REGIONAL ROUND TABLE ON AGRICULTURE AND FARMLAND PROTECTION

ROCHESTER, NY, MAY 29, 2003

New York State Department of Agriculture & Markets

Issue and Response Document

ISSUE

POSSIBLE POLICY RESPONSE
Administering Ag Districts  
-- Work to produce separate reports for county planning board and to NYS for district approval Option of producing an consolidated, single report for both audiences
-- Rolling ag district enrollment (requires full re-adoption of district) Amendment of recent state law to simplify this from and administrative point of view
-- NYS acceptance of digital mapping technology/GIS and required map submissions A&M communication with local officials encouraging digital submissions to the extent feasible with local resources
-- Public hearings for Ag District adoption very sparsely attended [A&M develop guidance for minimizing resource commitment to hearing where there is an evident lack of public interest]
Tax Policy  
-- Farmland requires less services than housing Reimburse localities for land classified as agricultural (funding source?), with funds dedicated to farmland protection
-- Penalty for conversion of land that has received an ag assessment is to small to discourage re-conversion [Change in state law on ag assessments]
-- Dedicate penalties to PDR or to providing retirements for farmers [Change in state law on ag assessments]
-- Assessors may abandon the use value standard when farmland is apparently idle (reverting to highest use standard) Change in ORPS policy extending time ag land must be vacant before its use classification changes
-- Excessive valuation of vacant ag buildings, sometimes leading to their wasteful destruction [Additional guidance for assessors from Albany]
-- School taxes remain a burden for farming operations that reach the farm school tax relief ceiling [Change in state law regarding farm school tax relief]
Farm Industry Economic Issues  
-- Farm profitability is the best means to keep land in agriculture [Assure that farming is profitable despite weather, competition from other areas, etc.]
-- New York State is less farm-friendly than neighboring states (R&D expenditures, reimbursement for predator damage) [Increased expenditure on programs to benefit farmers]
-- Farmers are over-regulated [Additional exceptions to general rules on the environment, farm labor, etc. for farmers]
-- N.Y. farmers suffer from unfair competition from Canada [Restrict access for Canadian goods; improve U.S. access to Canadian markets]
-- The agricultural industry is frequently seen as out of the scope of local industrial development efforts [IDAs directed by their county legislatures to target agriculture infrastructure and processing projects]
-- Lack of focus on prime agricultural land puts industry survival at risk [Priority for prime land in farmland protection and agricultural economic development programs; local regulation discouraging development of prime lands]
-- Siting of Empire Zones in Agricultural Districts [Change in state laws or policies to prevent this; establishment of Agricultural Empire Zones with provisions that are explicitly friendly to maintaining agriculture]
-- Government programs encourage surplus commodity output rather than the processing of products already offered [Greater emphasis on attracting downstream investment in state programs]
-- Farmers lack retirement programs and therefore convert their land equity by sales to developers at retirement Take half the revenue from local land taxes to fund a farmers’ retirement fund; dedicate some of the funds that farmers receive from selling development rights, or a mortgage transfer tax to this purpose
Farmland Protection Programs  
-- Some farmers resist the permanence of sale of development rights for all times Develop a program with 10 -20 year deed restrictions, funded from a real estate transfer tax or other funding source
-- Areas where ag and non-ag land values for whole parcels are similar are poor targets for PDR PDR program focused on frontage lots to protect the most vulnerable open land
-- Planning is reactive, waiting for a proposal to decide whether the use in question meets long-term local objectives [Comprehensive planning at the local level that takes protecting the agricultural industry specifically under consideration]
Local Support for Agriculture and Farmland Protection  
-- Newcomers to the countryside, and the public in general, has little understanding of agriculture Support for agriculture in the classroom and agricultural education programs in the public schools; work with county tourism departments on farm tour programs; expose students in teacher training programs to agriculture through farm visit and agricultural industry understanding programs
-- Resistance to animal agriculture Additional public funding for on-farm methane digesters
-- Need to engage non-farm rural landowners in maintaining agriculture Tax benefits for keeping their land in agricultural production

Note: The list of issues in the first column an effort to capture all specific concerns raised during the discussion. There is no attempt to rank or gauge the breadth of concern about particular issues or support for accompanying proposals within the group. It is possible that a given proposal had only the support of the person who voiced it. Many issues were raised without accompanying policy proposals. In such cases, the implied policy response is given in brackets ( [ ] ).