Land trusts can now apply for funding to protect working farms without first having to partner with municipalities or counties.
The legislative change removes a bureaucratic roadblock in New York”™s Farmland Protection Program.
“This legislation will help farmers protect their land more quickly, while ensuring transparency and accountability in the process,” said David Haight, New York director for the American Farmland Trust.
The state”™s Farmland Protection Program provides funding for “purchase of development rights” projects. This voluntary approach pays farmland owners to convey a permanent deed restriction called an agricultural conservation easement that permanently ends the right to develop the property and limits the use of enrolled properties to agriculture and other compatible uses. Participating farms remain in private ownership and on the tax rolls.
As of 2009, the program has awarded more than $173 million to protect more than 73,000 acres of land on more than 300 farms. The program receives its funding from New York State”™s Environmental Protection Fund, a dedicated fund for more than 30 programs that protect the state”™s air, water and land resources.
Dutchess County is showing how the partnership can work in protecting agricultural land. The county announced June 24 that it was protecting 80 additional acres of agricultural land in the town of Red Hook as part of a matching grant program that ties state and county funding together to push farmland protection initiatives.
“Success comes from great partnerships,” said County Executive William R. Steinhaus, regarding the protection of an additional 80 acres on Mead Orchards in Red Hook. He said the purchase of the conservation easement was possible through a partnership with the Mead family, which runs a roughly 200-acre pick-your-own fruit farm and roadside market, the state Department of Agriculture and Markets, Dutchess County, Â the town of Red Hook and the Dutchess Land Conservancy.
The state paid $428,000 or 75 percent of the cost to buy the conservation easement.
The purchases of conservation easements and development rights are designed to have broad positive effects on agriculture and tourism, while ensuring that valuable and productive farmland is not transformed through development into other uses.
