NorCo Farmland Preservation Goal - 25%

Before last night's Northampton County Council meeting, Farmland Preservation Administrator Maria Bentzoni told me that my report yesterday was mostly right. A Lehigh County Ag Board member also gently corrected me on a few points. If they were grading me, I think I'd get a B or B-. That's pretty damn good for a bottom-feeding blogger. But I owe it to Maria and the rest of you to try once more to get it right. So let me fill you in on what Bentzoni herself told Council last night.

I just want to warn Maria that if she knocks me down to a C+, I'm suing. Rick Orloski is my lawyer, too, damn it!

1. Bentzoni estimates that there are approximately 900 farms in Northampton County. She'd like to preserve 25% of them. Thus far, the County has preserved 123 farms.

2. Although Northampton County beat Lancaster last year in state money received for farmland preservation, Lancaster still preserved more farmland. Over the last 23 year, the County has preserved over 12,000 acres. We still lag behind Lehigh County, which has preserved 21,000 acres. We're definitely catching up, but Lehigh still has us beat.

3. Northampton County started its farmland preservation program 23 years ago, when Jerry Seyfried was County Executive. He wanted to take advantage of a state bond that was providing matching funds. He and Ross Kahler are responsible for much of its original success. After Jerry left office, Bill Brackbill and Glenn Reibman were focused more on other things. Between 1990 and 2003, 30 farms and approximately 3,000 acres were preserved.

4. The appointment of Maria as a full-time farmland preservation administrator, combined with John Stoffa's half mill tax for open space, were real game changers. In the last ten years, 93 farms were preserved, consisting of 9,392 acres. That's three times as many as in the first ten years. In the words of the Lehigh County expert, Stoffa and Bentzoni both deserve credit. She is "creative" and is "working wonders with the program."

5. An example of this creativity is the Municipal Partnership Program, in which seven townships and the County pool their resources together to get higher matching grants from the state. That's how Northampton County was able to beat Lancaster in funding received in 2012. Thus program was so successful that last year, the County raked in $6.6 million from the state, in the middle of a recession, and was able to preserve all but one of about thirty applications. That just never happens but it happened in Northampton County.

6. Contrary to what I reported yesterday, more than one farm has applied for preservation this year. Bentzoni told council that there were 33 applications, and 20 of them are "qualified". "I was stunned," stated Bentzoni.

7. State funding for farmland preservation is not decreasing. Next year, it will climb from $9 million to $33 million. this is largely due to the heat Governor Corbett had to take over his first two budgets.

8. Contrary to what I would have guessed, one out of every seven jobs in Northampton County is agricultural or agricultural-related.

9. Bentzoni and the Lehigh County Ag Board member believe that now, when the real estate market is depressed, is the best time to buy development rights. This is because there is no development demand for the farms and farmers will take less money to sell their development rights.

10. Preserved farmland is still private land and the public has no automatic access to it for hunting, hiking, etc.

11. Preservation is permanent. But if a preserved farm can no longer be farmed because it is uneconomical or surrounded by so much development that it is logistically impossible to farm it economically, a land owner can ask to buy back the development rights. The county has not obligation to sell.

12. Bentzoni is a farming groupie, a farmie? She ended her presentation with a few photos called "the Faces of Farming." They show a few old guys in ripped T-shirts standing next to tractors and corn cobs and they really get to her.

Now I know there is still hope for me.