PENNSYLVANIA State gets $3.9 million for farmland preservation

Preservation funding received a huge boost in the 2002 federal farm bill.
HARRISBURG (AP) -- Pennsylvania farmers will receive $3.9 million in federal dollars this year for farmland preservation, the most ever earmarked for the state, and the most in the country this year, state and federal officials said Thursday.
Of Pennsylvania's $3.9 million this year, nearly $2.5 million will go to the state Department of Agriculture, which plans to use the money to preserve 1,600 acres in 15 counties, including parts of five farms in Dauphin County, four in Northampton County, and three each in Berks, Centre and Lancaster counties.
County governments will receive the remaining $1.4 million to preserve about 700 acres.
Since the federal government began subsidizing state farmland preservation programs in 1996, Pennsylvania farms have garnered nearly $11 million, the most of any state.
Big boost
Federal farmland preservation funding received a huge boost in the 2002 federal farm bill, with nearly $600 million pledged through 2007, including $65 million this year, said Doug Lawrence, of the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Previously, the federal government allocated $35 million in the 1996 farm bill and another $17 million in 2000.
Overall, Pennsylvania, which began its farmland preservation program in 1988, leads the nation in the number of acres put into preservation.
With the addition of 50 farms comprising 5,339 acres approved Thursday at the Pennsylvania Agricultural Land Preservation Board meeting, 2,245 farms and 263,325 acres are now preserved. Those acres cost $552.5 million to preserve -- $2,098 per acre -- with preservation funds mostly coming from the state and counties.
Fighting sprawl
Farmland preservation is a program in which states, counties, or nonprofit organizations purchase the development rights to a farm or ranch, ensuring that the land will remain in agricultural use permanently, a tool that has been used against suburban sprawl.
Farmers in participating counties can get their farms appraised, both for development value and agricultural value. A county board then ranks each farm and makes recommendations to the state, which decides which farms to preserve.
A farmer who accepts the state's offer retains title to the land, and is paid -- either in a lump sum or structured over time -- based on the difference between development value and agricultural value.
The state's most active programs are in rural counties with exceptional farmland and high development pressure from the suburbs of Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Reading or Baltimore.
Lancaster, Berks and York counties each have protected more than 25,000 acres, and Chester, Lehigh and Adams counties have preserved more than 12,000, according to state statistics.