Daily News

By Diane Ducharme
N.C. Cooperative Extension Service

One subject surfacing lately is the preservation of farmland. The primary economic justification for farmland protection is the amenities, primarily open spaces and visual, that these lands provide to the community.Assigning a dollar value to these amenities is not an easy task, but a task that would give landowners one more tool to work with to protect land from development.There is also a personal value attached to the land and the desire for its continuance with family.Widespread awareness of the value of these amenities underscores growing interest in developing protection measures. There are preservation tools for individuals who want to save farmland:• Present Use-value taxation. As land values rise, property taxes rise because they are based on assessed true-market value. "Horticultural land" is land that is a part of a horticultural unit that is actively engaged in the commercial production or growing of fruits or vegetables or nursery or floral products under a sound management program; and consists of at least five acres that are in actual production and that, for the three years, have at least produced an average gross income of $1,000.• Voluntary Agricultural districts. Under North Carolina’s use value taxation program, qualifying land used in agriculture, forestry and horticulture is taxed on its use value rather than its fair market value.

The General Assembly authorized counties to implement voluntary agricultural district programs through adoption of appropriate county ordinances. In rapidly urbanizing counties, this program may result in substantially reduced property taxes.

It serves chiefly to give farming areas in counties that have adopted ordinances some additional recognition, a voice in county government, waiver of water and sewer assessments in some counties, a way to address condemnations of agricultural land, and record notice to buyers of property in proximity to an agricultural district.

Participation in the program is strictly voluntary, but may give farmers a chance to be eligible for additional programs tied to funding. Application for participation in the program is made to the tax office in the county where the property is located.• Purchase of development rights. When farmers sell PDRs, they accept a deed restriction against non-farm development in the future in return for the cash value of the development rights today, the difference between the farm value and the development value.• Conservation Easements. Conservation easements are deed restrictions designed to ensure that farmland remains in agriculture use either for a fixed term or in perpetuity. A PDR program is a local government program designed to use tax, grant or donated funds to purchase conservation easements on agricultural property. (more…)

 Email This Post  Print This Post

This entry was posted on Monday, October 30th, 2006 at 5:41 am and is filed under Daily News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.