest for freedom and independence as a nation in the 21^st century, we must also pursue our independence in food and resources.

That still sounds like good advice after 310 years!

Delaware launches program to help young farmers buy land

BY DEBORAH BOWERS

DOVER, DE – Delaware Gov. Jack A. Markell signed into law the Delaware Young Farmer program during the Delaware State Fair in July and used the occasion to promote the state’s efforts at securing a future for farming for Delaware’s 2,500 farm families. This year Delaware committed $10 million to farmland preservation, with $3 million targeted to the new Young Farmer Program, which helps beginning farmers purchase land that is put into conservation easement.

Delaware Gov. Jack Markell at the bill signing for Young Farmer Program

Delaware farmers generate $1.2 billion in annual sales. Over the last 20 years the state farmland preservation program has preserved more than 100,000 acres, about one-third of the state’s farmland.

“At this year’s fair, we celebrated our renewed commitment to agricultural preservation and the launch of our Delaware Young Farmer program – providing incentives for young farmers to carry on family farms and start-up farms of their own,” Markell said in his weekly address.  “We will help young farmers acquire land, and at the same time, be providing for the permanent preservation of that land.”

“Farmland is one of the wisest investments we can make to grow jobs and opportunities – while saving our future costs and sending a signal that we’re investing in agriculture for the long haul,” Markell said. “We know the dream of so many young Delawareans is to grow up to be like their parents or grandparents and become farmers. It is our job to facilitate that dream.”

The Young Farmer Program, developed by former farmland preservation director Mike McGrath before he retired in June, was provided for in the FY 2012 budget. It is designed to reduce the capital investment for young people who want to start an agribusiness and sets up an affordable repayment program for them. The land a young farmer purchases will also be permanently preserved through the Delaware AgLands Program.

Markell also promoted the state’s farm markets and state’s Delaware Fresh smart phone application for locating fresh produce.

Delaware ranks 9th nationwide in the percentage of land area devoted to cropland.  Thirty-five percent of Delaware’s land mass is devoted to cropland, 42% of our land is in farms.

New Jersey approves first solar installations on preserved farms

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

TRENTON, NJ– The State Agriculture Development Committee (SADC) approved June 23 the first applications for installation of solar units on preserved farms. The three approved applications are for units that are roof-mounted on existing buildings. Rules have not yet been completed for ground-mounted structures.

Roof mounted solar installation (Photo courtesy of Wis.-based Northwind Renewable Energy LLC)

The SADC acted on the applications under a law passed last year that allows alternative energy systems to be installed on farms. Its proposed rules were released for comment early this year.

The rooftop generation systems range in size from 17 to 40 kilowatts, according to Hope Gruzlovic of the SADC.

SADC approved rules in May that set standards for commercial farms to qualify for right-to-farm protection for energy generation operations on New Jersey farms, as directed under the law passed last year, and it will be developing rules specifically for preserved farms as required under the law. The rules will become effective upon publication, anticipated late this summer.

In addition to operating the farmland preservation program, SADC administers the state’s right to farm law and was charged with developing rules for adding energy generation as a protected use.

According to SADC, farms seeking right-to-farm protection must conform to the newly developed standards as well as meet the eligibility criteria for farmland assessment. These include that for every acre devoted to energy generation, another five acres of land must be devoted to agricultural/horticultural operations; the total area devoted to energy generation cannot exceed 10 acres and no more than two megawatts of power may be generated.

The New Jersey law allowing energy generation on farms, including preserved farms, was signed into law in Jan 2010. Under the law, energy generation on preserved farms will be allowed to exceed farm use by 10 percent, or alternatively, the plant will be allowed to occupy up to one percent of the land. Farm owners will be required to own the facility and can sell excess generation to reduce energy costs on the farm through net metering. Under New Jersey law, net metering allows excess generation to be credited to the customer’s next bill at the retail rate.

NJ preserved farm (Photo: SADC)

Coinciding with passage of the energy law, the legislature also amended the state’s use value assessment law to include biomass, solar or wind energy generation. SADC executive director Susan Payne said adding energy production under use value taxation was distinguishable from redefining agriculture or even agricultural use generally. She told FPR in Feb. 2010 the new law “acknowledges that alternative energy generation is something that can happen to a limited degree” without turning a farm into a power station. It is a subtle distinction, she added, between allowing, for taxation purposes, the inclusion of energy production as an agricultural use, and changing the state’s definition of agricultural use.

SADC strongly objected to changing the definition of agriculture or agricultural use when the bill was first introduced in 2008.

The law states that no income from power or heat sold from biomass, solar, or wind energy generation may be considered income for eligibility for valuation, assessment and taxation.

Legislation ties Pa. program funding with gas drilling tax

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

Pennsylvania farmland (FPR photo)

HARRISBURG, PA – One of Pennsylvania’s two dedicated sources of money for farmland preservation has dried up and one bill introduced in the legislature would replenish those dollars by taxing the state’s fast growing Marcellus shale gas drilling industry.

Legislation introduced by Rep. Kate Harper, who represents parts of Montgomery County, would create a severance tax on gas extraction, which has become the hottest economic boost in recent history in the state. Drilling in the Marcellus shale regions that stretch across the western and northern parts of the state has changed the rural economic landscape. According to Harper, and the bill’s 18 cosponsors, it is time for the gas drilling industry to pay into a fund to address the negative impacts the change has brought about. Those include water pollution, wildlife habitat destruction and damage and wear on local and state infrastructure. Pennyslvania has not imposed a tax on the drilling industry.

The Environmental Stewardship Fund (ESF), whose monies came through the state’s Growing Greener II initiative passed by voters in 2005, provided $80 million for farmland preservation. Now, the farmland program must rely more heavily on its other dedicated fund, a portion of the state cigarette tax revenue that earmarks at least $20 million to farmland preservation annually.

A coalition of organizations supports renewing the Growing Greener initiatives with $200 million annually. The coalition also is urging the state to stop using the ESF to pay the debt service on Growing Greener bonds.

With ESF funds spent, the cigarette tax funding will remain as the program’s major funding source, said Doug Wolfgang, director of the Bureau of Farmland Preservation. Wolfgang said the program also gets some monies from a rollback tax imposed on lands enrolled in the state’s Clean and Green program, which taxes agricultural land at its use value. The program also receives federal funds from the Farm and Ranchland Protection Program.

“There’s always a need for additional funding,” Wolfgang said.

A loss of funding will impact and likely enlarge the program’s 2000-farm backlog, comprising approximately 240,000 acres. Since the program’s beginning, the average per acre payment has been $2500.

According to the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group, drilling companies have been paying for their wear on local roads, spending more than $400 million to repair roadways they use. Under state law, companies log which roads are used and must provide a plan for maintaining the roads.

Marcellus gas drilling site (Credit: Pa. DEP)

Under the Harper bill, HB 1406, 36 percent of revenues from the severance tax would go to environmental programs including the ESF. The tax would equal 1.5 percent of the gross value of gas units extracted for the first 60 months of production and 5 percent of the gross value of units taken thereafter on wells that produce natural gas in excess of 90,000 cubic feet per day. According to Harper, the bill was modeled after a similar tax enacted in Arkansas.

“The money would go to local communities to help them deal with the effects of a heavy industry moving in,” said Rep. Harper on her website. She said every other state with active gas drilling has a severance tax. “Pennsylvania is remiss in not having this industry pay its fair share.” She said she and her cosponsors do not believe that the tax will make drilling companies go away.

A bill in the Senate, SB 1100, would impose graduated impact fees on natural gas extraction with revenues targeted to community services and conservation districts.

Since 2005, the state Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Oil and Gas Management, has issued 7,560 permits for Marcellus shale drilling, and 3,329 have been drilled. Of that number, 745 wells have been drilled in 2011. From Jan. through May 2011, the Bureau issued 1,367 permits for Marcellus shale drilling in northern and western parts of the state; 654 wells were drilled during the period. Bradford, Tioga and Lycoming counties lead the state in number of wells drilled and permits issued. Bradford had 158 Marcellus wells drilled as of April; Tioga had 101, and Lycoming 96.

Gov. Tom Corbett opposes levying a severance tax, stating it would hurt the booming economy that the gas drilling has created, which is indirectly boosting tax revenues. Corbett said gas drillers would work in other states if Pennsylvania levied its own severance tax. A recent poll found that Pennsylvania voters support taxing drilling companies by 69 percent to 24 percent. The legislature debated levying a severance tax during budget negotiations that are ending with passage of a budget by the end of June. But the severance tax push will continue.

House agriculture spending bill slashes conservation programs

BY DEBORAH BOWERS

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The House passed the FY2012 agriculture budget June 16 at $7 billion less than requested by the president, including $770 million for conservation programs, a nearly $1 billion decrease in spending over last year.

Wetlands Reserve project, Wisconsin (Photo by NRCS-Wis.)

According to the Land Trust Alliance, the House bill funds the Farm and Ranchlands Protection Program at $150 million, a cut of $25 million over last year and $50 million less than authorized in the 2008 farm bill.

The American Farmland Trust and the Land Trust Alliance are urging their members to call their senators to ask that funding be restored.

Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, subcommittee chairman on agriculture appropriations, said the House-approved budget for agriculture as a whole is a reduction of 13.4 percent in discretionary funding and “makes the tough choices necessary to reduce spending while keeping our bill’s basic missions of food production, food and drug safety, rural development and nutrition programs intact.” Kingston said the Committee worked “where possible” with the Agriculture Committee “to identify and initiate major reforms for the upcoming Farm Bill.”

“We realize that Congress faces tough budget choices, but making draconian cuts to voluntary conservation programs that help farmers and ranchers provide all Americans with cleaner air and water, more productive soils and habitat for wildlife is penny-wise and dollar-foolish,” said Sara Hopper, agricultural policy director for Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and a former staff member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “The Senate needs to restore reasonable funding levels for conservation programs for the benefit of our environment and taxpayers.”

Fifty organizations including the American Farmland Trust, Land Trust Alliance and the EDF, opposed the proposed cuts May 31 in a joint letter stating conservation programs “are crucial to the health and viability of agriculture and rural America” that “deliver demonstrated environmental benefits including clean air, clean water, and abundant habitat for wildlife. They protect soil and farmland to provide lasting food security. And they bring important money and jobs to rural areas…”

Conservation funding in the farm bill supports a number of federal programs that use conservation easements to protect agricultural and natural lands in cooperation with state and local land protection programs. Those programs, administed by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) include the Farm and Ranchland Protection Program; the Grassland Reserve Program; the Emergency Watershed Protection Program, which purchases floodplain easements; the Healthy Forests Reserve Program; and the Wetlands Reserve Program.

Harford program back after three-year hiatus

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

Preserved farm in Harford (FPR photo)

BEL AIR, MD – Applicants to Harford County’s local farmland preservation program have been waiting three years for funding to become available again following the economic downturn that pinched revenues from the county’s local real estate transfer tax. They got their wish a few months ago when the county announced it would have $3 million to use for the program. Sixty applicants are under consideration in the new round.

“We’re going to treasury and the county executive to get them ranked. In about mid-July we should have it hammered down and start making offers,” said Bill Amoss, program administrator. After offers are accepted, proposed purchases will go before the Harford County Council sometime in October, he said.

In Harford’s last round, finished in 2008, per-acre offers ranged between approximately $9000 and $13,000. But this new round will cap per-acre offers at $7000, Amoss said. In addition, in this round the county will not offer the option of lump sum payment as in past rounds. All applicants will be offered an installment purchase arrangement.

“That will help stretch the money to get to more of our 60 applicants,” said Amoss. He didn’t know how many would receive offers. “They are all nice properties.”

Just six years ago the Harford program had to increase its offer range because a cap of $5000 per acre was keeping applicants away, with about 12 offers turned down. But the installment purchase agreement (IPA) aspect of the program also kept potential applicants away from the Maryland state program operated by the Md. Agricultural Land Preservation Foundation, because the advantages of the county’s IPA were well understood by Harford’s farmers. The prospect of capital gains tax deferral and tax-free interest payments was preferred to the state program’s lump sum payout.

New home construction in rural Harford in 2011. This new home is part of a six-lot subdivision next to a preserved farm. (FPR photo)

The presence of a major military installation that is host to personnel transfers under the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Act has kept Harford County from experiencing the level of real estate downturn in other Maryland localities. New home construction and lot sales in the county’s rural areas continued with many homes going up next to preserved farms. Even so, officials said transfer tax revenues slowed to a point that the farmland program had to be put on ice for several years to allow revenues to accumulate for a new round. During that period, revenues were adequate only to pay the interest on installment purchases completed in prior years, county officials said.

Harford’s program began in 1993 when the county council passed legislation that allowed for installment payments to be made in government real estate transactions. The program rapidly became a national leader and since has preserved over 40,000 acres. Once an agricultural powerhouse that led the nation with its number of canneries, Harford’s coastal plain soils along the top of the Chesapeake Bay have had the fate of hosting not only a large military reservation but industrial and office development county leaders favored over agriculture.

Harford’s program currently ranks 9^th in the nation for number of acres preserved. Under the latest USDA agricultural census, its value of agricultural products was reported at about $43 million. The county’s agricultural zoning, restricting density to 1:10, has been rated as ineffective.

Filmaker George Lucas helps preserve Marin County ranch

POINT REYES STATION, CA — Lucasfilm Foundation, the charity founded by filmmaker George Lucas, this spring provided $2 million to Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) to preserve the 1,214-acre Corda Ranch just west of Novato. The remainder of the $2.9 purchase was provided by the federal Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program through NRCS.

George Lucas, left, with MALT director Bob Berner at the Corda ranch

The easement will help the fifth-generation Corda family stay in agricultural production. The easement also protects the headwaters of Novato Creek, the primary tributary of Stafford Lake, an important part of Novato’s water supply.

George Lucas has taken an active interest in the landscape of Marin since bringing his Lucasfilm operations to Skywalker Ranch near Nicasio in the late 1970′s. Skywalker Properties owns several ranches in the area covering more than 6,100 acres, most of which are protected by MALT agricultural conservation easements.

“As a long-time resident of Marin, the county’s natural open spaces are very important to me,” Lucas explained in a MALT press release. “Since we first made the move here in 1979, we’ve always worked to preserve the landscape and the environment. We need to respect and protect the land while we’re here, so that future generations can also appreciate its beauties and its benefits.”

A scenic Marin dairy farm

“The farms and ranches of Marin are an important resource for the entire Bay Area,” Lucas continued. “By supporting MALT’’s protection of the Corda Ranch, we’re helping to ensure that these diverse habitats are monitored and well-managed now and in the future.”

Since its founding in 1980, MALT has permanently protected more than 40 percent of the private family farm and ranch land in Marin County.

Robert Berner, Executive Director at MALT, explained the importance of protecting agricultural properties such as the Corda Ranch, saying, “Family farms and ranches in Marin face tremendous pressure to give in to residential development. Large properties such as the Corda Ranch are threatened as the market for country-style luxury homes and estates keeps increasing. By permanently preserving this ranch for agricultural uses, we’re helping to maintain the critical mass of farming operations required to sustain agriculture as a viable component of Marin County’s economy for generations to come.”

The Corda family has owned the ranch since the early 1900′s. Agricultural operations on the ranch include raising beef cattle and dairy heifers, as well as silage crop production for a local dairy. According to MALT, without the sale of a conservation easement, the family would have likely been forced to subdivide the ranch and sell parcels to settle estate issues.

“Our family has been tending this land for over a hundred years,” said Fred Corda, who will retain ownership of the property, along with his wife and two adult sons, and continue agricultural operations. “I’m sure that in the beginning, no one ever dreamed that property values would grow so high and the pressure to sell would be so great. But now, thanks to MALT, we know this ranch will always be protected for agriculture, and that’s really important to us as stewards of the land.” 

MALT is a member-supported, nonprofit organization created in 1980 by a coalition of ranchers and environmentalists to permanently preserve Marin County farmland. Some of the Bay Area’s most highly acclaimed dairy products and organic crops are produced on farmland protected by MALT conservation easements, which total more than 42,300 acres on 67 family farms and ranches.

This story was provided by MALT in a press release.

Planning was my profession, but farmland preservation is my love

BY MIKE MCGRATH, Contributing Editor

Mike McGrath

Thirty-eight years ago I climbed down off a tractor and went to work for the New Castle County government.  Where did my parents go wrong?  Seriously, I’ve not regretted a minute of the time as I look forward to retiring from the State of Delaware at the end of June.  I did tell every boss that I worked for, “If you want to fire me, let me know in January.”  “Why”  “Because, then at least, I can buy some seed and get a crop in the ground!”  Farming was a passion I inherited – saving farmland I had to learn.

It’s been a good run here at the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation in the Department of Agriculture.  With over 100,000 acres of Delaware farmland permanently preserved I feel as though I’ve done what I came here to do 28 years ago.  I’m the only person who has ever managed ag preservation in Delaware.  Like Ted Williams’ home run in his last at-bat, I wanted to leave public service on a high note – I think I’m doing that.

Planning has always been my profession – away from the farm.  At the very heart of farmland preservation is good planning.  Many people talk about maintaining a local food supply, or insuring the local ag economy, or supporting the noble profession of farming as reasons for putting public money and effort towards preserving farmland.  Those are all good reasons.  But at its very heart farmland preservation has always been, for all those reasons and many more, just plain, good planning.  Preserving farmland complements good urban planning, too.  It’s all part of what every jurisdiction should be doing as one of its principal goals – solid planning.  In the 1950s, when “Holly” Whyte (famous, then, as author of The Organization Man and with a definite Delaware connection as a graduate of St. Andrew’s School in Middletown) advocated for preserving farmland through placing conservation easements on prime land, it was really part of his wider vision for planning in New York City.  In 1972 Whyte wrote the text for the NYC Plan.  Later, Whyte became famous for his insistence on street level plans that reflected humans’ actual activities.  The connection is obvious – eating and farming are the most basic of human activities and should be at the very base of the plans we make for our civilization.  The Greeks and Romans made the farmers’ marketplace (agricola) the centerpiece of their city plans.  William Penn, another great city planner (and planter!) established farmers’ markets in his plans for Wilmington, Delaware.  Only recently are we re-discovering the proper role of farmland and markets in our plans.  I hope it’s not too late.

McGrath at Gettysburg Roundtable dinner, 2008 (FPR photo)

But preserving farmland has been my passion.  Ultimately, the value of preserving farmland is a personal matter.  As much as anyone in this business I’ve tried to use statistics, analysis, facts to justify the permanent protection of farms for future generations.  In the final analysis, though, I have found that the public, and most farmers, have a deep-seated commitment to protecting the land that transcends numbers.  While I can justify marriage (most days!) by citing the tax code, or longevity statistics, or basic economics, at the end of the day I’ve stayed with Joan for nearly forty years because I love her so much.  That’s been the case with preserving farmland, too.  I love doing it! I love seeing the face of an octogenarian who walks in to permanently preserve his great-grandfather’s farm.  I love handing a settlement check to a young couple who are committed to farming a piece of land for a lifetime.  I love it when someone who just bought a farm signs an easement and says, “Well, this farm will never be developed!”  I don’t know exactly why I love all these things – but I do!

When I left home at 18 my father had a few words of advice.  Fathers always do, don’t they?  He said, “Whatever you decide to do with your life, try to make it something you would do even if they wouldn’t pay you for doing it.”  Dad always said his vegetable farming and greenhouses were his hobbies – and he made money, too.  I think I’ve done the same thing with my career.  They’ve paid me pretty well for pursuing my passion.  Not a bad deal!  I can only wish the same for you in your career!

From the Publisher: Congratulations, Mike! We all wish you a long and happy retirement. But we look forward to your continued words of wisdom here at FPR! – Deborah B. Mike can be reached until June 30 at michael.mcgrath@state.de.us. After June 30 he can be reached at mhmcgrath@gmail.com

“Sustainable farming takes root in agriculture”

BY BOB HEUER, Contributing Editor

“Sustainable farming takes root in agriculture.”

That’s the headline of a recent front page San Francisco Chronicle story.

Conventional agriculture and fossil fuels at work

The Chronicle’s Washington correspondent Carolyn Lochhead has reported on the “conventional” versus “alternative” farming debate for many years. She wrote this story because public interest in food, farming and agriculture reform is “gaining real momentum from even a year ago, reaching a critical mass. The rewrite of the federal farm bill will see these forces play out with much greater intensity than the 2008 bill, especially given the enormous budget pressures.”

Carolyn’s article explores the ideological battle dividing large- and small-scale agriculture and makes the case for co-existence. The story presents perspectives from numerous sources—including me.

Having tracked federal Farm Bills since 1990 first as a reporter and now as a consultant, I think profitability must remain the core principle of “sustainable agriculture.” Nothing really new there. What’s changed is the increasingly irrefutable need to factor external environmental, social and economic costs into the equation. How this gets done will depend a lot on dialogue and the creation of mutually acceptable measures to incrementally improve sustainability outcomes.

Local governments are sponsoring the 'buy local' message to support their local ag economy (FPR photo)

I’ve never seen such a good conversation starter as “local” food. Growing demand for food sourced from nearby farms is obviously a criticism of the industrial farm and food model, but this need not be the cause for a culture war.

A big part of the solution will come from “conventional” farmers and ranchers who learn to accommodate ideological differences. One farmer told me recently: “Regional food system work isn’t about replacing global markets so much as creating opportunity for smaller growers who are better positioned to supply nearby markets. The demand for locally grown food will lead the general public to have a better understanding of the importance of having agriculture around.”

Bob Heuer is an Illinois-based public policy and marketing consultant. This article was first published in “Fork to Farm” edited by Warren E. Clark.

State funding formula among top issues at Harrisburg

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

Tom Daniels speaks to PFPA about the state program's funding formula

HARRISBURG, PA – The formula that determines how much money the state sends to localities for farmland preservation was one of the hot topics discussed among Pennsylvania’s county-level farmland program administrators at the semi-annual conference of the Pa. Farmland Preservation Association (PFPA) May 18.

The topic was among those named by University of Pennsylvania planning Professor Tom Daniels as aspects of Pennsylvania’s program that needed adjustment after more than 20 years of program operation. Daniels, former Lancaster County program director, was a featured speaker at the conference.

Also addressing the group was Pa. Secretary of Agriculture George Greig. Greig, speaking just

Secretary of Agriculture George Greig with PFPA officers

hours after his swearing in, said he believed in farmland preservation and while serving on the Crawford County Conservation District Board urged county government to establish its farmland preservation program in the early years of the state program. Greig told the group that he will do what he can to protect and to increase program funding. Greig’s own farm in Crawford County is not preserved due to lack of development pressure in the area, Greig told FPR.

Tom Daniels, who received a certificate of appreciation from the group for his leadership in the policy and practice of farmland preservation both locally and nationally, said the funding formula used in Pennsylvania was rewarding counties that have high development pressure and stronger real estate transfer tax revenues, resulting in high per-acre costs. He said the state’s agriculture would better benefit from a formula that emphasizes a county’s percent of state agricultural output and its financial commitment to the program.

The state’s more productive agricultural counties are being left in the cold when it comes to amount of funds awarded, Daniels indicated.

Ellen Dayhoff, veteran program administrator for Adams County, said she agreed with Daniels and that a look at where her county stands in ag production and what it received from the state compared to Allegheny County was a good example of the problem. Adams ranks 6^th in the state

Adams County farmland (FPR photo)

for total market value of agricultural products and 1^st in fruit production, but it received a 2010 state grant of just $117,814 based on the county’s portion of state Realty Transfer Tax revenues. It also received a state match of $306,457, an award for the county’s own contribution of $425,015, for total state funds of $448,842.

Comparing those figures with those of Allegheny County, tells the tale, Dayhoff said: Allegheny ranks 56^th in the state for total market value of agricultural products and 13^th in vegetable production, its highest ranking, but it received a 2010 state grant of $671,095 based on the county’s portion of state Realty Transfer Tax revenues. Allegheny received zero matching funds, because the county contributed zero dollars to the effort.

Dayhoff said the example shows clearly how the formula rewards counties that are undistinguished agriculturally, and don’t contribute funding to the effort, but are rewarded for having larger numbers of real estate transactions. Those real estate sales could be due to less effective planning and development restrictions, resulting in weaker farmland protection.

Northampton County program administrator Maria Bentzoni agreed the state funding formula could be adjusted. “Now that we’re 20 years out, isn’t it time to revisit the allocation formula?”

The way farms are ranked, or prioritized, was also a topic. Patricia McCandless of York County said the percent of emphasis in the ranking formula given for soil productivity is too high at 40 percent for her county, but Betty Reefer said she felt it was just right for Westmoreland County.

Daniels said he felt that weighting soil productivity in the ranking formula should be left up to the counties and not set by the state.

Daniels also said preserving contiguous blocks of farmland was an important strategy for a program to succeed in retaining agriculture.

“If you’re not going to get large preserved blocks of farmland, you’re not going to succeed. The last thing you want is development coming in next to your preserved farm.” He also urged administrators to pursue enactment of growth boundaries around townships as a means of protecting contiguous blocks of preserved farmland and showed examples from Lancaster County. Another key to success is farmer support and satisfaction with the program, which will help build contiguous blocks.

“Farmland preservation works when you have neighbors talking to neighbors, talking to neighbors,” Daniels said.

Ray Pickering, agricultural development director for Fauquier County, Va.

The group’s theme for the meeting, “Back to the Future” also brought former Pa. state program director Ray Pickering to present his current work as agricultural development director for Fauquier County, Va. Fauquier’s farmland preservation program, begun in 2002, has preserved 7,380 acres on 36 farms, and retired 390 development rights from its target farms consisting of traditional dairy and crop farms. The program uses a set $25,000 per development right, and has four criteria for eligibility, including a 50-acre size requirement, recognition as a “boni fide agricultural operation,” agricultural zoning designation, and absence of other easements or restrictions, which effectively excludes those properties which have donated conservation easements.

Fauquier County has more than 69,000 acres on about 464 properties preserved through easements donated to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. Many of those properties are equine operations in the county’s northeastern area nearest to Loudoun County’s rural western region. Pickering answered many questions about farmland preservation in Virginia, which has little support from the state level compared to other states. Programs that have managed to use points-based appraisal systems or other systems like Fauquier’s, which avoid the timely and costly appraisal process were of particular interest to the group.

Doug Wolfgang with Agriculture Secretary Greig and Jim Baird of American Farmland Trust

At the meeting Doug Wolfgang, director of the Pa. Bureau of Farmland Preservation, was feted with the group’s Local Hero Award for his leadership and effective administration of the state program.

Wolfgang said other important topics for the group include gas drilling, which brought a number of comments from administrators who asked Wolfgang to provide guidance on how to monitor farms that have gas leases or company rights-of-way. Betty Reefer of Westmoreland County said most preserved farms have signed leases with gas drilling companies. Wolfgang said that owners of preserved farms who grant a right of way for the pipelines are not in violation of state ag easements.

Wolfgang said that while companies drilling for natural gas in the western and northern portions of the state are, as local officials say, “breathing new life into an ailing farm economy,” he wonders whether the presence of compressor stations will harm the image of the program for the rest of the state.

Agricultural conservation easements used by the Pennsylvania Bureau of Farmland Preservation, and most other state farmland programs, do not prohibit mineral extraction, and the boom in Marcellus shale drilling throughout western and northern Pennsylvania and southern New York has put hundreds of preserved farm owners in position to sign gas leases and program administrators in some counties confirmed that many if not all of their preserved farms have signed leases. One thing is more than evident: the money to be made from natural gas extraction has cut regulation to the quick. Water quality concerns are the focus, as the content of wastewater, which in Pennsylvania is being trucked off site and processed at wastewater facilities, is still under study. The EPA is studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing, but that report will not be completed for another year. Truck accidents and spillage have already occurred.

The Pennsylvania legislature may amend Act 43, which governs the farmland preservation program, to deal with the gas drilling issue. But amendment language is far from final and the earliest any changes could be introduced would be next fall, according to Senate staff.

Jeff Everett takes post at Wisconsin NRCS

Everett (Photo by FPR)

MADISON, WI - Jeff Everett has become easement programs coordinator for the Wisconsin state office of the NRCS as of early May. Everett had served as farmland preservation program administrator for Carroll County, Md. for three and a half years. In his new post Everett is responsible for administering all farm bill easement programs including the Farm and Ranchlands Protection Program for the state.

While at Carroll County, Everett devised a new method for installment purchases of conservation easements and set a national record for number of acres preserved in a county PDR program in a single year by preserving more than 5,000 acres in 2010. His finance innovation, which provided increased interest payments and potential for tax benefits in exchange for a discounted principal, saved millions of dollars for the county. He also successfully instituted conservation practices as part of conservation easement agreements.

While at Carroll County, Everett garnered several awards, including national recognition from The Conservation Fund for his innovative finance work.

“I currently administer all farm bill easement programs for NRCS, so it’s a mix of farmland preservation and natural resource conservation.  While I miss home, it is refreshing to experience a new locale, particularly in a place as progressive as Madison. I was able to preserve 12,000 acres in the three and a half years I was in Carroll County, which is something I’m proud of, particularly since it occurred during the worse economic recession since the Great Depression.”

Everett hails from Virginia where his parents have a farm in Shenandoah County. He formerly managed the Howard County, Md., PDR program and also worked for the National Park Service in New Hampshire. Everett continues to work as a consultant to help build potential for a PDR program in New Hampshire and also provided consulting services to state and local officials in Virginia.

New Jersey announces largest preservation deal in state history

Property owner Bill Flemer speaks at the announcement that his family has agreed to place its 1,900 acres into open space and farmland preservation

TRENTON, NJ – New Jersey land preservation efforts saw several milestones last month , including marking its 2000^th preserved farm and announcing a deal that will preserve a group of contiguous properties comprising 1,900 acres in nursery use for decades. The deal includes both fee and easement transactions and is the largest in the state’s history.

During a news conference April 18, New Jersey Agriculture Secretary Douglas Fisher and Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner Bob Martin joined officials from Monmouth, Mercer, and Burlington counties, Upper Freehold Township, and the Monmouth Conservation Foundation, as well as local officials, to announce contracts with members of the Flemer family, which until recently operated the land as Princeton Nurseries, once one of the nation’s largest commercial nurseries.

The $28 million project includes $11.4 million for agricultural conservation easements  on about 900 acres. About 15,000 acres of farmland are preserved within a five-mile radius of the parcels that comprise the project. Open space fee purchases will use $16.4 million, according to Hope Gruzlovic of the State Agriculture Development Committee (SADC), which administers the state farmland preservation programs. More than 1,000 acres will be preserved as open space, creating a 512-acre State Wildlife Management Area and nearly 500 acres of additions to an adjacent county park and greenway corridor. The SADC worked with the DEP Green Acres Program to bring the project forward.

“This project is in the midst of what already is the highest concentration of preserved farmland in the state, and for good reason — the farmland here has extraordinarily high-quality soil, among the best in New Jersey,” said Secretary Fisher.

One of the nursery properties preserved as part of the 1,900-acre open space and farmland project

As the project was announced, the Green Acres Program celebrated its 50th anniversary.

The majority of the land is in Upper Freehold in Monmouth County, with additional parcels in Hamilton Township in Mercer County and North Hanover Township in Burlington County. Monmouth County is providing more than $10 million for the project — $7 million toward the purchase of open space for county parkland additions, and in cooperation with Upper Freehold another $4.6 million toward the purchase of farmland easements.

The Flemer family stated that the preservation of the land was the fulfillment of a lifetime wish of John Flemer who began the Princeton Nursery over 50 years ago.

“We are grateful to our staff and to our customers for all those good years and to the State of New Jersey for ensuring that this land we love will keep its rural character and natural beauty forever.”

“The scope of this project is impressive,” said Monmouth Conservation Foundation Executive Director Adele Keller. “Having the largest unpreserved farming operation in Monmouth County contiguous to many preserved farms and open space areas is of great significance to our communities.”

The SADC celebrated preserving 2000 farms since it began operating in 1985. The celebration took place at the 102-acre Tark farm in Salem County, which was among the recent preservation projects that helped the state Farmland Preservation Program reach the 2,000-farm mark. The New Jersey Conservation Foundation worked closely with co-owner Ernest Tark Jr.

To date, about 190,000 acres of farmland have been preserved under the state program in 18 counties. Salem County has preserved 28,000 acres, more than any other county.

Bailey returning to Ohio farmland preservation post

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

REYNOLDSBURG, OH – Michael Bailey was named May 9 to head Ohio’s farmland preservation program, a position he held from 2004 to 2007 before becoming executive director of the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board. Bailey will continue in that position as well, according to a press release.

Mike Bailey

The Ohio programs Bailey will be responsible for include the Clean Ohio Agricultural Easement Purchase Program, the Ohio Agricultural Easement Donation Program, and the Ohio Agricultural Security Area Program.

Bailey joined his counterparts from other states in 2007 for the first Farmland Preservation Roundtable in Gettysburg, Pa., organized by Farmland Preservation Report. Ohio was not represented at the most recent Roundtable held in Annapolis, Md.

Bailey’s immediate task includes getting through the purchase program’s current application round that ended April 6. Funded through bonds voters approved in 2008, the round brought in 190 applications representing 28,500 acres. The program also convenes an annual statewide Farmland Preservation Summit.

In 2010, the Ohio program added 6,160 acres at a cost of $6.2 million. The total preserved agricultural acres to date is about 42,400, comprising purchased easements and 6,000 acres of donated agricultural conservation easements. The figure also includes close to 3,000 acres comprising 19 farms that were preserved in 2002 using tobacco settlement funds.

Bailey replaces Kristen Jensen.

The big transition

BY TOM DANIELS, Senior Contributing Editor

Preserving farmland –signing easements, handing out checks, and putting blobs of “forever green” on maps—is the fun part of the process. Yet, with public budgets under stress and private land trusts struggling to fill the gap, this is a good time to assess the future of farmland preservation.

Six states (PA, MD, NJ, CO, VT, and DE) have exceeded 100,000 acres preserved through government-funded programs. These states also now hold or co-hold nearly 10,000 farmland easements. Although the acquisition of conservation easements will continue to be a major focus of these programs, monitoring and enforcing easements will become the top priority. Monitoring and enforcement require governments to maintain a dedicated staff or else to contract out with a third party to do at least some of the work. I am reluctant to recommend the contracting option—especially when enforcement is needed—because a central purpose of a conservation easement deal is to develop a long-term relationship based on trust between the landowner and the easement holder. But I understand that governments may not want to hire staff to monitor easements because of the costs of benefits. Still, governments will be better served, both in accountability and transparency, if their own employees are interacting with the landowners.

Lancaster County farm (FPR photo)

On the other hand, contracting out for monitoring can save money for a public program. For example, the Lancaster County (PA) Agricultural Preserve Board has contracted with the Lancaster Farmland Trust to monitor about one third of its more than 700 easements each year. The cost of monitoring may not increase much over time on a per farm basis, but a big fear among land preservationists is an expensive enforcement case. The Land Trust Alliance is responding to this challenge by arranging for easement insurance for land trusts– in essence a defense fund—to ensure that a legal challenge does not bankrupt or financially damage a land trust. A land trust will pay a few thousand dollars a year for easement insurance.

It is uncertain when public officials will authorize increases in farmland preservation budgets. The economy remains sluggish, and the real estate market has hardly begun to recover. Ironically, this is an ideal time to preserve land. The difference between market values and the value of land under an easement has narrowed. Many developers are looking to unload land, if not take a bargain sale easement offer.

Public preservation programs and land trusts have to decide how much funding to allocate to land and easement acquisitions and how much to monitoring and enforcement. But going forward, monitoring and enforcement will eat up a larger piece of the funding pie. That will be the price of land preservation success.

Former Md. Gov. Glendening says strong ag is essential to smart growth

BY BOB HEUER, Contributing Editor

Parris Glendening, who was a University of Maryland professor for 27 years, speaking on smart growth in 2006 (Wikipedia photo)

Buy-in from farmland owners on suburbia’s edge can accelerate efforts to create compact, walkable communities in metropolitan regions nationwide.   So says Parris Glendening, president of Smart Growth America’s Leadership Institute. This Washington-based non-profit agency helps local governments implement strategies that target housing and transportation investment near jobs, shops and schools.

Stable urban-edge farm economies will encourage urban reinvestment by acting as a market-based firewall to impede suburbia’s outward march, according to Glendening—a national leader for smart growth during two terms as governor of Maryland, serving from 1995 to 2003.

The Glendening administration created a number of innovative incentives for local governments to encourage more compact patterns of development.  Maryland’s Rural Legacy Program, one of Glendening’s most successful programs, has preserved large blocks of agricultural and natural land.  Less successful was a law that targeted state assistance to “priority funding areas”—i.e. urbanizing locales that met smart growth criteria.

“I used to say the best tool against sprawl is a prosperous agricultural community,” Gov. Glendening recalls.  “People who are opposed to sprawl often don’t understand the importance of farmers remaining economically viable.  And the ag community was often hostile towards smart growth. They view their land as their own IRA and want to protect their right to the very logical alternative of selling for development.”

Maryland’s initiatives helped boost local farm economies by expanding both the supply and demand for farmers markets products. Yet, the focus on environmental outcomes like open space and habitat protection sparked a political impasse.

Maryland farm preserved through the Rural Legacy Program (FPR photo)

Gov. Glendening sees potential for a “a new kind of conversation” emanating from the nationwide movement to know the source of food.  Unmet consumer demand for local food creates comparative advantages for farmers near population centers and, thus, a strong economic rationale for a comprehensive policy framework that promotes farmland preservation and agricultural development.

The Leadership Institute is affiliated with Smart Growth America—a national advocacy organization that supports farmland preservation as a means to encourage reinvestment in “existing” urban and suburban communities.   Gov. Glendening says both organizations need to do a better job of recognizing exurban farming areas as another “existing” community in need of reinvestment:  “We have some partners involved in agriculture and rural development but haven’t made this connection as explicit as we should.”

This myopia is reflected in the Obama Administration’s Sustainable Communities Initiative—a partnership between HUD, DOT and EPA.  In FY 2011, Congress appropriated $70 million for HUD-administered regional planning grants to help guide state, metropolitan, and local investments in land use, transportation and housing.

The lion’s share of the funds goes to metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs).  For decades, MPOs have treated urban-edge agriculture as a temporary land use pending inevitable suburbanization.  Some MPOs—such as those in Philadelphia, Sacramento and Columbus—are beginning to explore ways to sustain their regional agriculture industries.

A more typical example is the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. CMAP recently received a $4 million HUD grant to support implementation of its 2040 Plan for northeastern Illinois.  CMAP’s idea for “sustainable communities” acknowledges that maybe farmland isn’t empty space best paved over.  Indeed, the plan recommendation to “promote sustainable local food” is a historic point of departure reflecting the recognition that agriculture as an enduring asset.  Urban, suburban and exurban constituencies are beginning to target parcels of underutilized private and publicly owned land for local food production and related businesses.

But local food is a sliver of the region’s agricultural market segments.  In CMAP’s seven-county planning jurisdiction, farming occupies a land mass about six times the size of the city of Chicago.  The decisions of northeastern Illinois farmland owners and renters affect all aspects of regional planning—ranging from transportation, land use and housing to the natural environment, economic growth, and community development.  Yet, CMAP has never had a strategy to encourage proactive dialogue with the agricultural industry.

“As issues of food costs and sustainability become more urgent, it is more essential than ever that the smart growth and the agriculture communities recognize that we are two sides of one equation,” Gov. Glendening says. “We all lose when farmers come under financial stress or live with the constant impact of sprawl.  When farmers prosper, it helps the prosperity of our existing cities and towns.  This must be the heart of an ongoing conversation about America’s future.”

JOB POSTING

Preservation Specialist

Department of Land Use, Planning, & Development

Carroll County Government

Westminster, Maryland

Salary $21.66 Hourly Salary, 40 hour position with full benefits

General responsibilities:     Coordinates program outreach and easements through settlement process of Agriculture Land Preservation Programs under the guidance of the Carroll County Agricultural Land Preservation Advisory Board in accordance with federal, state and local laws, within the goals and objectives of the Bureau of Planning. Negotiates Rural Legacy easements with landowners and processes Rural Legacy project agreements through Board of Public Works and the County Attorney’s Office. Provides hands-on guidance and counseling to farmland owners on land preservation programs and counsels landowners regarding easement sale, and coordinate application and easement settlement processes.

Requirements: Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture, Business Administration, Comprehensive Planning or related field and two years professional land use experience.

A Carroll County Government job application is required for this position and must be submitted by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, June 10, 2011.  To apply on-line, contact ccgovernment.carr.org or call the Carroll County Job Hotline at (410) 386-2020 to request an employment application.  For employment inquiries call the Office of Human Resources at (410) 386-2129.

Pennsylvania funding for farmland exceeds last year’s

Lebanon County farm (FPR photo)

HARRISBURG, PA – Pennsylvania will have $22 million to spend on farmland preservation in the coming year, $2 million more than last year, and some counties will benefit more than others by virtue of their commitments to spend more themselves. Lancaster County comes out on top, a place it is used to holding. With the most acres preserved, it also put up the most local money to spend, and therefore reaps more funding from the state coffer – this year, $2.3 million, more than any other county and about $400,000 more than last year.

Other counties with significant cash for the upcoming year include Bucks, which appropriated $2.5 million and was awarded $1.9; Northampton, which appropriated $3.7 million and received $1.8 million; and Berks which appropriated $1 million and received $1.4 million. Chester County, where local funding has been hit, put up $659,000 and pulled $1.3 million from the state.

Under the formula the state program uses to match county dollars, half of a county’s funding score comes from how much it appropriates relative to other counties. The other half of the formula grades the level of property tax revenues a county generates. This explains why Montgomery County, a populous and desirable Philadelphia suburb, can appropriate just $270,280 to save its hard hit and expensive remaining farm acres but receive $1 million from the state in aid, and similarly, Chester County receives twice as much as it puts in.

Tom Daniels, professor of planning at the University of Pennsylvania and former administrator of the Lancaster County program, has criticized the Pennsylvania funding formula for funneling high dollar amounts to urbanizing counties like Montgomery, where agriculture is not a high value industry. According to Daniels, preserving farmland in such counties is open space preservation and has little to do with agriculture.

In 2008 an audit conducted by the Legislative Budget & Finance Committee, a joint committee of the legislature, reviewed 19 issues surrounding farmland preservation. One of the areas examine was the cost of easements in areas with high development pressure. The report authors stated they found “widespread support for the State Board to reduce the program’s emphasis on preserving high-cost farms in the path of development, which would allow more acreage to be preserved on better-value farms that, in the long run, are likely to prove more beneficial to a county’s agricultural industry.”

Officials in Montgomery County disagreed with that assessment, reporting that high-value production in proximity to high-density population offsets the cost of such easements are are vital to that county’s agricultural industry.

A cap of $10,000 per acre was removed from the program in 2001. As of the end of 2007, according to the audit, the state had contributed funds to 36 projects totaling 2,613 acres costing over $10,000 per acre and a total of $38.3 million. The report stated that those funds would have purchased 23,759 acres using the state’s average per acre cost of $1,612 for easements costing less than $10,000.

Regardless of land use circumstances in urbanizing localities, the state formula sends most state preservation dollars to the southeastern quadrant of the state, which as a whole has the state’s best soils and highest value ag production.

Did I get into this business just to fight alligators?

Mike McGrath

BY MIKE MCGRATH, Contributing Editor

“When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it is difficult to remember your original mission was to drain the swamp.”

Do you remember your original mission in farmland preservation? It was to save farmland, right? Your objective was to permanently preserve as much of the good farmland, as quick as you could. That’s pretty straightforward isn’t it? We all got enthused about that objective and the citizens – the taxpayers in your jurisdiction – they were fired up, too. Then things got a little messier – the Federal government wanted to help us preserve America’s farms. And why not? Something so popular would be embraced by Congress, of course. Mark Twain once quipped something to the effect, “The essence of politics is to find a parade and jump in front of it!” There was a parade forming behind farmland preservation and there were plenty of political leaders willing to be the drum major! But then there’s the Federal bureaucracy!

Ronald Reagan once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘’I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” For an actor he was pretty insightful and he would have loved to use the FRPP as an example – if he was still around. At the recently concluded roundtable conference of farmland preservation managers convened by FPR publisher Deborah Bowers in Annapolis, Md. earlier this month, I was again reminded that the swamp is full of alligators – and many are from USDA! I must note that when Bill Clinton first cooked up the idea of funding farmland preservation life was much simpler.

Do any of you remember those days? We got word that there was excess money in the CCC (Commodity Credit Corporation) and that the president had decided to spend some of it to preserve farmland. You just had to request the money, show how you spent it and a check arrived! I had never seen such a simple, easy, straightforward Federal program in my life (and I had been involved with HUD grants, and others, for years). It worked! We preserved many acres in a short time. We were ecstatic – the Feds were ecstatic – Congress was ecstatic – local politicians were ecstatic. Well, the USDA lawyers weren’t so ecstatic! This was just too easy – just too undefined – just too subject to fraud (really?) – in short, we needed new rules and a new bureaucracy! Here come the alligators!

At the Annapolis conference we heard from the outgoing administrator of FRPP and there’s some good news – some of the alligators may be removed. Not all, but some! There may be fewer obstacles in the path of established programs that want to use Federal funds to preserve farmland. Now, that’s good news! But, as I sat and listened to the presentation on FRPP changes, and the questions, and the concerns, I got worried about something else – we may be tempted to forget “. . . our original mission was to drain the swamp.” And this, in my opinion, is a serious danger.

As program administrators and professionals working to preserve farms from development, we must never forget why we do what we do. We must resist the real temptation to get caught up in the processes, rules, regs – the bureaucracy – of what we do. Don’t misunderstand me – we must follow the rules, play the games, and abide by laws that govern what we do. That’s a given. They are the means to the end. But the means can consume us and obscure the goals that create the passion and the excitement. Let’s never lose sight of our ultimate mission – saving America’s farms! At times we will need to sharpen our focus on the things that really matter in this business. Let me suggest some concrete steps you can take to stay focused on what matters.

Why not make a list of goals for your program in concrete terms of acres, farms and dollars for the coming year. Then flesh out what steps you will need to take to achieve those numbers. Be realistic, but think big. Talk to the staff you work with about what needs to get done. Encourage the positive attitudes that come from focusing on the good results that have been achieved. Why not do a survey of citizens in your community to measure the support for farmland preservation – you will be pleasantly surprised at the positive energy – and so will the political leaders in your jurisdiction! Write a letter to the editor about the results of farmland preservation and all the positive benefits that have accrued to the community. Don’t sound needy – just let people know about the positive energy and the results.

Whatever we do we can’t allow the toil of details to sap all our energy. We must rise above the level of those who only see regulations and processes and limitations – and spend more time talking to those who see the possibilities and the promise of the future. All of us in this business of preserving our nation’s farms and forests must spend time to maintain our energy to “drain the swamp.” We can’t wear ourselves out with fighting the alligators!

Mike McGrath is the fearless leader of the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation and an FPR contributing editor. He can be reached at mhmcgrath@gmail.com.

Michigan could terminate property tax relief program for farmers

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

MI Gov. Rick Snyder (Associated Press)

LANSING, MI – Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposed budget would eliminate a number of tax credits and incentives, including the Farmland & Open Space Preservation Tax Credit, also known as Public Act 116. The program is Michigan’s property tax relief for farmers and gives credits based on income in exchange for a 10-year land use restriction.

But the governor’s proposal can’t easily do away with a taxing principle that every state in the nation employs, that is, that farm land, in farm use, should be taxed on its current use not its highest and best use as defined in local law. According to the governor’s office, the plan is to keep all current contracts but to phase out new ones.

So Michigan farmers are waiting for the other shoe to drop, in the form of legislation that will provide an alternative to the income tax credit they’ve been claiming for decades. The credit is equal to the amount of property taxes exceeding 3.5 percent of the household income and is applied to both land and improvements covered by an agreement.

“We’re still waiting for a number of details to be worked out,” said Rebecca Park, a lobbyist with Michigan Farm Bureau and expert in tax law. “But the initial thought is that if farmers want to renew or extend their P.A. 116 contracts, they can do that all the way out to the 90- year limit. But they have to apply by the end of 2011.” Park warned that farmers wanting to extend their credits should do it soon “to allow time for paperwork to be processed.”

Grand Traverse Co MI orchard (Photo by NRCS)

Lands enrolled in P.A. 116, in addition to the income tax credit, avoid special assessments for sewer, water, and other non-farm projects, something that could be continued even if the tax credit is phased out, according program administrator Rich Harlow of the Michigan Department of Agriculture.

But the tax credit is also tied to the purchase of development rights program in Michigan, another program Harlow manages. Rollback taxes that are collected when preservation tax credit contracts are not renewed fund the PDR program. If the credit is legislated away, then funding farmland preservation may also be revisited.

According to Harlow, the proposal to eliminate the tax credit is part of a budget restructuring underway.

“I believe the desire is to eliminate tax credits as an approach to dealing with a number of property tax issues, one of which is the farmland preservation program. Tax credits are largely invisible during the appropriation process. I believe the attempt is to cause the issuance of tax benefits to come before a review in appropriations. Although it is early to tell, perhaps another farmland preservation vehicle will be created that reduces the tax burden on farmers in Michigan but does so via the appropriation process.”

Allegan Co. MI flower crop (Photo by NRCS)

Some Michigan lawmakers may experience déjà vu if they approach the tax credit question. Eleven years ago the legislature scuttled an opportunity to establish traditional use-value assessment, in use for more than 40 years in most states as the method of choice to tax farmland fairly. The method values farmland based on its current use rather than on its speculative or market value. Instead, Michigan’s credit is a “circuit breaker” form of tax relief, which caps the percentage of income a farm household will pay in property tax.

Not only did the legislature in 2000 throw away a well-developed plan to upgrade its farmland taxation, it also turned its back on a proposed increase in and restructuring of the state’s rollback tax on cancelled tax credit contracts that would have gone much farther in funding the state’s purchase of development rights program, which has never seen meaningful or consistent funding.

Since the P.A. 116 credit was first established, 350 to 400 farmers have enrolled properties, on average, each year. As of Feb. 26 of this year, 40,628 active agreements were in place, protecting 3.1 million acres.

A study completed in 2006 by the Michigan State University Land Policy Institute completely skirted the rollback tax and found the most promising funding route for farmland preservation in Michigan was to expand the income tax, sales and use tax, real estate transfer tax, or gas tax. Also, it was suggested the legislature could dedicate all or portions of the bio-fuel tax revenue, implement a water tax, add a road toll, establish a sales tax on services, or levy impervious surface fees as possible ways to pay for farmland preservation.

Wisconsin governor wants to kill fledgling farmland program

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor and Publisher

MADISON, WI – Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed biennial budget would eliminate the fledgling Working Lands Program, the only Northeast style, state level purchase of agricultural conservation easement (PACE) program to gain a foothold west of Ohio in the last decade. The program, complete with statewide planning requirements and funding for the PACE component through land conversion fees, was the brainchild of former state agriculture secretary Rod Nilsestuen who died last year. The program in its entirety is targeted for dismantling.

In addition, separate identical bills introduced this session (SB 24 and AB 34) would eliminate the PACE program and the conversion fee.

The Working Lands Initiative was approved in the budget of Walker’s predecessor Gov. Jim Doyle in 2009. If the elimination takes place, 16 approved applicants to the program will be left without contracts. The program was slated for $12 million in initial funding.

Board members of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade & Consumer Protection approved a resolution during its board meeting this month that opposes Walker’s eliminating the program and the conversion fee, collected when land in a farmland preservation zoning district is rezoned for nonagricultural use.

“The PACE program is an effective tool that works in tandem with local planning, to protect prime farmland, while allowing development in areas where it is appropriate,” the resolution stated. “In its first two years, PACE has received 75 applicants, protecting farmland on over 18,600 acres. Many landowners (and their respective cooperating entity–the town, county or land trust) whose 2010 PACE applications were preliminarily approved are pending incurred considerable legal, staff, and other expenses,” the resolution said.

The Wisconsin Farmers Union also is opposing the governor’s plan.

“Many people from all political spectrums worked to develop those programs as ways to assure that agricultural and woodlands would be available to future generations,” said Wisconsin Farmers Union president Darin Von Ruden said in a release. “The governor’s proposals only would make developers and speculators the winners where our valuable working lands are concerned.”

The Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation is to date unopposed to the elimination of the farmland program and said in a position statement that it supported the governor’s austerity measures.

Some farmland preservation efforts at the local level in Wisconsin will remain at work if the program cut comes to pass. Rock County took up the Working Lands Initiative in earnest. Located on the state’s southern boundary, Rock County approved its PACE program in January and this month, the county board passed a resolution opposing the governor’s plan to kill the state PACE program. The county has $750,000 committed to its PACE program and expects federal matching funds as well. The county PACE board approved six applications last month that will protect 1,050 acres in three townships.

What the 2010 U.S. Census means for farmland preservation

BY TOM DANIELS, Senior Contributing Editor

The 2010 U.S. Census is now available on-line at www.census.gov. The big number is the national population—308,745,538—an increase of more than 27 million people and 9.7 percent from 2000. More mouths to feed means a greater need to retain farmland. Keep in mind that the United States is the fastest growing industrial nation, and is on track to reach 440 million people by 2050.

Farmland preservation efforts are most often measured at the county level. First, let’s look at the population change from 2000 to 2010 in the top 12 counties in farmland acres preserved in 2010 as reported in the September 2010 issue of Farmland Preservation Report (see Figure 1).

Sources: Farmland Preservation Report (county ranking based on acres preserved); U.S. Census Bureau

Eight of the top 12 counties grew faster than the national rate of 9.7 percent. Frederick County, MD in greater Washington, D.C., and York County, PA, an affordable housing haven in the greater Baltimore region were the fastest growing counties. No county lost population, though Marin was nearly flat. All 12 counties are metropolitan counties in terms of their population. The bottom line is that the farmland resources in these top 12 counties continue to be under significant development pressure.

The top 12 counties are highly concentrated in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Next, let’s look at the population changes in six other counties from around the nation (see Figure 2). Addison County, Vermont is that state’s leading agricultural county and has more than 50,000 acres preserved through the state’s Housing and Conservation Board and the Vermont Land Trust. (It has no locally operated program and so doesn’t qualify for FPR’s annual top counties survey).

Clark County, Ohio has preserved just over 10,000 acres, which puts it first among counties in the Midwest for farmland acres preserved. Fayette County, Kentucky is in the Bluegrass Country famous for its horse farms. The county has preserved about 25,000 acres. Fresno County in the heart of California’s Central Valley is the nation’s leading agricultural county with more than $3 billion a year in the sale of farm products. Kane County, just west of Chicago, is the top county in farmland preservation in Illinois; it is the only county with a PDR program. Sussex County, Delaware produces more than $400 million a year in farm products, and in the Northeast, is second only to Lancaster County, PA.

Figure 2. Population Change 2000 to 2010 in Six Other Counties.

County 2000 Population 2010 Population Percent Change

Addison, VT

35,974

36,821

2.4

Clark, OH

144,742

138,833

-4.1

Fayette, KY

260,512

295,803

13.5

Fresno, CA

799,407

930,450

16.4

Kane, IL

404,119

515,269

27.5

Sussex, DE

156,638

197,145

25.9

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Four of these six counties grew faster than the United States as a whole from 2000 to 2010.

Kane and Sussex Counties added population by more than twice the national rate.

Perhaps most alarming is the strong population increase in Fresno County, the nation’s agricultural gem, and the number one producer in California with 5.3 billion in ag production in 2009. Farmers in Fresno grow more than 200 types of crops, some of which are not grown in other parts of the United States. But county land use law grew its own crop over the decade: an increase of 131,000 people.

Population growth in Addison County, Vermont was essentially flat and Clark County even lost population. Clark’s situation is fairly common in the Midwest. For instance, two-thirds of the counties in Iowa—the nation’s number two farm state—saw  population declines in 2000-2010.

So, there remains plenty of farmland in the Heartland, but on the East and West Coasts, the pressure to retain farmland continues.

Tom Daniels is senior contributing editor to FPR.

Allowed uses on preserved farms hot topic at farmland preservation roundtable

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

Maryland lawmakers were meeting at the State House while farmland preservation administators met across the street at the historic Gov. Calvert House

ANNAPOLIS, MD – Some of the nation’s top farmland preservation administrators met in Annapolis, Md., March 14-15 to discuss the future of protecting farmland and the difficult issues that are cropping up as state governments pursue energy production and struggle to resolve deficits. The 4^th Farmland Preservation Roundtable, an invitational event presented by Farmland Preservation Report and moderated by FPR publisher Deborah Bowers, brought together 24 state and county-level farmland preservation program directors and a number of farmland-focused land trusts from 10 states.

The group heard from Farm and Ranchland Protection Program (FRPP) administrator Mark Rose of USDA-NRCS, on his last day in that position, about changes to the program. Rose reviewed those changes and answered many questions from administrators who have had difficulty meeting the program requirements.  Some administrators learned the ins and outs in the definition of pending offers and how differences in state-level procedures might be addressed. Rose told Maryland participant Carol West that she would have to convince NRCS that a landowner’s asking price in Maryland’s bidding system is a pending offer. Rose suggested a rewrite of Maryland’s landowner application could improve a pending offer confirmation.

Susan Payne, executive director of the NJ State Agriculture Development Committee asked how the NRCS would view eligibility of farms with wind turbines and other energy production development, now allowed under NJ law.

FRPP program manager Mark Rose of USDA-NRCS explains the program's final rule

“We’re going to look at the impact on the easement,” Rose said. “Sometime in the future it will have to be addressed.” NJ law restricts wind energy on preserved farms to serving the farm’s energy needs as the primary use. Rose indicated NRCS would support the “primary use” language because “otherwise we would have to measure output.”

Several program directors complained to Rose that federal appraisal review was taking too long.

Effective the day he spoke to the group, Rose became program manager of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) at USDA.

Pa. program director Doug Wolfgang, Ray Pickering, Fauquier Co. Va.; Susan Payne, NJ SADC, and FPR publisher Deborah Bowers

Doug Wolfgang, program director from Pennsylvania, presented his department’s new online system for county programs to input project information, and for state board members to retrieve board packets – a huge savings in staff time prior to state board meetings, he said. Delaware has also automated various aspects of data collection, including monitoring, said director Mike McGrath. McGrath said a camera connected to a GPS enables his division to monitor 880 farms in four months, including federal and state easements as well as agricultural districts. A title search is conducted on a certain percentage of farms each year, he said, to check for changes in ownership.

Allowed uses on preserved farms a hot topic

In a session called “That’s a Stretch,” administrators shared their challenges in dealing with how legislatures are changing the definition of agriculture as well as changing policy on what kind of uses are allowed on preserved farms. McGrath said the Delaware legislature considered allowing paintball, water slides, and even ATV race tracks in the definition of agricultural use. Paintball was approved, “so enabling statute in Delaware [for agriculture] includes paintball, and so by definition, it is allowed on preserved farms,” he said. McGrath said the real issue that he sees is that the general public in all likelihood would say paintball is not agriculture. “All the public goodwill toward farming does not include paintball,” he said.

Bill Amoss, left, Harford County, Md. and Jeff Everett, Carroll County, Md., manage two of the nation's most successful local programs

Ellen Dayhoff, administrator for the Adams County, Pa. farmland program said her measure of the appropriateness of an allowed use is, “does it hurt the economic viability of the farmland tract?”

Susan Payne of the NJ SADC said the problem in New Jersey is that “farmers are beating the drum that anything that makes money for them is good for agriculture. But is it good for the public? I get tired of defending agricultural production when the farming community doesn’t say ‘that isn’t agriculture.’ So the debate is, what does keeping land for agriculture mean? We’re in a struggle to define our soul for the next 25 years.”

Several administrators said flexibility was important as a means to pump up farm income and keep farms viable. Brian Wilson of Burlington County, NJ, said allowed uses could simply be a matter of scale. “How do you legislate scale? A couple of weekends with a tent or paintball?”

In Pennsylvania, each county “has boilerplate language for accessory enterprises,” said Doug Wolfgang. The allowable area may be the house and curtilage. In Pa., counties, not the state, regulate accessory uses. Lancaster County’s Matt Knepper said his program sees accessory uses as a means to enable farmers to earn more income and stay on their farms.

Brian Wilson, Burlington Co. NJ; Nancy Everhart, Vermont; Nina Young, Maine Farmland Trust; Bill Amoss; Jeff Everett

Some administrators said historic preservation policy, particularly for old barns, had become a difficult issue for farmers because of the cost involved, and this was running headlong into the issue of defining agricultural production, because of the types of events and uses that are a natural fit to old structures.

Bob Wagner of American Farmland Trust said he didn’t think it is a problem if one dy a farm buiding is used for a non-ag function.

“If you look at the statute it was about protecting land for future agricultural use. It didn’t say anything about building use, and the land is still there.”

Bill Amoss of Harford County, Md., said one of his chief concerns was wetland and forest mitigation on preserved farms that has been allowed and even encourage by the Maryland state program since the 1990s. In many cases, good farmland is being taken out of production and owners are being paid by developers and mitigation companies to create wetlands and forested areas. “It’s really getting out of hand,” he said. Amoss said the TMDL goals for the Chesapeake Bay set by EPA would likely lead to further conversion of agricultural land for environmental purposes. He indicated TMDL money was a possible source for funding purchase of development rights.

Roundtable moderator Deborah Bowers shares a laugh with NJ SADC executive director Susan Payne

Susan Payne said taking land out of production for environmental mitigation was a “serious question” that could be in conflict with ag preservation policy or law. “The time is now to draw these lines.”

Amanda Behrens of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future showed the group her findings on the lack of fresh and locally grown foods in the City of Baltimore. Behrens has been compiling data on food production in Maryland and what neighborhoods have access to quality food, including local foods. She found that the inner city had food stores, but they offered low quality foods, while neighborhoods toward the fringes of the city had superior access to local and gourmet foods. Farmland program administrators said food availability had become an issue because the land base that is the result of decades of farmland preservation is becoming the land that will feed the surrounding metropolises.

Susan Payne said farmers markets in New Jersey are looking for farmers. “What are we going to do? We have a retreat this month to try to fill the void.” Putting ag marketing into ag preservation programs is a welcome trend, others said.

Mike McGrath, left, took photos during the roundtable

Roundtable participants applauded Mike McGrath for his upcoming retirement in June. McGrath has been the only director of Delaware’s farmland program since it began in 1991. He has overseen the preservation of 100,000 acres and headed development of program policy and administration.

The Farmland Preservation Roundtable began in 2007, meeting first in Gettysburg, and then in Lambertville, NJ. It met again in Gettysburg in 2009. No roundtable was held in 2010 due to cuts in travel budgets. The roundtable conferences are arranged by Bowers Publishing, Inc., publisher of Farmland Preservation Report.

Visit to Epcot Center changed Stonyfield CE-Yo’s perspective on agribusiness

BY BOB HEUER, Contributing Editor

Stonyfield Farm president and CEO Gary Hirshberg (Photo by channels.com)

Many local food entrepreneurs lack access to credit as well as to the financial expertise needed to create creditworthy businesses. Stonyfield Farm president and CEO Gary Hirshberg sees an even more basic problem—unrealistic expectations.

“There are a lot of idealistic, philosophically-driven entrepreneurs who are not ready to play by the rules of the commercial world,” he says.  “To secure credit, you have to speak the language of investors and bankers.”

Hirshberg delivered the keynote address at the Familyfarmed EXPO’s second annual financing conference on March 17 in Chicago.

The FamilyFarmed Expo in Chicago drew 4,500 attendees and 155 exhibitors

Over the last three decades, this self-described “pathological optimist” built a seven-cow organic school in New Hampshire into a $360 million a year yogurt business.

In 1981, Hirshberg was executive director of the New Alchemy Institute, a research/education center dedicated to sustainable system design.  On a visit to Disney World’s Epcot Center, he realized the Kraft-funded Land Pavilion drew about as many people on a daily basis as the institute did in a year. “It suddenly became vividly clear to me that we needed to reach beyond the limitations of our NGO audience,” he recalls. “Creating a real business would demonstrate the benefits of organic foods to much larger numbers of people.”

Hirshberg soon joined the board of a New Hampshire save-the-family-farm organization called The Rural Education Center (TREC). He and TREC founder Samuel Kaymen realized private enterprise may be an avenue to realize their “big honking goal to change the nature of a food system that makes people and the planet sick.”

In 1983, Hirshberg joined TREC full-time to launch Stonyfield Farm with a $35,000 loan from charitable sources. “We learned early that you have to keep your virtues and values in proper context. The number one goal has to be to survive so you can make a difference. You have to shelve your inviolable principles over the short term to achieve your goals in the long term.  When you’re in debt with friends’ and family’s money, you don’t have time for philosophy.”

In food processing, he says: “Small is rarely beautiful. There are definite and distinct advantages to scale.”

Stonyfield buys its milk through the CROPP Cooperative which consists of 1,750 small dairy farms.  (Average herd size is about 70 cows.)  The processor’s seven facilities nationwide require 180,000 acres of organic production for milk purchases alone.

“This radical improvement of local farm economies couldn’t have been done without us getting big,” Hirshberg contends.

At first, the only thing big was a dream.  “We tried to imagine an organic marketplace but there was no supply or demand.  We had no money or networks or resources to market. All we had was an idea for delicious yogurt which in the end was really the most important thing.”

They scratched together financing from multiple sources, extending equity stakes in the company and relying on friends and family to co-sign for loans.   When they outgrew the 1,500 square foot plant inside an old barn and sought a lease for a 21,000 square-foot building, the capital needs totaled exactly $592,500. “I’ll never forget the number,” Hirshberg says. “We had SBA loan guarantees but the banks would only lend us $300,000. We needed more equity.”

By the time Stonyfield became profitable, it had several hundred shareholders.  In 2001, Hirshberg negotiated a deal in which he retained majority control—and will do as long as he is company president and “CE-Yo.” The global company Groupe Danone bought all non-employee investors through an arrangement that Hirshberg recommends as a way for mid-sized businesses to provide investor liquidity.

Hirshberg advises aspiring food entrepreneurs to keep their day jobs until a critical mass of consumers agrees that they have a good-tasting product currently unavailable in the market. “It’s better to spend another year working in the kitchen on R&D before putting your family at risk with a leap into business. Stonyfield Farm has been the thrill of my life but, at times, a very dangerous ride that is not for the meek.”

Bob Heuer is an Illinois-based writer and marketing consultant in the area of food, farming and agriculture policy. He produces a free e-news service called Fork to Farm and is a contributing editor of Farmland Preservation Report.

Will farmland preservation programs keep farmland affordable?

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

Farmland affordability ~ will farmers be locked out despite farmland preservation programs? A new study led by Rutgers looks to find out. (FPR photo)

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ – A new study led by the Food Policy Institute at Rutgers through a USDA grant will try to determine whether farmland preservation programs are keeping land affordable for farmers, according to Brian Schilling, Food Policy Institute associate director and specialist in agricultural policy.

The study will focus on five state-level programs in three states-  the state farmland program in New Jersey administered by the NJ State Agriculture Development Committee (SADC), Delaware’s state farmland program, and three programs operated in Maryland, including the farmland program operated by the Maryland Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation (MALPF), the Rural Legacy Program and the easement donation program of the Maryland Environmental Trust, which holds easements on more than 1,000 properties, many of those on farmland.

The team will interview about 500 farmers in these states to measure their satisfaction with their respective programs, the extent to which they feel constrained by their deed of easement and their experiences in the farmland marketplace, if any. Schilling said the study will also explore the ownership patterns of preserved farmland, looking at what percent is owner-operated, what that means, and to what extent leasing plays a role in commercial production.

Schilling, who is leading a team that consists of researchers from Rutgers, University of Maryland, University of Delaware, and the University of Nebraska Center for Great Plains Studies, said the study had its genesis in 2004 when the SADC formed a farmland affordability working group.

Brian Schilling

“We knew preserved farms were increasing in value pretty significantly and the question was whether or not that appreciation was resulting in commercial farmers having less access to that land. We had taxpayer money going to funding programs so that farmland would be available for farming in perpetuity. So the question in my view was whether or not that policy goal was being met. Are preserved farmland parcels remaining affordable and accessible for farmers?”

Schilling said data at that time was lacking, and the question couldn’t be answered. “That’s when the seed was planted in my mind – we needed to understand what goes on in the market and whether there is this affordability gap.”

Data began to be collected in 2006. Working with SADC, Schilling and his team looked at data from the first farm preserved in 1985 to early 2007. Of 325 farms that were resold in arms-length market transactions, Schilling said it was “clear to us we were seeing a sharp increase in those per acre values when they were being resold.”  From 2005 to 2007, just before the real estate market plunged, Schilling’s analysis of about 50 farms sold during that period showed the average value of those farms was over $10,000 per acre, close to double the average value from the period of 2000 to 2004, of about $5800 per acre.

“That per acre value was two to three times what the typical farmer could economically rationalize as a fair market value for farmland,” he said.

When states desire to assist with intergenerational transfers of small and medium size farms, the question arises, Schilling said, of whether preserving farmland would help keep land available for small and medium size farm operations? The study aims to find out if there is an affordability gap, if so, how big is it, and, what, if anything can be done about it? Schilling said he would like to put that question to a roundtable of experts including program administrators from the region.

The research team will also look at how policies that affect housing on preserved farms, such as exclusion areas, residual dwelling site opportunities (RDSO – NJ) and limitations on house size affect farmland affordability.

The New Jersey program includes a fee simple option that enables the program to purchase farms outright. The program then resells the farms with easements that include limits on the size of any new residence.

While completing landowner interviews will take longer, Schilling said he hopes a summary paper on the study’s major findings will be released this summer.

“This is such an exciting and important study – we are eager to get these findings out.”

Stories are not necessarily posted in order from the top. Please scroll down to see more recently posted articles.

States struggle with deficits, keep farmland preservation afloat

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

This story has been updated with a preserved acreage table for state programs.

MD Gov. Martin O'Malley gives his State of the State address (Photo by Karl Merton Ferron, Baltimore Sun)

While states struggle with deficits by cutting spending and raising taxes, the nation’s busiest farmland preservation programs, those in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey, managed to preserve 31,172 acres in 2010. Pennsylvania’s farmland program was the leader, approving 15,939 acres for preservation during the year, and in Maryland, 8,289 acres were settled on, and 396 acres were pending settlement in January. New Jersey state and local-level programs, not including nonprofits, preserved 6,548 acres. Settlements in Pennsylvania will occur over the next 18 months. The Pa. program does not re-tally acres after settlement. (See acreage table below for other programs.)

Farmland preservation persists in these states due to a combination of dedicated funding streams and political commitment to what are now longstanding and popular programs.

NJ Gov. Chris Christie (Associated Press photo)

Yet in New Jersey, where 189,000 acres are preserved to date, state funding that has always come by way of bond referenda is in a holding pattern. Voters approved a referendum last fall that called for continued borrowing for farmland and open space preservation. But the legislature has yet to appropriate funds for debt service, said Andrew Pratt, communications director for the New Jersey Treasury, and so no bond sales for farmland preservation have been scheduled.

While the FY12 budget is up for discussion in the NJ legislature, conservationists are busy trying to convince lawmakers that now is not a good time to block farmland and open space funding.

According to New Jersey Conservation Foundation executive director Michelle Byers, open space preservation in New Jersey has become a part of the economy that creates jobs and attracts companies.

At the Foundation’s 50^th anniversary last fall, five former governors spoke on New Jersey’s commitment to protecting natural resources and stated their hope that current Gov. Chris Christie will build on that record rather than weaken it. Byers recently noted that Gov. Christie didn’t mention the environment in his State of the State address, where he had to focus on New Jersey’s $10.5 billion deficit.

Farmland preservation in New Jersey has bright spots despite deficits and uncertain funding. Last month a 519-acre farm in Cumberland County, in “South Jersey,” was preserved, the largest farm preserved in that county to date.

Adams County Pa. dairy farm

In Pennsylvania, farmland preservation continues to reap big numbers of acres with its dedicated funding and popularity at the state and local levels. The farmland program is earmarked for $20.5 million per year from the state cigarette tax, as well as 14.8 percent of the state’s Environmental Stewardship Fund. Well operated local programs throughout the southeastern section of the state that put up significant funding matches are also key to the program’s success. The funding has kept Pennsylvania on top, now with 444,647 acres preserved to date by the state farmland preservation board. Final documentation and settlement is completed by counties.

Farmland preservation in Maryland has slowed with drastic diversion of its dedicated revenue source over the last four years.  Gov. Martin O’Malley however has kept land preservation programs afloat, making use of the state’s AAA bond rating. Maryland is one of only eight states given the coveted rating by all three major rating agencies. A finance plan that shifts most of the program’s dedicated real estate transfer tax revenue to the general fund and partially replaces it with bond money is now in its fourth year. In the fiscal year 2012 budget $19.6 million in transfer tax revenue is diverted to the state general fund and $4.4 million ‘backfilled’ with bond money.

Preserved farm, Harford County (FPR photo)

According to Andrew Gray of the Dept. of Legislative Information Services, the MALPF program is slated for $8.6 million for FY 2012 – $4.4 million in general obligation bonds and $4.2 million in special funds, or real estate transfer tax revenues. Declining transfer tax revenues required increased borrowed funds being used for MALPF. Gov. O’Malley’s budget, as sent to the General Assembly for approval, also includes $4.5 million for the Rural Legacy Program, a grants program for land trusts and local governments allowing for easements and fee purchases on both farm and natural lands. The great majority of activity is in easements.

The MALPF purchase of development rights program is significantly boosted by Maryland’s independently operated county programs, the strongest currently being those in Carroll, Baltimore and Montgomery Counties. Acres preserved by county programs in Maryland are substantial but are not counted in MALPF’s acreage tally.

Carroll County allocated $17 million in 2009 to boost farmland preservation, and the money was matched administratively with innovative finance. The installment purchase program structured by administrator Jeff Everett was coveted recently by the New Hampshire Land and Community Heritage Investment Program (L-CHIP) in which farmland preservation has been a minor focus over the last 20 years. According to Everett, legislation is being prepared to enable the NH program to adopt installment purchase as a means toward rejuvenating farmland preservation in the state.

In 2010, Carroll County preserved more acres than any other locally operated program surveyed by FPR – 3,561 acres settled, and 2,232 acres since the start of FY 2011. Carroll’s program has preserved about 56,000 acres to date, excluding Rural Legacy Program acres, which add more than 5,000 acres.

Baltimore County Rural Legacy Area farm (FPR photo)

Baltimore County in recent years has borrowed funds for farmland preservation and handed much of the work over to local land trusts that are top award-getters in the state Rural Legacy Program. Two land trusts in Baltimore County each received Rural Legacy grants of $1 million in 2010. The county often matches the state funds those land trusts receive. Baltimore County is highly urbanized, but its strong planning and land use regulation in its northern region has made purchase of development rights viable, affordable and attractive to landowners over the last 30 years. The county to date has preserved nearly 27,000 acres, and those purchased-easement acres are matched by an equal number of acres in donated easements to the Maryland Environmental Trust, for a total of 52,156 acres preserved in Baltimore County in FPR’s Sept. 2010 survey.

Montgomery County, while nearing “build out” in its preservation zone, is reinventing its preservation programs. A new program, designed to retire development potential that remained after the county’s renowned transfer of development rights played out, should have its first purchase period this year. The Building Lot Termination (BLT) program will buy up building lots remaining from the TDR program’s residual 1:25 density. Valuation is the last aspect to be ironed out, according to program manager John Zawitoski.

The farmland preservation program in Delaware is close to those in neighboring states in more than just geography. Delaware recently passed the 100,000-acre milestone, and the program’s ‘state of the state’ is brightened by farmers routinely giving deep discounts to get into the top of the application heap. Discounts average 51 percent below appraised easement value. That level of discounting is not found in any other state PDR program, yet it is sure to be an aspect lost in the shuffle at budget decision time.

The DE Department of Agriculture has requested $6 million for farmland preservation, more than twice the program’s 2011 budget, said program director Mike McGrath. The department would also like to fund a new program similar to critical farms programs in Maryland, which focus on helping farmers buy land that in many cases is threatened with development. The department has asked $2 million for that program, but like in other states, money is tight in Delaware. Gov. Jack Markell endorsed both budget requests when they were made, but cutting is the name of the game, no matter if you once served on the farmland preservation state board. Markell has proposed cutting the entire farmland budget.

States with farmland preservation programs, showing FY12 projected deficit and deficit as percent of FY11 budget

(Source for figures: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)

Colorado / $988 million / 13.8%

Connecticut /$3.7 billion /20.8%

Maine / $436 million / 16.1%

Maryland /$1.6 billion /12.2%

Massachusetts /$1.8 billion /5.7%

Michigan /$1.8 billion /8.6%

New Jersey /$10.5 billion /37.4%

New Mexico /$410 million /7.6%

New York / $9.0 billion /16.9%

North Carolina /$3.8 billion /20.0%

Ohio /$3.0 billion /11.0%

Pennsylvania /$4.5 billion /17.8%

Rhode Island /$290 million /9.9%

Vermont /$150 million /13.9%

Virginia/ $2.3 billion 14.8%

Washington /$2.9 billion /18.5%

West Virginia /$155 million /4.1%

Wisconsin / $1.8 billion / 12.8%

Selected programs with acres preserved in 2010 and total to date

Funding in doubt for New Mexico program created one year ago

BY DEBORAH BOWERS

SANTA FE, NM - When former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson last March signed into law the Natural Heritage Conservation Act to award grants for conservation easements, the legislation provided $5 million in initial funding. However, those funds have not materialized and the funding is in jeopardy due to the state’s $410 million deficit, according to Jody Porter, spokesperson for the NM Department of Energy, Minerals & Natural Resources (DEMNR).

“It’s in a holding pattern. We’re waiting to see what the legislature does,” Porter said.

According to Dan Ware of the Forestry Division, DEMNR, rules for the program are ready, even if the money isn’t.

“Even though we didn’t have funding appropriated in 2010, we prepared and adopted rules. We had a series of public hearings. Those rules are now in place so when we do get appropriations we’ll be able to implement the program that much faster,” Ware said.

New Mexico passed a land conservation tax credit in Jan. 2008 that allows a deduction of 50 percent of appraised easement value up to $250,000 per individual donor. The credit can be applied for up to 20 years. Also, like a land preservation tax credit in Virginia, credits are transferrable.

Lack of state funding will hamper agricultural land preservation in the state, much of which is carried out by the New Mexico Land Conservancy. About 85 percent of the 80,000-plus acres the organization protects are agricultural. The federal Farm and Ranchlands Protection Program (FRPP) would figure significantly into any funds the state provides.

California Williamson Act tax relief is on governor’s chopping block

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

Ca. farmland next to towns could give way to development without Williamson Act tax breaks (FPR photo)

SACRAMENTO, CA - California’s counties are facing termination of reimbursements for the property tax breaks they give to farmers under the 45-year-old Williamson Act. Facing a $26 billion budget shortfall, Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed eliminating the reimbursements known as subvention payments to localities. Many counties cannot say whether they will be able to shoulder the often substantial amount of revenue they would forgo if they continue the tax breaks.

About 16 million acres are enrolled in Williamson Act contracts in 53 of 58 counties. The 10-year contract that prohibits development is automatically renewed. A program added in 1998 allows for an additional 35 percent reduction in property value for tax purposes under a 20-year contract that creates a Farmland Security Zone. In 2009, 23 counties had adopted the FSZ program and reported 20-year contracts covering 863,530 acres.

Troubles for the Williamson Act began in earnest in 2005 when the state legislative analyst recommended to lawmakers that they begin phasing out the program.

In 2009 counties claimed more than $35 million in subventions, but there would be no payments from the state. The largest claims came from Fresno County, at $5.2 million, Kern County at $4.6 million, Tulare County at $3.4 million, Kings Co. at $2.6 million and San Joaquin County, at $1.8 million.

Last month Fresno County officials decided to cover the costs of tax breaks for farmland by cutting personnel and other areas.

North Carolina governor vetoes bill that would have depleted Farmland Preservation Trust Fund

BY DEBORAH BOWERS

This story has been updated.

Buncombe Co NC (Photo by Anne Lancaster, CSREES)

RALEIGH, NC - North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue Feb. 22 vetoed legislation passed Feb. 9 that would have depleted a number of trust funds, including the state’s Farmland Preservation Trust Fund. Perdue said the bill would have harmed job creation in the state.

SB13, the “Balanced Budget Act of 2011,” would have taken $1.8 million from the trust fund this year and transfer those funds to the state’s General Fund.

Brian Long, spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services said the bill would have depleted the fund and canceled projects for the coming year. Soil and water conservation and CREP funds would also have been diverted.

CA Supreme Court rejects builders appeal on farmland mitigation case

MODESTO, CA - The California Supreme Court will let stand a lower court ruling that Stanislaus County is within its authority to require developers to pay for farmland preservation one acre at a time – for each acre developed. The decision came Feb. 16 with much relief expressed by supporters of smart growth and farmland protection statewide who watched the case.

The Central California Building Industry Association prevailed early on, with a lower court judge ruling Stanislaus County’s mitigation program unconstitutional.

The mitigation program was established in 2007, and was not the first in the state. The court’s ruling relieves local governments of fears that the technique would invite an expensive legal challenge. Mitigation programs are expected to be enacted in other counties following the ruling.

“Cities should have no reservations anymore about putting this in (growth policies),” Tom Orvis, governmental affairs director for the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau, told the Modesto Bee. The Bureau supported the county in the case.

Upcoming Conferences

March 17-19, Chicago: FamilyFarmed EXPO is a three day gathering of Chicago-area fans of locally grown and responsibly produced food and artisanal goods. Features: our world-class Financing Farm to Fork conference connecting local food producers with potential investors; the Midwest’s leading local food trade show, our Meet the Buyers reception, an innovative Food Policy Summit, and the scrumptious Localicious Party; cooking demos from celebrity chefs, educational seminars and an interactive Kids Corner.  Exhibitors offer a wide selection of local food, gifts and useful information to help you eat locally and healthy year-round.

March 26, Worcester, MA: The Massachusetts Land Conservation Conference is convened by The Trustees of Reservations’ Putnam Conservation Institute and the Massachusetts Land Trust Coalition, and co-sponsored by Mass Audubon, the Nature Conservancy, The Trust for Public Land, and the Land Trust Alliance.

Boston, site for upcoming APA conference

April 9 – 12, Boston, MA: 2011 National Planning Conference of the American Planning Association. Food system and rural planning among broad topic selections. See planning.org.

April 30, Middletown, CT: Connecticut Land Conservation Conference, The conference will offer 24 workshops; 8 each in one morning and two afternoon sessions. The workshops will be preceded by a keynote speaker in the morning. The workshops are generally about 1.5 hours in length, with up to 45 people, attending each. Both basic and advanced training will be available.

May 19-21, Harrisburg, PA: 9^th Annual Pennsylvania Land Conservation Conference. Hosted by the Pennsylvania Land Trust Association, this conference is Pennsylvania’s annual training, networking and inspirational event for those involved with private and public land conservation.

May 31 – June 2, Charlottesville, VA: Virginia’s Land Conservation Conference, sponsored by the Piedmont Environmental Council. “Join land trust staff, PDR managers, volunteers, board members, public agency staff, and land conservation advocates to network with colleagues from across the state and learn about the latest advances in the practice of conservation.”

April 29 -30, Brunswick, ME: Maine Coast Heritage Trust presents the Maine Land Conservation Conference in support of its Maine Land Trust Network program and Maine’s land conservation community. The conference will take place on Friday, April 29th in Brunswick and Saturday, April 30th in Topsham. The conference provides training on best practices in land trust management, land transactions, and stewardship and a forum for learning about the most pressing issues facing land conservation today.

Food system plan released in Philadelphia

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

PHILADELPHIA, PA – To build a working regional food system in the Philadelphia region will require improving access to land and capital for farmers, according to the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) in a food system plan released Feb. 10. The release of the plan, which contains 52 recommendations for remaking how people can obtain whole nutritious food, was celebrated at the Reading Terminal Market, an historic farmers market in downtown Philadelphia. The recommendations run the gamut of minor policy changes to major legal changes and taking on comprehensive community-based projects.

The report is the culmination of two years of research and stakeholder meetings convened by the DVRPC to examine the region’s foodshed, which the report defines as “a geographic area from which a community or population center obtains food resources or from which it could obtain those resources.”

DVRPC executive director Barry Seymour told event participants that supporting farmland and open space preservation bond referenda is one way to improve and assure food availability for Philadelphia. He also mentioned becoming a member of a land trust, buying local foods, composting and growing your own garden.

“How we grow, package, transport and distribute our food are significant factors in the health of our economy, our environment and our community,” Seymour said.  “This plan is designed to help strengthen our complex food system so it sustains the Greater Philadelphia region for decades to come.”

Lebanon County Pa. farms are part of the Phila. foodshed (FPR photo)

The Philadelphia region is surrounded by the nation’s leading farmland preservation programs in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. It lies in a “golden crescent” where locally operated and funded programs sometimes double the funding power of state coffers and over the last 30 years have put about one million acres of farmland out of the reach of developers.

DVRPC examined about 50 other foodshed studies; few found were more than 10 years old. Among the earliest were a study conducted by the Sacramento Hunger Commission in 2000 and a plan developed by the Toronto Food Policy Council in 1999.

The Commission represents nine counties in Pa. and NJ and is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Greater Philadelphia. The 100-mile foodshed, however, stretches across 70 counties in five states including the planning area.

Last year the Commission published the Greater Philadelphia Food System Study, which examined the agricultural industry, food distribution network, food economics in the region and “social capital.” The recommendations released this month are an outgrowth of the study. Sustainable, environmentally sound agriculture that provides ample fresh foods to the urban population is the vision behind the study.

The study and the recommendations point up that while farmland preservation is receiving consistent political and funding support, ecological stewardship and conservation is lacking and water quality in the region is worsening.

The 100-mile foodshed (graphic by DVRPC)

The state of agriculture in the region was measured in the study using USDA Census of Agriculture data for Land in Production in New Jersey and Pennsylvania only, from 1997 to 2007. New Jersey experienced a decline of 16.2 percent from 647,245 acres to 542,704 acres, and Pennsylvania saw a decline of 2.8 percent from 5,761,251 acres in 1997 to 5,602,562 acres in 2007. The nation as a whole saw a decrease of 3.4 percent in the period.  Land in production is cropland and permanent pastureland. The figures are extrapolated from the USDA land in farms data. Cropland has declined sharply (20 percent in NJ and 10 percent in Pa.) while pastureland has increased in both states, seen at least partly as a shift from bean and grain crops to hay by retiring farmers.

The report also includes profitability data for New Jersey and Pennsylvania from the Census of Agriculture. The data depends of farmers reporting net losses and gains. Both states saw net losses in 2007 compared to 1997. In 1997 the two states combined reported 51 percent of farms showing net gains, but in 2007 that figure dropped to 42 percent. Increased expenses for fuel and feed were among the reasons for losses.

Farmers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania combined received $82.8 million in various types of agriculture support payments, about one percent of the national payout of nearly $8 billion.

Water quality improvement lags behind farmland preservation successes, the plan states (FPR photo)

While productive land and profitability were used as indicators for farming and sustainable agriculture in the study, farmland preservation was used as an indicator of trends in ecological stewardship and conservation, along with surface water quality.

A top priority in the plan is farmland affordability. “Maintain affordable land for farmers through a range of potential innovations and new business models,” the recommendation states. “These include addressing the retirement needs of farmers, identifying opportunities to transition preserved land into food production, and creating investment vehicles for long-term agricultural production on preserved land.”

The Pa. Association for Sustainable Agriculture was awarded a $100,000 grant from DVRPC to expand on the state’s FarmLink Program by identifying tillable land available for lease. The “Farming Futures” initiative will work like an agent between landowners and farmers seeking to lease, and will sniff out idle lands that could be leased for crops. The offshoot is to use lease agreements as a form of equity that will help in attaining financing. The Farming Futures pilot will work in Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties.

Grant funds were provided through the William Penn Foundation.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food and Community Program last year identified a number of barriers to investing in and financing agricultural enterprises, including insufficient borrower capital or poor credit histories and difficulty in communicating production knowledge, management experience, and profitability potential. Additionally, farmers on leased land cannot use land as collateral. The Kellogg Foundation program recommended developing a scorecard or formula that could help determine profitability and manage risk.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter in 2008 said he was committed to making Philadelphia “the Greenest City in America” and sustainability was adopted as a fundamental approach for all of the city’s operations. Nutter’s food initiative, Philadelphia Food Charter, incorporates the development of a regional food system as a centerpiece, and calls for the use of city-owned land for urban agriculture. Greenworks Philadelphia, part of the Nutter plan, recommends 12 commercial agriculture projects be established in the city by 2015.

Agriculture’s leaders of the past

BY MIKE MCGRATH, Contributing Editor

We stand on the verge of debating the next Farm Bill.  It’s unclear to me where the leadership will come from to craft this next round of agricultural policy.  With February upon us I thought now might be a good time to reflect on the history of America’s early national leaders and their views on agriculture.  I thought I’d start with the two Presidents whose birthdays we celebrate this month.  So, let’s take a look at our first President.

“I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world.”

“I know of no pursuit in which more real and important services can be rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture, its breed of useful animals, and other branches of a husbandman’s cares.” - George Washington

Washington was clearly a man who loved his farm and home at Mt. Vernon, Virginia.  More than a few of his biographers are convinced he loved his farm, and farming, far more than being president!  He had led a nation in wartime, at its founding.  One could argue that the Revolution was mostly about commerce and agriculture.  In fact, to a large degree, commerce and agriculture were one and the same in those days.  At the beginning of our nation, America’s place in the world was based on our rapidly expanding agricultural productivity and trade.  Our ability to freely trade those products and gain access to world finances based on our sale of agricultural products was the basis for our growth and prosperity.  Washington, as evidenced by his second quote, was aware that agricultural improvements were, in fact, strategically important to his new nation.  Are these facts so different from what we see in today’s world?

Today, in the midst of a world-wide economic malaise that continues to hobble the U.S. economy, agriculture has been a bright spot.  Our balance of trade is defined by agricultural sales which offset declines in other sectors.  But access to markets in Asia, and elsewhere, are still constrained by imbalances in tariffs and trading rules.  Today, agriculture is one of America’s strategic strong points in international affairs.  More than ever, agricultural technologies from the U.S. dominate world farming practices.  But will the next Farm Bill recognize and capitalize on those advantages?  Will our leaders recognize the importance of research and development, as Washington evidently did?  Will we, for the first time, truly seize the opportunities to permanently preserve our inestimable reserves of prime working lands, farms and forests?  Washington would urge us to do more than we have done – for the sake of our nation!  Now, I turn to Abraham Lincoln.

“This leads to the further reflection, that no other human occupation opens so wide a field for the profitable and agreeable combination of labor with cultivated thought, as agriculture. I know of nothing so pleasant to the mind, as the discovery of anything which is at once new and valuable — nothing which so lightens and sweetens toil, as the hopeful pursuit of such discovery. And how vast, and how varied a field is agriculture, for such discovery. The mind, already trained to thought, in the country school, or higher school, cannot fail to find there an exhaustless source of profitable enjoyment.”
-Abraham Lincoln, Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, September 30, 1859

Putting aside the language of the 19th century, Lincoln’s words sound so fresh and alive to me!  Lincoln, the creator of the United States Department of Agriculture, the signer of the Homestead Act and the Morrill Act, was a man with a keen sense of the importance of taking the seemingly mundane in life and applying research, education, imagination – and making life easier and more fascinating and, yes, finding enjoyment!  At the time of Lincoln’s speech agricultural societies all across the land were pushing for action by the Federal government in support of agriculture.  They had been promoting research and discussion of the emerging scientific advances in farming.  Lincoln, a consummate politician, seized the opportunity to trumpet their cause.  With the politician’s eye he saw that this cause would also combine the interests of the toiling workman with those of the intellectuals and scientists, while providing for the needs of all citizens at lower cost.  Now, there’s a cause worth running a campaign on!  Is that not true today – even more than in Lincoln’s day?  Americans in all walks of life are now asking where their food comes from, what is our diet doing for health and how are our farmers faring?  Agricultural research goes begging while we are on the very verge of monumental advances that will feed more people, at lower costs, with less environmental damage, while improving the lot of farmers here, and around the world.  Lincoln, I believe, would say, “Expand research and get our best – and most practical – minds to work on agriculture!”

The next Farm Bill is upon us.  Where are our leaders who will speak for agriculture?  Should not our nation’s chief politicians see agriculture as the next, great opportunity for America to lead the world – again?  Will we protect our most important strategic resource – our working lands?  When it comes to agriculture – are there any Washingtons or Lincolns to lead the way?  I pray there are!

Mike McGrath leads the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation and is a member of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture. Founded in 1785, it is the nation’s oldest agricultural society.

When 600 farm bankers meet ‘ex-hippie grocer’, now Whole Foods co-CEO

BY BOB HEUER, Contributing Editor

OMAHA, NE - Whole Foods co-CEO Walter Robb says that consumers viewing farmers as “heroes” helps explain the “renaissance” in farm production supplying nearby markets.  Robb—the product of the New Age alternative culture—was addressing the North American Agricultural Lenders Conference in Nov. in Omaha. Farm financiers tend to view farmers—at least the creditworthy ones that they loan money to—as businesspeople who know how to profitably supply global markets.

California banker Curt Covington has a more nuanced view.  As last year’s chairman of the American Bankers Association ag/rural lending committee, Covington decided that his peers need to hear the story of a 300-store, $9 billion national grocery chain that is so popular that it doesn’t advertise.

“Whole Foods has a simple economic model,” Covington says.  “They cater to consumers who are willing to pay more to have confidence in the quality of a product.  They rely on word-of-mouth marketing among a totally committed customer base that includes my wife.”

Covington heard Robb speak at the February 2010 USDA Ag Outlook forum and invited him to speak to the bankers meeting in Omaha.  “I was terribly concerned about the skeptics,” he concedes.  “I have a lot of friends from the Midwest, ag bankers who think you can afford to ignore the $25 billion a year organic and natural food retail industry.”

Covington is a Fresno, CA-based senior vice president at Bank of the West. Its $5 billion farm loan portfolio consists of 20 major production segments—including vegetables, table grapes, fruit trees, nuts and dairy.   “California has so many crops that turn over so many times a year.  Our business isn’t either conventional or organic. It’s becoming a side by side type of deal.”

He sees this shift in consumer preference colliding with the longstanding federal farm policy of encouraging the highest quality food at the cheapest price.  “The growth of organics drives the regionalization of food production and USDA’s response through the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program,” Covington explains.

Covington knows it’s nonsense to think these changes are a passing fad, but he wasn’t about to present Whole Foods as the answer.   “In the program brochure, we were careful to sell the sizzle, not the steak,” he says. “We didn’t say this is a business model that merits your attention.  We said Walter Robb would bring a ‘different perspective as to how products are marketed to a sizeable portion of the U.S. consumer base.’”

Robb later called Covington to ask how bankers liked his presentation. “I told him that I’d heard he’d gotten the best rating of any of the speakers. And I said ‘don’t be surprised if you get invited back in five years to tell the story of how you managed to be so successful.”

Robert ‘Bob’ Heuer is an Illinois-based writer and marketing consultant in the area of food, farming and agriculture policy. He produces a free e-news service called Fork to Farm and is a contributing editor of Farmland Preservation Report.

Carroll County to get award for PDR finance innovation

Preserved farm in Carroll County, Md.

WESTMINSTER, MD – Carroll County, which boosted its preservation program two years ago by reinventing the installment purchase scheme first used in Howard County in the late 1980′s, will be recognized by The Conservation Fund at its Green Infrastructure conference in Shepherdstown, WV in February.

The Carroll County program ended a fast-paced year, logging 3,561 acres in 2010, according to program manager Jeffrey Everett. Only half way through fiscal year 2011, the program has preserved an additional 2,232 acres, he said.

The Carroll program boosts tax-free interest payments in exchange for discounted principal. Installment purchase agreements in their original structure devised by the firm Evergreen Conservation Finance are used by a number of localities in the Mid-Atlantic.

The Carroll program was recognized by the National Association of Counties and the Trust for Public Land with a conservation award in 2006 for its Critical Farms program. That program makes rapid payments to help beginning farmers purchase land and preserve threatened farms. The upfront funds are later reimbursed by the state farmland program.

Carroll County was profiled as a success story in the Chesapeake Bay Commission’s new report on land conservation in the watershed, produced every decade. Carroll was one of only two counties profiled in a case study and the only one with multiple programs featured.

FRPP final rule out Jan. 24; call for comments on certification

This story has been updated.

WASHINGTON DC - After nearly 120 days of review at the Office of Management and Budget, the final rule for the Farm and Ranchland Protection program was published in the Federal Register Jan. 24.  According to Mark Rose, program administrator at NRCS, a 30-day comment period will begin today on just one section of the rules – that concerning entity certification.

“One subject the final rule addresses is the certification of cooperating entities. NRCS will be accepting comments on this section only for 30 days after publication,” he said.

“NRCS agrees that a more robust certification process will improve FRPP implementation,” the final rule states. Comments received at NRCS particularly urged that title reviews, which were taking too long to complete, be minimized for certified entities. In response, the final rule now requires that a certified eligible entity hold and manage a minimum of 25 easements as well as five FRPP easements “and have acquired these easements using industry-approved appraisals, title clearance reviews, and deed reviews for each transaction. This minimum number of FRPP easements will demonstrate the entity has experience with FRPP cooperative agreements and FRPP easement acquisition process,” the rule states.

In addition, NRCS will no longer require its own review of appraisals, title reports, and deeds of easement prior to acquisition “since a certified entity demonstrates, during the certification process, that it has credible processes of its own that ensure its conservation easements will meet FRPP
purposes.”

States now have their FY2011 FRPP funds and are announcing their application ranking dates, he said. Rose said that in FY2010 FRPP obligated $144 million enrolling 403 parcels consisting of 170,412 acres.

King County TDR has new focus on farms

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher
This story has been updated.

Issaquah, WA (Photo by johncao.com)

ISSAQUAH, WA - A longstanding battle over development in this scenic mountain community of King County, Washington, ended last month with a compromise that seemed to please all the stakeholders, a fairly rare occurrence. It came about through a mechanism well known to land use planners and conservationists: the transfer of development rights, or, TDR.

Issaquah had a population in the 2000 census of just over 11,000. It is adjacent to the city of Redmond.

In an agreement reached by the City Council and developers that satisfied community leaders, 410 development rights contained on three parcels were transferred onto one 35-acre parcel and 145 acres of mountainside forest will be protected in the TDR scheme, according to Keith Niven, development review program manager for the City of Issaquah.

The TDR program is operated by King County, and since its inception has protected 141,800 acres. But nearly all of the land, as in the Issaquah deal, is forestland, owned by both large and small timber interests or residential landowners, said TDR program manager Darren Greve.

“There are only two properties that are farms,” Greve said. “But we are working on a new strategy with a focus on farmlands,” he said. That strategy got underway in August 2010, when the TDR program purchased development rights on a 23-acre family-operated organic produce farm in the Snoqualmie Valley.

King County/WSU Extension Fall Harvest Farm Tour

“Rural farms face intense pressure from development,” said King County Executive Dow Constantine in announcing the deal. “But when protected through transfers of development rights, they can help ensure a consistent, fresh, local food supply to city residents for generations to come.” The purchase enabled produce growers John Huschle and Anna Davidson to buy the land they had been leasing.

Constantine set a goal last year to preserve 850 acres through TDR banking and through the county’s Conservation Futures tax. The figure was not arbitrary – Agriculture Program staff combined their own knowledge of local farms with a check of assessor records to reveal that of 59 growers selling produce in the county, all but 10 were leasing their land. The 49 leased properties totaled 850 acres. Most of those parcels, like the 23-acre farm recently secured through the first TDR-farm deal, are in the Snoqualmie Valley, where river bottom soils and temperate climate have given rise to sustainable and organic farming.

It is no wonder King County officials have been bitten by the local-food bug. At stake are 41 farm markets the county studied in depth to strengthen operation practices and boost by maintaining a database for growers called Puget Sound Fresh.

Expanding the use of TDR is also part of the county’s farmland preservation effort. Since 2009 the county has been working with the city of Sammamish to create a greenbelt and send development rights to the town center. The prospect of denser development in the town center was tempered with the offer of funds to create a city-operated TDR program that would acquire greenspace within the town. The benefit for the city of outlying farmland has been TDR program manager Darren Greve’s calling card.

“There is a direct, tangible, easy-to-digest connection between the cities where we’re asking the densities to go and the lands that are being protected,” Greves told the Seattle Times last September when the first TDR-preserved farm was announced.

Purchase of development rights, too, has long been in King County’s vocabulary. The county’s PDR program was among the early local programs in the nation, but while it was funded with a $50 million bond referendum in 1979, it was allowed to wind down, with very minimal growth since depleting those funds. It has preserved 13,200 acres, but program manager Judy Herring spends most of her time on stewardship of existing preserved farms.

“Very little of the original funding is left… there’s not enough to buy development rights on a lot of properties.” In fact, she said, the program preserves only one or two farms annually. A recent purchase was on a farm of just 15 acres.

Meanwhile the county TDR bank, which had an initial fund of $1.5 million in 1999, can work as a revolving fund as TDRs are sold, to purchase additional conservation easements.

At the receiving end, density or floor area allowances are increased by 150 percent.

According to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, King County has 1,790 farms and 49,285 acres of land in farms. Farms not in the Snowqualmie Valley and specially targeted by King County could benefit from a move by Gov. Christine Gregoire to focus state farmland preservation efforts on protecting the Puget Sound (see related story below).

TDR is at work elsewhere in Washington. In 2007 the state enacted an interjurisdictional TDR program for the four counties and 71 cities of the Puget Sound region. It became effective in 2009.

The Washington Department of Commerce and the Puget Sound Regional Council last September announced over $1 million in grant awards to 10 cities for TDR planning and program development. The funding comes from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Puget Sound Watershed Management Assistance Program to support planning at a regional level. The grants were awarded to cities in the four Puget Sound counties including King.

“With these funds, cities will be creating a market for developers to increase the value of their projects while protecting land that is important for farming, forestry and watershed protection,” said Rogers Weed, director of the Washington State Department of Commerce. The City of Issaquah received $100,000 for environmental and market analysis for planning its receiving areas for King County’s farmland preservation effort. Another King County town, Normandy Park, received a similar grant.

King County Private TDR Market Analysis

(Data from 2000 – 2010, excluding King County TDR Bank transactions)

Source: King County TDR Marketplace web page

AFT sells MI farm, proceeds become revolving loan fund

CLIMAX, MI - The American Farmland Trust announced Jan. 19 it has sold a 660-acre farm it owned in Michigan and has used the proceeds to create a permanent loan fund for land trusts and local governments to purchase conservation easements in the state. Commitments will be limited to $2.5 million.

The farm, acquired by AFT in 1995 from Owen and Ellen Love,was sold with a conservation easement to two brothers last February. The net proceeds from the sale, all of which has been set aside to fund and administer the fund, was $2.9 million, according to AFT spokesperson Jennifer Morrill.

“Not only will the original farm stay in agriculture, the proceeds will help protect numerous other farms in Michigan. That’s a double-gift with lasting impact,” said Bob Wagner, senior policy and program advisor for AFT.

“The fund will help bridge the gap in local farmland preservation efforts in the state and will significantly enhance those efforts,” said Rich Harlow, farmland preservation program manager at the Michigan Dept. of Agriculture. The new fund is indeed significant, because Michigan’s farmland easement program has zero dollars. It’s website tells prospective applicants to contact their township or county to see if it has a PDR program.

Eligibility documents show that loans from the fund cannot exceed $2.5 million. Wagner said the loan fund “is intended to bridge a time gap between an opportunity to protect farmland and the availability of other public or private funding.”

Governors look to merge conservation agencies to cut costs

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

OLYMPIA, WA – Budget proposals in at least three states – Washington, Florida and Maryland -include or could include proposals to merge conservation agencies or commissions whose objectives are perceived as similar. The cost cutting measures would affect agencies that administer farmland preservation programs.

Under a plan proposed by Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, the state’s 11 natural resource-related agencies would be honed down to “five primary, function-based organizations,” according to a policy brief. The brief claims the move would save the state $2.5 million per biennium. The Conservation Commission, which administers the farmland preservation program, would be placed under the Dept. of Agriculture.

At least two Conservation Districts say the Commission’s autonomous structure would be sacrificed if that placement were to occur.

“Taking a locally led structure and stuffing it into a state agency silo will cut it off from its grass roots,” said George Boggs, executive director of the Whatcom Conservation District in a letter to his state senator.

According to Josh Giuntoli of the Conservation Commission’s Office of Farmland Preservation, a petition drive to oppose the move is being led by the state Association of Conservation Districts. Giuntoli said the estimated biennial savings from moving the Conservation Commission to the Dept. of Agriculture is $200,000.

Giuntoli said the governor’s proposals include a new focus on protecting the Puget Sound, and that farmland preservation and other resource based easement acquisition projects now in the pipeline could be culled based on location affecting the Sound.

Washington is facing a two-year budget deficit of $4.6 billion.

In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott’s transition team recommended merging the Department of Community Affairs, the state’s growth management arm, with the state departments of transportation and environmental protection. The three departments would become the Department of Growth Leadership. Along with the merger are proposed changes in how the state regulates growth, including ending a requirement that roads be adequate to handle projected traffic levels before development plans are approved and eliminating state oversight of comprehensive planning.

In Maryland, Gov. Martin O’Malley told attendees at a conference on sustainability Jan. 8 that he would consider merging the state’s Department of Environment with the Department of Natural Resources, siting some overlap between activities of the agencies. DNR administers a number of conservation easement programs including the Rural Legacy Program. O’Malley and the Maryland legislature face a $1.6 billion deficit and have warned of drastic budget cuts including possible layoffs.

NRCS associate chief Murphy to spend year advising in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON DC - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack Jan. 18 announced that Ginger Murphy, Associate Chief of USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), will spend a year supporting the agriculture mission in Afghanistan.

“The Obama administration has identified agriculture as the top reconstruction priority for the U.S. government in Afghanistan,” Vilsack said. In Afghanistan, Murphy will help implement and refine the country’s agriculture strategy and will also help coordinate non-USDA agricultural projects.

Murphy, whose early career was in soil conservation including work on the Farmland Protection Policy Act, first went to Afghanistan last summer on a short-term assignment.

Murphy was state conservationist for both Maryland and Delaware before working at USDA headquarters in Washington. Murphy joins more than 100 USDA employees who have served as long-term advisors in Afghanistan since 2003. More than a quarter of USDA’s advisors have been NRCS employees.

STATE BRIEFS

In California… Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing to dissolve the state’s redevelopment agencies, a move that “would free up roughly $5 billion in annual tax increments that redevelopment agencies control and would redirect those increments to fund a range of local services,” according to the California Planning & Development Report published by William Fulton. The governor also proposes to end Williamson Act subventions, leaving tax breaks for farmers to localities. The state has a $28 billion deficit.

Marin dairy farm (Photo by MALT)

In Novato, Marin County, Whole Food Marketplace will donate five percent of their sales on March 22 to the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. MALT’s website recently posted a film clip on the Straus Family organic dairy operation, which in 1994 became the first certified organic dairy farm west of the Mississippi. In 1980 Ellen Straus was a co-founder of MALT. The Straus Family Creamery, one of 24 dairies in the county, produces organic milk and yogurt. Second-generation owner Albert Straus describes how he converted the farm to organic, and that a MALT easement enabled him to inherit the farm successfully.

In Maine … The Maine Farmland Trust launched a $50 million campaign to preserve 100,000 acres by 2014. The campaign was announced at the 70th annual Maine Agricultural Trade Show. MFT Executive Director John Piotti said 400,000 acres of farmland in the state would change hands in the next decade. “We believe strongly in the promise and potential of farming as businesses in this state,” he said. This year’s goal is $10 million. Half of that goal has been reached. “We need to preserve more farmland so existing farmers can afford to expand and so new farmers can afford to go into business,” said Maine Agriculture Commissioner  Seth Bradstreet. A dairy farmer who is entering a lease agreement with MFT on a farm it has preserved was on hand to talk about how the deal has enabled his son to plan to come into the business.

In Pennsylvania … The state approved the preservation of 15,939 acres in 2010.

In Maryland … The Maryland program in 2010 settled (as opposed to approved) on 8,289 acres, with 396 acres pending.

In New Jersey… The State Agriculture Development Committee (SADC) tallied settlements on 7,731 acres in 2010. The legislature has not appropriated funds to pay debt service and therefore no bond sales for farmland preservation are scheduled. NJ voters approved borrowing for farmland preservation last fall.

In Delaware … The farmland preservation program preserved 5,429 acres in 2010 and also preserved 872 acres in its new forestland preservation program. The program requested $6 million in the upcoming budget, more than twice what it received last budget round, according to program director Mike McGrath. The program would also like to see $2 million “for a new program to aid young farmers in purchasing, preserving and mortgaging a first-time farm,” McGrath said.

County program director to chair Garden State Preservation Trust

CLAYTON, NJ -  Ken Atkinson, director of the Gloucester County Office of Land Preservation, has been elected chairman of the Garden State Preservation Trust, New Jersey’s financing authority for all state expenditures on land preservation. Atkinson has served on the Trust board since 2008 by legislative appointment.

Atkinson has administered Gloucester’s farmland preservation program since 2003. During his tenure the county preserved more than 8,800 acres, more than doubling preserved acres to 17,000, among the highest totals in the state. Another 24 farms and 1,400 acres are planned to settle in 2011.

CONFERENCES

Feb. 3-5, State College, PA: Farming for the Future, annual conference of the Pa. Association for Sustainable Agriculture. Wes Jackson keynote speaker. “The annual Farming for the Future conference is PASA’s signature event and our main vehicle for community building. Widely regarded as the best of its kind in the East, this diverse event brings together an audience of over 2,000 farmers, processors, consumers, students, environmentalists, and business and community leaders annually.”
Feb. 23- 25, Shepherdstown, WV: National Green Infrastructure Conference, sponsored by The Conservation Fund. “The Inaugural 2011 National Green Infrastructure Conference is a gathering of policy-makers, practitioners, and on-the-ground implementers of green infrastructure practices and design from around the country. This is the first official conference of the National Green Infrastructure Community of Practice.”
March 17-19, Chicago: FamilyFarmed EXPO is a three day gathering of Chicago-area fans of locally grown and responsibly produced food and artisanal goods. Features: our world-class Financing Farm to Fork conference connecting local food producers with potential investors; the Midwest’s leading local food trade show, our Meet the Buyers reception, an innovative Food Policy Summit, and the scrumptious Localicious Party; cooking demos from celebrity chefs, educational seminars and an interactive Kids Corner.  Exhibitors offer a wide selection of local food, gifts and useful information to help you eat locally and healthy year-round. See familyfarmed.org.
April 30, Middletown, CT: Connecticut Land Conservation Conference, The conference will offer 24 workshops; 8 each in one morning and two afternoon sessions. The workshops will be preceded by a keynote speaker in the morning. The workshops are generally about 1.5 hours in length, with up to 45 people, attending each. Both basic and advanced training will be available.
May 31 – June 2, Charlottesville, VA: Virginia’s Land Conservation Conference, sponsored by the Piedmont Environmental Council. “Join land trust staff, PDR managers, volunteers, board members, public agency staff, and land conservation advocates to network with colleagues from across the state and learn about the latest advances in the practice of conservation.”

Va. puts $100,000 into farmland preservation

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

RICHMOND, VA – Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell announced Jan. 6 the distribution of $100,000 split between eight localities as a contribution to their farmland preservation efforts. The counties of Albemarle, Clarke, Fauquier, Isle of Wight, New Kent, Northampton, and Spotsylvania and the City of Virginia Beach each received $12,500 as matching grants, although the sums are nowhere near matching: the eight localities together reported $17 million in local funds for purchase of development rights, of which $3,524,331 was reported allocated for FY 2011.

Last month the governor proposed adding $400,000 to the program’s $100,000 FY2012 budget, saying he was committed even in difficult fiscal times, “to setting aside funds for preserving farmlands, lands that are producing goods, providing jobs, and generating tax revenue for localities.”

Fifteen of the state’s 22 local PDR programs have some level of local funding available. Virginia has contributed $5.25 million to these local efforts since February 2008.

To date, state funding has been involved in preserving 4,047 acres on 27 farms in 11 localities. Another 511 acres on six farms have been approved and are awaiting closing.

Kevin Schmidt, coordinator of the Va. Office of Farmland Preservation, said he expects a bill to be introduced in the General Assembly that would set up a Virginia Farmland Preservation Fund “so that we don’t have to return our funding at the end of each fiscal year and wait to get it back the next fiscal year.” The General Assembly convenes Jan. 12.

Builders ask Ca. high court to review mitigation case

FRESNO, CA - The Central California Building Industry Association on Jan. 3 petitioned the California Supreme Court to review whether Stanislaus County should be able to require homebuilders to save an acre of farmland for every acre they develop, a program referred to as farmland mitigation. In Nov., an appellate court in Fresno said the county is within its authority to require mitigation, reversing a lower court’s ruling that the requirement was unconstitutional (see FPR, Dec. 2010 Edition).

The three-judge panel in Fresno agreed with county attorneys that sprawl-type development endangers the future of agriculture and that county law seeking to mitigate that danger was not unconstitutional.

“It sure seemed like (appellate justices) ruled on emotion rather than matters of law,” BIA president Toby Wells told the Modesto Bee.

Former farmland preservation specialist gets CT top ag spot

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

HARTFORD, CT -  Connecticut Gov. Elect Dan Malloy on Jan. 3 announced that former farmland preservation specialist

Steven K. Reviczky will serve as Agriculture Commissioner in his administration. Reviczky has been serving as executive director of the Connecticut Farm Bureau for the last four years.

“I welcome the opportunity and challenges of this new role,” said Reviczky in a press release from the governor-elect’s office. “Preserving Connecticut’s farmland, increasing the availability of Connecticut grown food and products and helping the state’s family farms thrive have been my priorities and I’m eager to continue that advocacy when I return to the Connecticut Department of Agriculture.”

According to the 2007 USDA Census of Agriculture, Connecticut has 4,916 farms and a value of agricultural products sold of $550 million. The University of Connecticut College of Agriculture and Natural Resources reports agriculture is a $3.5 billion industry in the state. The state’s top valued crop is tobacco, ranking 7th in the nation.

Reviczky served in the Dept. of Agriculture for seven years before departing for the Farm Bureau. Farmland Preservation Program Director Joseph Dippel said Reviczky is a good choice for the state’s top ag spot.

“He is very highly and uniquely qualified, understands agriculture and farmland preservation. His diverse skill set will make him a very valuable member of the Malloy administration,” Dippel said.

In his new job, Reviczky will weigh in on whether to continue the state’s subsidies to dairy farmers. At least part of the funding for the dairy program came from farmland preservation funding sources, and the fund diversion was to sunset after two years. That sunset date will come in July.

During his tenure at the Dept. of Agriculture, Reviczky, a Coventry farmer, oversaw the state’s first grants under the Farm and Ranchland Protection Program and reviewed applications to the state’s purchase of development rights program.

The state farmland preservation program has preserved 36,450 acres and 279 farms to date. The program has 2,200 acres on 20 farms scheduled to settle in the coming months, according to Dippel.

Tax Relief and Spending Squeeze

BY TOM DANIELS, Senior Contributing Editor

On Dec. 17 President Obama signed The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. The Act included a generous pair of Christmas gifts for farmers.  First, the estate tax, which was zero in 2010, was scheduled to return in 2011 with a $1 million personal exemption and a maximum rate of 55%. But in his haste to extend unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed, President Obama agreed with the Republican leadership to raise the estate exemption to $5 million and lower the rate on estates above $5 million to 35%. As a result, only a few thousand estates will be taxed each year and if farm families plan their estates properly, Mom and Dad can leave their heirs at least $10 million in assets free of federal tax.

The $10 million exemption will help farmers in metropolitan areas where the value of farm real estate is higher for growing houses and strip malls than for raising crops and livestock. But the greater exemption removes an incentive to donate a conservation easement or do a bargain sale. Similarly, ranchers near western ski resorts may not need to donate conservation easements to reduce the value of their land to avoid estate taxes.

Second, the 2010 tax deal extended until the end of 2012 the favorable deduction schedule for donated conservation easements first passed in 2006 and made it retroactive to Jan. 1, 2010. Farmers can deduct up to 100% of the value of an easement in the year in which the easement was donated; non-farmers can deduct up to 50% of the easement value in a year. Both farmers and non-farmers may use a deduction for up to 16 years or until it is exhausted, whichever comes first. The Land Trust Alliance claims that this expanded deduction has been instrumental in the preservation of one million additional acres, and is pushing to make the more generous deduction permanent.

The tax deal, which included extending the Bush tax cuts of 2001 for another two years carries an estimated price tag of more than $850 billion over ten years. Although the federal deficit reached a modern day record of $1.3 trillion in fiscal 2010, Congress decided that a tax cut was what a recovering economy needed, the burgeoning federal debt be damned.

So the question arises: Are we borrowing money from the Chinese to pay for preserving our farmland?

The answer is yes and no. Yes, a tax reduction means a larger budget deficit and more borrowing. And, yes, the Chinese hold more U.S. Treasury bonds than any other country, which apparently we Americans hope will continue. Otherwise, we will have to raise interest rates. The answer is also no, because federal, state, and local government funds along with private money are being spent on farmland preservation. The only problem is that these funds are being squeezed as public budgets tighten and the private sector continues to recover from the Great recession of 2007-2009.

Here are a few situations to consider. The federal Farm Bill is likely to be delayed until 2012, if not 2013. This is actually positive for the Farm and Ranchland Protection Program, which is authorized for more than $100 million a year. Yet, authorized does not mean budgeted, and those funds will be vulnerable as Congress looks to trim spending. In 2011, state government revenues are expected to run more than $100 billion short. Because states (except Vermont) cannot legally run budget deficits, they will have to cut a variety of programs, and farmland preservation will have to take its fair share of the hit. The story at the local level is not much brighter, even though the interest rates on bonds to pay for preserving land are at rock bottom.  Floating a bond still means raising taxes, not a popular course of action right now.

The private sector—especially, foundations and major donors—have felt the pinch of the stock market decline from record levels and the real estate meltdown. One bright spot is that real estate developers are not proposing many new projects that would convert farmland. Rather, several developers have unloaded land or done easement deals with preservationists.

Getting the tax and spending mix for farmland preservation should be a matter of debate, not just among preservationists or farmers, but as part of a public discussion of what government should do to protect farmland and what the private sector can be expected to do.

Tom Daniels teaches land use planning at the University of Pennsylvania. He is author of The Small Town Planning Handbook and other books.

Janus: What Does He See for Preservation?

BY MIKE MCGRATH, Contributing Editor

Mike McGrath

In ancient Rome Janus was the god of beginnings and endings.  Depicted with two faces he was able to look simultaneously into the past, and forward, into the future.  As we are in his namesake month (January) it’s a good time to look back – and to look forward.

Well, 2010, it turns out, was not such a bad year for farmland preservation.  For one thing the number one item on my gift list for preservationists showed up on our front step.  The favorable tax treatment for donated easements got passed, along with a host of other tax and unemployment measures (see Tom Daniels’ excellent review of the details in this edition).  It’s not every year you get your biggest present – but that was it – especially considering that the inheritance tax remains favorable to landowners – at least for a while!  The president and Congress came through for farmland preservation!

On the funding front 2010 was not as tough as it could have been.  At least here in Delaware some extra money came along at the end of budget-writing and made it possible to match most all of the available federal funding.  Not bad, considering that we could have been zeroed out.  I hope you were as fortunate.  And the key to continued support remains building your support base throughout the electorate and making the case for the wisdom of preservation funding.  But there are always more applications for permanent preservation than there is money to meet the need.  And that’s a good thing!

And speaking of applications for preservation, 2010 continued a strengthening trend in that area.  From the farmers I talk to there is a growing realization that the development bubble was illusory, at best, and downright damaging, at worst!  Many landowners were the ones who suffered financially when the development plans went “south.”  In many (if not most) cases the landowner had been convinced to put a mortgage on the farm to pay for engineering and legal work to create the plan.  Now the developer is in bankruptcy and the farmer’s left holding the bag.  Most landowners that were not in such a position  now realize that their “best bet” is to preserve the land, make long-term investments in agricultural production and commit to a long-range business plan – in farming!  The result in our office has been a steady stream of applications for permanent preservation.

And like any year we are all older and wiser.  A benefit not to be sneezed at!  As I’ve grown older I have a better perspective on the value of wisdom that comes with age.  But in order for this inevitable onward march of time to become a valuable asset we must seize it.  Let me recommend an approach that you may find valuable.  At the end of every year I have started the habit of cataloging some key things I’ve learned.  I don’t try to make the list too long – just ten to fifteen items that have come up during the year that may have lasting value.  They may be big or small, but they had real value.  I then write down beside each one how I can continue to use that knowledge, improve on its effectiveness and expand it to other areas or in other ways.  Then I keep the annotated list handy and look at it every once in a while and try to keep applying the new knowledge.  Give it a try and I think you’ll find the habit useful in the business of preservation.  So, continuing in this vein, let’s look forward into 2011.

A time-honored approach for preparing for the New Year is to make a few, well-chosen New Year’s resolutions.  So, here are my resolutions for farmland preservation in 2011.

• I will quit complaining about the USDA administration of the FRPP and the lack of a final rule. Anyway, I feel like the voice teacher for a pig – I’ve been wasting my time and they’re annoyed!
• I will take time to thank those I work with in preservation. At times this can be a solitary and thankless job.  While most of us have internalized our job satisfaction and feelings of accomplishment it never hurts to hear it from someone else!  If you haven’t done it lately thank your employees, or (Heaven forbid!) thank your boss who leads the preservation office, or the Top Dog for letting you work in this wonderful field of endeavor.
• I will thank the landowners who preserve their farms. Ever since I signed the papers at my very first closing of an easement I have always taken the time at the end to say something like, “On behalf of all the citizens of Delaware I want to thank you for preserving your farm for future generations of Delawareans.”  People really like to hear that – and moreover – it’s true!
• I will work every day like it was my first day on the job. Nothing makes the year fly by like enthusiasm and a belief in what you do.  Do you remember what you felt like when you first came on the job to do preservation?  I do!  It was exciting!  Twenty-eight years ago I started in preservation.  It was 12 years before I signed my first easement – but I managed to stay excited about the possibilities during that time and have been even more excited since then. The time has flown by.  It hardly seems like 28 years have gone by and I’ll be retiring in 2011.  I hope 2011 flies by for you and many things are accomplished in your sphere of influence.

Yes, like the Roman god Janus we can look back on some accomplishments.  We can look forward with hope and enthusiasm to the year ahead.  But like Janus, our lives are lived in the present.  Let’s make every moment count for preservation and those of us who love working in this “vineyard!”

Mike McGrath is director of the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation.

CA superior court rules in favor of farmland mitigation

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

Lettuce crop, Central Valley

FRESNO, CA - California’s Fifth District Appellate Court ruled Nov. 29 that the Stanislaus County Farmland Mitigation Program (FMP) does not conflict with state law or exceed the county’s police power, claims made by the Building Industry Association of Central California. The program will stand, and developers will continue to be required to provide for preservation of an acre of farmland for every acre their projects convert. The California Farm Bureau Federation and others were interveners in support of the county. Click here to view the ruling.

For development proposals converting 20 or fewer acres, the Stanislaus County program allows for either direct acquisition of a conservation easement on comparable lands, or the purchase of banked credits. If a developer of a parcel of fewer than 20 acres can demonstrate that no comparable land was available for conservation easement and no credits were available, a fee in lieu of purchase can be paid. But for parcels of greater than 20 acres, purchase of a conservation easement on comparable lands is required. The developer is solely responsible for negotiating and settling the easement purchase.

It is estimated that about 10 localities in California have enacted farmland mitigation programs.

A lower court found that Stanislaus County and the intervening Farm Bureau Federation failed to demonstrate a “reasonable relationship” between the FMP’s requirements and the negative impact of converting agricultural land to residential use.  The lower court additionally found the county failed to show the FMP’s mandates would or could achieve its “ostensible purpose of mitigating farmland conversion.”

The appellate court found however, “that contrary to the trial court’s conclusion, the FMP mandates bear a reasonable relationship to the loss of farmland to residential development. As outlined in the County’s updated agricultural element, agriculture is the leading industry in the County generating an annual gross agricultural value in excess of a billion dollars into the local economy. Further, the elements that make the County so well suited for agriculture, i.e., favorable climate, flat land, available water and low-cost power, also make the County attractive for urban development, including affordable housing within commuting distance of major employment centers.”

The Building Industry Association claimed the farmland mitigation program was “arbitrary and without evidentiary support.” The appellate court disagreed, finding that, “Agriculture is the County’s leading industry. Real estate development that requires agricultural land to be converted to residential use has a deleterious impact on this valuable resource. Although the developed farmland is not replaced, an equivalent area of comparable farmland is permanently protected from a similar fate. To meet the reasonable relationship standard it is not necessary to fully offset the loss. The additional protection of farmland that could otherwise soon be lost to residential development promotes the County’s stated objective to conserve agricultural land for agricultural uses.”

NEWS BRIEFS

Berks County farm (photo by FPR)

In Pennsylvania …The state board approved 1,916 acres for preservation Dec. 9. The 23 farms involved are located in 10 counties. Nine of the farms are located in Lancaster County and range in size from a 46-acre crop farm to a 139-acre

dairy. Three of the farms are in Berks County. Lancaster and Berks are among the nation’s top 12 local programs for number of acres preserved

(see FPR Sept. 2010 Edition). Chester County, another of the nation’s Top 12, had one farm in this month’s approvals. Pa. now has 4,096 farms and 444,647 acres preserved, the nation’s highest number of acres preserved in a purchase of development rights (PDR) program.

Since 1988, state, county, township and federal programs have spent more than $1 billion on farmland preservation. The state alone has spent $337 million.

In West Virginia… Since 2002, Jefferson County has been collecting a local transfer tax to fund its farmland preservation program. This month, despite drastic reductions in that funding due to scanty real estate transfers, the county had enough funds to preserve 668 acres on seven farms, bringing the county’s total preserved farm acres to about 3,000. There are now 32 farms with conservation easements in the county. One-third of the local transfer tax goes to the program. About five years ago the annual revenue to the program was over $1 million. Now it is about $360,000, according to the county farmland protection board. About 17 counties in the state have enacted local transfer taxes to pay for farmland presewrvation.

In Maryland… Howard County has produced bumper magnets to give out to farmland preservation supporters. The 3-inch by 12-inch “Farmland Forever” is illuminated against a farmland scene. “It gives me great pleasure to make the

Farmland Forever bumper magnets available to the public,” said County Executive Ken Ulman. “It is a wonderful way for the public to show its support of the landowners who are preserving their farmland for future generations and helping us protect the quality of life in Howard County for future generations.” The program also produces a Farmland Forever roadside sign for preserved farms, as do many Maryland counties. Howard County has preserved about 21,000 acres of farmland. It was the first locality in the nation to offer payments in tax free installments. The program was inactive for a number of years during the real estate boom. Its location in the urbanizing corridor between Baltimore and Washington and the absence of agricultural protection zoning has made land protection a particular challenge.

Preserving farmland in Corn Country

BY TOM DANIELS, Senior Contributing Editor

Clark County, Ohio lies on the eastern edge of America’s great Midwestern Corn Belt. Tucked between the cities of Dayton and Columbus, more than 80 percent of the county—about 177,000 acres—is devoted to farming. The county’s population of 144,000 is expected to hold steady for the near future. In 2007, Clark County farmers produced $137 million in farm products, including 11.7 million bushels of corn. Compared to the East, this is big farm country, with more than half of the county’s farmland in ownerships of 1,000 or more acres.

With more than 10,000 acres preserved, Clark County is also the leading county in farmland preservation not only in Ohio, but in the Midwest, where farmland preservation is only operating at the state level in Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Farm preserved by Tecumseh Land Trust (TLT photo)

From 2002 to 2007, Ohio saw 618,000 acres leave farming. Fortunately, in 2002, the state launched a farmland preservation program that has preserved slightly more than 42,000 acres so far. In 2008, the state program received $35 million from the Clean Ohio bond, but that money is slated to run out in 2012.

Interest from Ohio farmers has far exceeded the available funding. In May of this year, farmers submitted easement sale applications on 203 farms. But the state only had money for 37 offers. Also, because of the strong demand for easement sales, the state has set a minimum threshold of 60 percent donation of easement value. That may seem like a high donation percentage, but as one farmer remarked to me, “There are a lot of farmers with tax problems.” Tax problems means they have high incomes this year from a combination of good yields and a corn price above $5 a bushel. A bargain sale of part cash and part donation could put cash in a farmer’s pocket and help reduce the federal income tax bite.

A major obstacle in the Midwest has been a shortage of county-level funding. In Ohio, for example, a farmland preservation ballot failed in Wayne County, Ohio in 2004. The Clark County Commissioners have given some funding for farmland preservation, but less than $100,000 and there is no dedicated funding source. Federal Farm and Ranchland Protection Program funds have been an important source of public money.

Clark County’s farmland preservation effort has been coordinated through the Tecumseh Land Trust. Krista Magaw is the Executive Director of the Tecumseh Land Trust, founded in 1990 and the first land trust in Ohio to receive accreditation from the Land Trust Alliance. The Trust has preserved more than 17,000 acres of farmland and natural areas in Clark, Greene, and Clinton Counties. Magaw is a member of the Clark County Farmland Preservation Workgroup which has conducted surveys indicating strong support for a county farmland preservation program. But the drastic cuts in local government and the continued sluggish economy do not bode well for funding a new county farmland preservation program. That’s why the Tecumseh Land Trust will continue to play a key role in keeping Clark County’s farmland preservation momentum going. An innovative program the Trust has created is to get local business owners to contribute one percent of their revenues to the Trust’s land preservation efforts.

Contact: Krista Magaw: krista@tecumsehlandtrust.org (937) 767-9490.

Tom Daniels is professor of planning at the University of Pennsylvania, Dept. of City & Regional Planning.

The gift that keeps on giving – three times a day!

Mike McGrath

BY MIKE MCGRATH, Contributing Editor

At this time of year our thoughts turn to gifts.  Hopefully, we are all thinking about the “spirit of giving.”  But, it’s easy to fall into the commercialization of the holidays.  We might even become somewhat greedy as we draft up another gift list to drop hints to friends and family.  But let’s pause for a minute in the rush and draw up a gift list for farmland preservation – in the “spirit of giving.”

Extension of favorable treatment for donations and bargain sales of conservation easements.  There’s little doubt that this law (while it lasted!) had a huge impact on preservation.  In Delaware it meant many more applications for ag districts came in and much more aggressive discounting by prospective easement sellers.  In effect, the landowners knew that they would be getting some of that discount back in the form of lower taxes in future years.  It saved Delaware and our funding partners a lot of money and allowed us to preserve many more acres of prime farmland with limited resources.  Congress can give a great big gift to preservation by extending the higher deductibility and longer carry-forward period for taxpayers who care about preservation – and give up a lot to see it happen.

Legislative leaders who understand that land preservation lowers the cost of government. Well, you can never have too many of those!  Educating, and then convincing, legislators of the wisdom of land preservation can be excruciatingly slow work.  But in the long run it is one of the strongest arguments for spending money on preservation – saving money in the long run.  As more and more land gets permanently preserved our high costs for sprawl development will stop skyrocketing.  Just another way that land preservation is the gift that keeps on giving.  Maybe a few of these legislators will be under your tree!

Shoppers looking for local food. As this trend has accelerated it has meant more support for preservation.  We need more of those folks.  It’s local food that tastes better, that lowers our carbon footprint and supports the local economy.  And our fellow citizens are beginning to realize that these benefits depend on local land remaining in farming.  And citizens “get it.”  Our surveying of public opinion in Delaware over the years has shown that taxpayers put “local food supply” at the top of the list when it comes to the reasons they support farmland preservation.  Right up there, too, in citizen recognition are the economic benefits of agriculture.  In Delaware we have seen steady gains in vegetable acreage as one indicator of the farm sector response to changing eating habits.  If we could receive some more local food shoppers under our tree . . . well, so much the better!

Optimism in agriculture. We constantly need to replenish our optimism.  And optimism is truly a “gift.”  The good news is that most farmers come equipped with an abundance of this otherwise scarce commodity.  I’ve been amazed my whole life by the farmer’s optimism demonstrated each year at planting time.  No matter how tough the years have been it seems that the warm sun of spring and a bag of seed rejuvenates the farmer’s enthusiasm for taking another stab at that “perfect year.”  My father was a great example of that.  Late in his life we celebrated his birthday and 70 years farming.  That’s right – 70 years of bringing in crops.  He had a tough childhood in that at 11 years old, he and his older brother, just 18 himself, took over the farm due to my grandfather’s failed health.  But he loved farming and never looked back.  Being from upstate New York he had a somewhat gruff demeanor, but a subtle sense of humor.  At his party someone asked Dad about his experience as a farmer for 70 years.  He paused just slightly and said, “Well, I think in that 70 years I had two good years!”  Well, the room exploded in laughter!  When the noise died down Dad said, with a twinkle in his eye, “No, wait a minute – one good year!”  Like most farmers, Dad had experienced good years and bad years.  But he was, with good humor, an optimist through it all.  And we know that landowners’ attitudes about the future of agriculture are the main determinant of their decisions to preserve land.  “Lord, please send us some more optimism this year.”

Abolition of estate taxes on agricultural land. Well, I always say – think BIG when you write up your gift list!  We all do it – put something on that list which our heart desires but that we know is – maybe – just too big to really expect.  There is not another single thing that would preserve as much land from development as ending the estate tax on ag land.  And, in my opinion, it’s a no-brainer.  What’s fair about charging every generation huge taxes just to receive the land of their ancestors and allow them the privilege of pouring money into it in order to farm for little return?  And will this solve the Federal deficit?  Not by a long shot!  Estate taxes on farm land are but a “blip” on the U.S. Revenue screen.  But it means so much to the farm families, especially where land values are high, that often must mortgage the place just to keep what their parents worked a lifetime to acquire.  If this big box appears under the tree – well, it will have been a good year!

Now, that’s my gift list for farmland preservation this year.  Of course, yours may be different.  Some of the same things perhaps – and others that are important to you.  But farmland preservation has given so much – to all of us – that, well, every gift on the list is well-deserved.  As we sit down to holiday meals around tables with family and friends may we give thanks for the bounty we share and those in agriculture who bring it to us.  Is it too much to give in return by making the “preservation gift list” a reality?  I know each of you are doing your part and may you be blessed in your efforts, have a happy holiday season and a prosperous New Year!

Mike McGrath is director of the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation.

Welcome to the Nov. 2010 edition of FPR. Click on the link below for the PDF version. The online version contains slightly more content than the PDF version.

In December, we will be posting minimal online content only.

[download#10]

New York program broke, contracts go unpaid

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher
This story was updated Nov. 29.

ALBANY, NY – Nearly half of New York’s 113 approved farmland easement projects with total encumbered funds of $55.4 million are not settled and are more than three years old, according to a report released in Oct. by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. About 60 farms have been waiting for payment, but the state has not dispersed the funds that were committed to the projects.

DiNapoli said delayed closings have caused a backlog in the state farmland preservation program, which operates through grants to municipalities and land trusts, but stopped short of placing blame for the delays.  DiNapoli recently estimated the New York State deficit is $1 billion.

The program was once funded with $30 million. This year, $10.75 million was in the governor’s enacted budget, but that could be cut in half. No new projects are being accepted.

“The program is in danger of becoming dormant,” said Seth McKee, director of conservation for Scenic Hudson. “There are a lot of farmers sitting around for several years waiting for word.”

McKee said his organization, and others, are pointing out that farmland preservation “is an economic development strategy and should be funded and staffed as such.”

The New York program has never had more than its one fulltime position, filled by David Behm.

The comptroller’s report stated that funds “are not being disbursed in a timely way,” and that “New York State government [should] focus attention on identifying and eliminating the sources of delay.”

According to Peter Paden, executive director of the Columbia Land Conservancy, an applicant to the farmland program, “the problem is, the legislature is not appropriating money. They’ve got an Environmental Protection Fund and year after year they have borrowed from that in order to pay for other things with the intention of paying it back. They would say they would release $33 million dollars and instead only release $20 million or, they would only release, as they did this year, $10 million dollars. In the meantime the Department of Ag & Markets has reviewed projects, signed contracts, made commitments.”

Paden said the department has awarded far more money than has actually been expended.

“The program is seriously underfunded even in the best of times,” Paden said, “compared to the amount of farmland we have in the state, which is good farmland, and compared to the amount of money other states with farmland protection programs spend.”

In a prepared statement, New York Agriculture Commissioner Patrick Hooker said the Farmland Protection Program has $5.5 million worth of projects “fully cleared and ready for disbursement of monies from the Environmental Protection Fund.” He also stated that other projects were underway in the department, but added “we are awaiting information from our farmland protection partners across the state on approximately $50m of proposed projects.”

Phil Giltner, executive assistant to Commissioner Hooker, told FPR completion of the projects is “out of our hands.” Gilter said the backlog “looks worse than it is,” but it was conceivable that allocated but unused funds could “go away” if the state’s fiscal condition caused the legislature to look for funds to fill other program needs.

“You never say never in government. It is conceivable if we don’t have a contract signed, the legislature could sit down and say ‘we need that money.’ Who knows?”

The farmland program is funded with appropriations from the state’s Environmental Protection Fund (EPF) and with bond proceeds from the Clean Water/Clean Air Bond Act of 1996. The New York program has preserved 170 farms and 32,867 acres. Easements are held by municipalities and land trusts. In addition to funding conservation easement purchases at 75 percent of easement cost, the New York program funds planning grants at a 50 percent match. Fifty-three counties and 64 towns have completed farmland protection plans under the program.

The comptroller’s report points out that a 2008 audit of the program found the upfront work of awarding the grants was “transparent and timely,” signifying the blame for the clog in the pipeline rests elsewhere, not in the Department of Agriculture & Markets.

But a number of land trusts feel that the program’s having just one staff person is part of the problem. While other state farmland programs currently have between three and five staff members, “we’ve had one for a long time, and believe me, it takes a long time to get the applications through,” said Peter Paden. “It’s a very poorly supported program, and that’s a resource issue. The legislature hasn’t decided this is sufficiently important.”

In the easement purchase part of the NY program, grants are awarded to municipalities and land trusts, which are responsible for all of the paperwork, including title work, appraisal, survey of the “proposed conservation easement area of the farm,” a project budget, the purchase agreement, the deed of easement, and a monitoring plan. Most municipalities turn over projects to land trusts if there is one in the area. Last year a law was passed to allow land trusts to apply directly to the program. Prior to 2009, municipalities were the applicants, and could turn over projects to land trusts, and any town that had a land trust took that route, according to Paden. “It would be a rare town that could do [the paperwork],” he said.

Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo stated in an agriculture platform brief that his administration would work to address the backlog “although there are no easy solutions because of the state’s fiscal constraints.”

According to the American Farmland Trust’s New York field office, not enough money is in the EPF “to make good on the $71.5 million owed to farm families” that have contracts with the state. AFT said the report from Comptroller DiNapoli, who has been elected to another term, mirrors the support of farmland preservation promised by Gov.-Elect Andrew Cuomo.

“There’s a lack of essential progress, part of it is staffing,” said Scenic Hudson’s Seth McKee, one of the state’s leading land trusts. McKee said the current administration has been supportive of farmland protection at the policy level, but the easement process is cumbersome and has caused some of the backlog.

Beyond the fiscal crisis and the problem of money not being released for committed projects, McKee, and Andy Bicking, Scenic Hudson’s director of public policy, said the future of the program depends on lawmakers seeing the economic importance of farms.

“Part of the issue overall, that we think the comptroller’s report really points to, and that we take great benefit in, is that it clarifies in no uncertain terms, that farmland protection is a very important tool for economic growth and renewal,” Bicking said in an interview. “So there’s value in protecting farms, but there’s a clear economic value and interest for the state to continue this program. The report came on the heels of two years of what was really an all out attack on the notion of private land conservation and the environment in general in New York State. There have been disproportionate cuts to key environmental, agricultural and parks agencies,” Bicking said.

David Haight, director of the American Farmland Trust’s New York field office, said the next budget will be critical to the future of the program and he is working with legislators and the in-coming administration.

“We’ve been reaching out to the governor-elect about options for making good on these commitments,” Haight said. “We’re working to get legislators on board. We’re hopeful but we also recognize the state’s fiscal problems.”

Haight said some farmers have paid more than $10,000 to prepare their easements and he worries that the program is getting a black eye as the waiting game continues with no known resolution.

Both Scenic Hudson president Ned Sullivan and AFT’s David Haight will serve on Gov.-Elect Cuomo’s transition team.

PA preferential assessment law amended for energy production

BY DEBORAH BOWERS, Editor & Publisher

Marcellus shale drill site in Washington County, Pa. ( Source: Fractracker.org)

HARRISBURG PA - In a state where drilling for natural gas in Marcellus Shale regions has changed both the economic and natural landscapes, lawmakers are playing catch-up in matters relating to taxing agricultural properties affected.

Gov. Ed Rendell on Nov. 23 signed Act 109, which will allow property owners whose lands are leased for gas drilling to keep their agricultural-based tax assessment for all acreage except that directly taken up by the drill site.

The booming Marcellus shale gas drilling industry has been at work for several years throughout the western and northern parts of the state.

The New Jersey legislature this year also addressed the taxation of agricultural properties engaged in energy production, passing a law that allows “biomass, solar or wind energy generation” to be considered agricultural uses for property taxation purposes. The Marcellus shale region does not extend into New Jersey.

Pennsylvania’s new law adds to the definition of agricultural use “any land devoted to the development and operation of an alternative energy system, if a majority of the energy annually generated is utilized on the tract.”

According to the Bureau of Farmland Preservation, preserved farms in Pa. retain the right to lease land for gas and oil extraction. Access roads and construction of drilling sites is allowed. Property owners are encouraged, not required, to notify their local farmland protection boards if they receive offers to enter into gas or oil leases.

Source: Penn State Marcellus Center for Outreach & Research

Most county-level programs permit farm-based renewable energy if most of the energy is used on the farm, according to the Bureau. Several county programs were amended in recent years to permit farm based renewable energy even if the majority of the energy is sold, provided any associated structures are confined to the area of existing structures.

While the Marcellus shale region doesn’t affect the state’s southeastern counties that contain the great majority of the state’s preserved farms, a number of counties with dozens of drill sites do have preserved farms.

In Centre County, Marcellus drill sites are located currently only in the northern part of the county, while preserved farms and agricultural security areas are in the southern portion of the county.

In Lycoming County, dozens of Marcellus drill sites are scattered throughout the northern portion and in the southeastern corner of the county. Lycoming has about 7,600 acres of preserved farmland.

In Greene County, the state’s most southwestern county and adjacent to West Virginia, the local Soil Conservation District warns farmers on its website, “What we’ve been seeing in the county has been described as a modern gold rush. There are a dozen or more companies in the county that are all vying to lease oil and gas rights. Here at the district we’ve heard about the worst and the best from landowners interactions with the Gas and Oil producers. The best thing you can do is educate yourself before a landman knocks on your door with an offer and a lease for you to sign. First and foremost never sign anything that your lawyer hasn’t looked at first.”

According to Fractracker.org, using data currently being compiled at the University of Pittsburgh, 77 percent of all shale gas being produced in the state is in Greene, Susquehanna, Bradford and Washington counties.

Marcellus drill sites have caused environmental and health concerns, including water and air pollution, and scores of violations have been cited. New standards approved Nov. 18 impose more stringent construction standards on gas wells, according to Pa. Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger.

In October Gov. Rendell ordered a moratorium on future drilling operations on state forest lands.

This month the Pa. Dept. of Environmental Protection announced it was investigating a spill of waste water from a shale fracturing drill site that had contaminated a stream in Lycoming County. Also this month, The Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority board (Pennvest) voted to approve $12 million to extend water service to 18 homes in Susquehanna County whose wells, state inspectors said, were contaminated by Marcellus shale drilling. Susquehanna County has about 26 preserved farms and 5,500 acres preserved.

CA appeals court to review farmland mitigation decision

FRESNO, CA - A ruling last year that declared the Stanislaus County farmland mitigation law unconstitutional (see FPR, July 2009) is being reviewed by an appellate court that is expected to decide the matter within a few months. The county’s mitigation law, which requires developers to pay to preserve an acre of land for every acre developed, was passed by Stanislaus County supervisors in 2007.

Farmland mitigation requirements are in use in a number of California cities including Davis, in Yolo County, and Brentwood in Contra Costa County. Davis’ program was the first in the state when approved in 1995. Mitigation programs grew out of Sierra Club lawsuits against cities approving projects that conflicted with master plans. The mitigation payments are used to purchase conservation easements on farmland, sometimes adjacent to developed parcels. Local farm bureaus have supported mitigation programs.

Money is low, interest high in local Maryland programs

Central Maryland preserved farm (Photo by FPR)

FREDERICK, MD - In Maryland, where a number of local farmland preservation programs are funded by revenues from taxes on real estate transfers, local matching dollars for the state program are scarce, but interest remains strong, according to program administrators.

Not only are there fewer transfers of property, but the dollars being paid for property are significantly less, meaning fewer dollars for land protection. The upside is a major slowdown in sprawl, the downside is, a slowdown and backlog in preservation programs.

One real estate expert in Frederick County confirms that farmland not zoned for development is not attracting developers these days, and the value of residential building lots has dropped by more than half.

“Where a perked two-acre rural lot may have sold for $350,000 in 2005, today it may sell for $165,000 or less.  In some cases the cost of developing lots exceeds the combined gross value of the finished lots it creates,” Rocky Mackintosh, president of MacRo, Ltd., told FPR.

Mackintosh, who has been in real estate for 40 years, said very few investors are looking for raw land. Such land “is not attractive to the development community … most now will only seek land that is zoned, and will go even further and not actually make the purchase until the approval of an unconditional site plan is achieved…”

Mackintosh, who writes the MacRo Report, said he believes the Frederick market will be strong in the future.

While Macintosh said he felt farmland values had remained fairly stable, Tim Blaser, Frederick program administrator, said he has received calls over the last year about the county’s Critical Farms Program, which helps beginning farmers buy land. But the county program, which depends on real estate transfer tax revenue for funding, is broke.

“I have had a lot of calls about the Critical Farms Program (which also has no funding) due to prospective farmers actually feeling as if they now have a chance to buy some farms now that the boom times are over and there are [fewer] speculators out there competing for those farms.”

“Interest in land preservation is booming” due to fewer development options, Blaser said. “This would be a great time to make headway if we had the money.”

In neighboring Washington County, revenues from the local agricultural transfer tax, a state tax collected locally, is generating “next to nothing” in revenue, said program director Eric Seifarth. The county had 30 applications, but it will depend on state dollars to fund what applications are finally approved. “There is substantial interest. We’ve had several [applications] come in for next year,” Seifarth said.

In Howard County, program activity is the strongest in years, said director Joy Levy. This year the program had 13 applicants and the county was able to make seven offers, she said. “This batch will deplete our funding for a while,” she said.

PROGRAM BRIEFS

In Pennsylvania… The Lebanon County Commissioners last month refused to approve a $325,000 grant to the county conservation district for farmland preservation matching funds, as they looked for ways to close a county budget deficit. It was the first time “in recent memory” the program received no funding, officials said. Funding was also cut for all Conservation District programs, leaving only funding for personnel.

The Farmland Preservation Bureau is working to address concerns of county level administrators who say regulations are not well communicated in easement language, with confusion in the areas of existing structures, the additional allowed residence, and replacement structures. Pennsylvania program administrators met Oct. 27 to go over a “wish list” of improvements to the state program. A draft of revisions will be released to counties in a few months, said Dwight Jared-Smith, department counsel, who attended the meeting.

Three land trusts will talk about how they can work with farmland preservation programs in a roundtable following the next state board meeting Dec. 9. The roundtables are arranged by the Bureau of Farmland Preservation.

In North Carolina … Agriculture commissioner Troxler announced $2 million available for grants in the Agriculture Development and Farmland Preservation Trust Fund with a deadline of Dec. 15.

In Delaware … Program director Michael McGrath announced Oct. 28 at his board meeting that he will retire in June 2011. McGrath has served as chief of planning in the state Department of Agriculture since 1984 and administrator of the state farmland program, the latter position since 1991 when the program first began operating.

Baltimore County preserved farm (Photo by FPR)

In Maryland … Baltimore County program administrator Wally Lippincott recently updated the county’s five land trusts on their balances in county grant money available for land preservation. About $889,000 in awards is currently uncommitted by the land trusts, and $650,000 in additional funds are available. In July 2011 an additional $1 million will be available. Other counties are not faring so well. Neighboring Harford County has no local money for new projects.

In Michigan… A balanced budget was more important to Kent County Commissioners when they voted on their budget, leaving the county’s fledgling PDR program without the level of funds it needs to match private grant monies. The board did allocate $275,000, but that was $75,000 short of the commitment sought by a grant agreement from a private funder.

In Connecticut … Gov. M. Jodi Rell presided for the last time over preservation of a farm this month and announced the state will be preserving 20 farms this year. During her tenure that began in 2004, 74 farms and about 8,000 acres were preserved. The state has preserved a total of about 26,000 acres and 270 farms.

In New York … The Finger Lakes Land Trust preserved 519 acres this month on a farm that grows cabbage, corn, beans and other crops. While the state struggles under a deficit estimated by the comptroller at $1 billion, the deal was sealed with state funds committed in 2008.

Voters approve $2 billion for land & conservation

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Voters across the country Nov. 2 overwhelmingly approved a variety of measures for land conservation, generating a total of $2 billion, according to results tallied by The Trust for Public Land.

Of 35 proposals for conservation funding, 28 passed, for an approval rate of 80 percent, TPL said.

“Yesterday, Americans stepped up and said they want to preserve land and protect clean air, clean water, farm lands, and other natural resources,” said TPL president Will Rogers in a press release following the election.

“It’s the same result we have seen election after election – American voters care about the lands and water where they live, and they’re voting with their wallets. And this support hasn’t changed over the years, despite the challenging economic times we’re living in.”

Rogers called on Congress to follow the lead of voters and approve full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a perennial fight in the budget arena.

During all of 2010 there were 48 measures, of which 39 passed, for an approval rate of 81 percent.

The measures are tracked by TPL’s Conservation Finance team, which advises state and local governments on conservation funding and helps win approval for measures dedicating funds for parks and conservation. Some examples from around the nation that were noted by TPL:

* In Iowa, voters approved an amendment to the state constitution creating a permanent trust fund to protect and restore natural resources.

* In Maine, voters gave 59 percent approval to a statewide bond that will send $9.75 million to the Land for Maine’s Future (LMF) program, which includes farmland preservation. The program has preserved 26 farms and 7,300 acres. LMF staff and the Department of Agriculture work in partnership to identify farm projects, and fund proposals focused specifically on farmland conservation. The measure was promoted by land trusts, including the Maine Farmland Trust.

* In Oregon, 68 percent of voters approved a measure which indefinitely continues to set aside 15 percent of the revenue generated by the state lottery for protection of water, parks and wildlife habitat. The set-aside provision had been scheduled to expire in 2014 had it not been extended. The provision has generated more than $800 million in the past decade.

Two NC counties get certified farmland protection plans

FORT BRAGG, NC - Farmland protection plans devised for Cumberland and Scotland counties were certified by the state Nov. 11. The plans were developed under a grant to the BRAC (Base Realignment & Closure) Regional Task Force, under its Working Lands Protection Program.

One of the task force’s primary concerns is growth around Fort Bragg, particularly residential growth that puts a pinch on military training exercises. The state certification gives priority status to counties for state grant money for farmland preservation and other funds for land and water conservation. Four other counties in the BRAC region have been certified. The BRAC Regional Task Force is comprised of representatives from 11 counties and 73 municipalities surrounding Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base.

“The region’s working lands will help maintain the operational readiness of Fort Bragg and reduce the problems posed by development and other land uses that are incompatible with the Army’s training and operational objectives,” said Greg Taylor, executive director of the BRAC-RTF.

The farmland protection plan for both counties outlines the importance of agriculture and identifies ways to support the industry. The plan also identifies ways to reduce development that may be considered incompatible with the mission of Fort Bragg through preservation of working farms and forests.

Redding: transition planning should follow preserving the farm

Sec. Russ Redding accepted an award from AFT at PFPA conference in Gettysburg (FPR photo)

GETTYSBURG, PA - Farm transition planning should follow farmland preservation, according to Pa. Agriculture Secretary Russ Redding, speaking before the Pa. Farmland Preservation Association’s (PFPA) twice yearly conference in Gettysburg Oct. 27.

Redding said the Pa. Dept. of Agriculture was the first state department of agriculture to partner with the Farm Journal Legacy Project, an initiative to help farm families pass their farm businesses to the next generation. The department will host a transition planning workshop for producers on Dec. 16 at the state’s Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg. Redding partnered with Andrew Weber, CEO of Farm Journal Media to promote the workshop. The six-hour session is being offered at no cost to attendees.

Redding said farmland preservation administrators, while focusing on getting the preservation deal, “should be every bit as determined” to help farm families plan their estate.

“That’s the most difficult thing to do as a farm family,” Redding told the approximately 25 county-level farmland preservation program directors attending the conference. “It has to be taken on in a very constructive way.”

“We’ve asked these families to step up and restrict their farms in perpetuity. We have to step up now and ask them to focus on their legacy,” Redding said.

In Jan. 2010, Pioneer Hi-Bred, a DuPont firm, announced it would partner with Farm Journal Media to support the Farm Journal Legacy Project in addressing succession planning for “the largest transfer of farm wealth in American history.”

CONFERENCES

Dec. 4, Exton, PA: Leasing Land for Farming, A Workshop for Landholders & Beginning Farmers. “In this workshop for landowners, land trusts, land managers and aspiring or expanding farmers, we will explore new options for leasing land for sustainable farming and learn about “Farm Futures”, a new program linking those with land to folks who want to grow food for human consumption.”
Jan. 13-15, Reisterstown, MD: We Are What We Eat: Community Health Through Sustainable Farming, sponsored by Future Harvest. “The Future Harvest-CASA Annual Conference is a highly anticipated annual gathering for hundreds of farmers, agricultural experts and researchers, marketers and food systems advocates who care about the sustainability of food and farming systems in the Chesapeake watershed.”

Author Wes Jackson

Feb. 3-5, State College, PA: Farming for the Future, annual conference of the Pa. Association for Sustainable Agriculture. Wes Jackson keynote speaker. “The annual Farming for the Future conference is PASA’s signature event and our main vehicle for community building. Widely regarded as the best of its kind in the East, this diverse event brings together an audience of over 2,000 farmers, processors, consumers, students, environmentalists, and business and community leaders annually.”
Feb. 23- 25, Shepardstown, WV: National Green Infrastructure Conference, sponsored by The Conservation Fund. “The Inaugural 2011 National Green Infrastructure Conference is a gathering of policy-makers, practitioners, and on-the-ground implementers of green infrastructure practices and design from around the country. This is the first official conference of the National Green Infrastructure Community of Practice.”
May 19 – 21, Harrisburg, PA: Pennsylvania Land Conservation Conference, sponsored by the Pa. Land Trust Association. See http://www.conserveland.org/conferences.

Preserving a farm in one evening

BY TOM DANIELS, Senior Contributing Editor

Imagine seeing a farm being preserved right before your eyes. No, I don’t mean the signing and shuffling of conservation easements, subordination agreements, and checks. I mean watching donors buy a quarter-acre, a half-acre, or an acre of a farm easement until the entire farm is preserved.

State Representative Scott Boyd, stocky, mustachioed with tie askew, is the auctioneer and behind him is a large map of the farm slated for preservation: a 60-acre farm owned by a member of the Old Order Amish community for which Lancaster County is famous. Boyd will not rest until he has begged, badgered, cajoled, and even sung enough money out of the audience. His tall, slender, and blonde assistant—a Vanna White look-alike—roams the dinner tables searching for willing donors to make a bid with a raised a hand or subtle nod. A full acre goes for $500, a half-acre is $250, and a quarter-acre is $125—all tax deductible.

The place to witness this exciting event is at the annual dinner of the Lancaster Farmland Trust. For each of the past five years, the preservation of a farm has highlighted the Trust’s gathering. The audience of 200 strong—mainly older adults in suits and dresses—come together to celebrate the Trust’s achievements. And they bring their checkbooks for a good cause.

At the 2010 annual dinner, the Trust raised more than $70,000 to preserve its 350^th farm, bringing the total number of preserved farms in the county to more than 1,100. Founded in 1988, the Lancaster Farmland Trust has preserved more than 20,000 acres, and has focused on working with Amish farmers who are reluctant to sell or donate an easement to the county government’s farmland preservation program. The Farmland Trust is accredited by the Land Trust Alliance and has preserved over 1,000 acres on 19 farms in the past year.

With public revenues under severe stress from the Great Recession of 2007-2009, it is refreshing to see the private sector raising funds by literally passing the hat at the farm preservation auction. This is community in action.

Keynote speaker Tom Curren of the Pew Charitable Trust primed the audience by noting that, “The land is never going to be less expensive than it is right now.”

The Trust’s annual dinner attracts people from far and wide. At my table was Scott Everett, long-time farmland preservation advocate from Michigan who was leading four county commissioners from Kent County, MI for meetings with Lancaster County farmers and officials about farmland preservation. Next to me was Matt Knepper, Director of the Lancaster County Agricultural Preserve Board, a recent winner of the Trust’s Spirit of Cooperation Award. And next to him was attorney Sam Goodley, Jr., who raises organic beef and goats on a preserved farm, and who also serves on the Farmland Trust’s Board of Trustees.

Wendell Berry once remarked that no farm was ever preserved in an air conditioned room. But the farm preservation auction in a large hotel dining room came pretty close. As the motto of the Lancaster Farmland Trust says, “We’re piecing together the landscape, one farm at a time.”

Tom Daniels is FPR’s senior contributing editor. He teaches planning and land conservation at the University of Pennsylvania and is author of When City & Country Collide and other books.

Why do we do what we do so well?

BY MIKE MCGRATH, Contributing Editor

Mike McGrath

After several articles suggesting why and how to grow our preservation programs, I wanted to try and provide some insights in answering the big question – WHY?

Why do people spend their lives trying to preserve and protect America’s vanishing farmland?  To those of us laboring in the vineyard it may come as a surprise that to many the answer is not obvious.  It is a question worth answering.  I won’t even try to cover all the reasons that we could give for preserving farms – just a few of the better ones.  Ones that we can use when we are asked about the hope which is within us!

Food has to remain one of the key reasons to preserve farms.  When I first heard about farmland preservation in the 70s it was couched in terms of the need to insure enough land to supply the nation’s food.  Bob Gray,  assistant to Congressman Jim Jeffords of Vermont during the Carter administration, spearheaded the National Agricultural Lands Study, published in 1980, that had as a central purpose understanding how land loss was affecting our ability to produce food.  But it wasn’t long before most people were downplaying the need to preserve land for food.  The globalization of agricultural production seemed to make that a moot point.  We could simply buy food from other places in the world if we ran short of land in America.  But people still had a hard time forgetting the Teamsters’ national strike that resulted in empty store shelves in New England.  That history was a reminder that food from far away was tenuous.  It drove the early interest in New England in protecting and preserving farms. Nationally, food security would come back later as one of the key reasons to preserve local farms.

Two changing tides are now pushing the issue to the forefront again.  First, the aftermath of 9/11.  Food system security looms large in the post-9/11 world.  We want to know where our food comes from, that it is safe, and that we are not putting our food supply in the hands of potentially unfriendly forces.  As I’ve said recently, “If you think people will kill each other over oil, watch what they do over dinner!”  The second major tide sweeping the country is the local/sustainable food movement.  It’s still a small movement, but more and more shoppers are looking to support local agriculture.  They want fresh food that tastes good!  Farmland preservation comes right behind that movement.  When Wal-Mart starts stressing the sustainable approach it’s time to pay attention!

Today, a cost-efficient government is at the top of the political agenda both at the national and state levels.  Farmland preservation can play a key role in holding down the costs attendant to uncontrolled sprawl.  Several years ago Delaware’s Secretary of Transportation said in a public meeting, “For every dollar we spend on land preservation, we can save ten dollars in transportation infrastructure.”  It was a bombshell!  Since then our analysis in Delaware has clearly demonstrated that sprawling development proportionally drives up capital costs and expenses for geographically sensitive services.  We can all be motivated, conservative and progressive, by public savings resulting from preserving farms and open space.

Those of us working with landowners every day are driven by the sincere intentions of these owners to give up much in order to see their land preserved.  Our programs to preserve farmland help these owners realize their dream of insuring that this land will remain forever in agriculture.  Our work is ennobled by the sincerity of these decisions that, more often than not, cost the owners hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.  In a world of six-figure bonuses, money-grubbing public figures and the “what’s-in-it-for-me” mentality, these farmers are an inspiration.  And the public responds positively to these motivations, as well.  I recall the comments of one of the attorneys that handled most of our closings here in Delaware in the early days (now a leading Delaware judge).  After one of the first closings he came to me and said, “Mike, I can’t believe it.  We just handed this couple more than a million dollars and I’m pretty sure that tomorrow they’re going to get up, go to work on the farm, and do the same things they did yesterday!  They were so happy to see this farm preserved – they didn’t even look at the check!  I love this work better than anything I’ve ever done as an attorney!”  Yes, it’s inspiring and makes it easy to come to work every day!

Finally, I wanted to mention something that motivates many of us to do this work – the love of the farm.  Now, this is hard to describe; but if you feel it, you’ll know what I mean.  There’s just something about a farm.  The growing crops, the animals grazing in the fields, the chickens clucking in the houses, the farmer going out at the break of dawn and climbing onto a tractor – all of it is, well, wonderful!  It doesn’t matter what part of the country, what the crops, what the animals – it’s just magical.  There is a beauty and peace and satisfaction in looking across a plowed field or waving grain or ripening vegetables and knowing it will be that way forever.  This feeling goes beyond the food, or the balance sheet, or the temporary pleasure of ownership – it is transcendent and touches some of the deepest chords in the human psyche.

We who have a hand in preserving these farms can reap a satisfaction that few people can ever feel in a mere “job.”  We are involved in keeping in this country one of the real touchstones of our civilization.  Daniel Webster once said in a speech, “When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.”  If he was correct, and I believe he was, then we who toil in the vineyard of preservation are the protectors of human civilization.

That should make it easy to get up tomorrow and go to work!

Mike McGrath is executive director of the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation.