Cows Don’t Go to School (and Other Reasons to Preserve Farms)

One of the hardest things in government is getting people to buy into the idea that sometimes you have to spend tax money on something now to save more in the long run.

Hence, it can be a tough sell to argue that by investing in early childhood education you’ll have fewer high-risk youths heading for much more expensive prisons later, as a law enforcement group argues here.

Saving tax money over the long term is also a good reason to support preserving farmland. Before the housing slump, open space was disappearing from the Lehigh Valley at the rate of four square miles a year and will no doubt pick up again as the housing market returns.  

 “If that 100 acres turns into a housing development, that 100 acres is going to cost the community a lot more than if you keep the 100 acres as a farm,” said Jeff Zehr, director of farmland preservation for Lehigh County. With housing subdivisions comes the need for more public services such as road maintenance, police, snowplowing and, the most expensive, schools.

“I always like to say cows don’t go to school,” Zehr said.

By the time you read this, Lehigh County commissioners should have voted on a budget that allots $200,000 for farmland preservation.

That money can be parlayed with matching state funds, which altogether could mean about $1 million in 2013 to keep local farms from being paved over in favor of the latest townhouse development or strip mall.

The way it works is county representatives assess what the farm would be worth if the land was developed and what it is worth as a farm. The difference is what the county pays the farmer for the development rights. Lehigh County caps the price at $5,000 an acre but Northampton County has no cap.

Each farm seeking to sell its development rights is assessed on several criteria, including quality of the soil, location and size, and given a score. The better the score, the higher it is on the waiting list.

“If a farm came in from Lower Macungie Township that has beautiful limestone soil, that would probably rise to the top of the list,” Zehr said. “We just don’t get many applications from Lower Macungie and part of it is because the land values are so high there.”

Currently, there is a 37-acre farm along Weiss Road in Upper Macungie that is seventh on the list.

After a glorious day Sunday at the Lehigh County Open Gate Farms Tour, I asked Zehr how preservation efforts are going. He said as of Wednesday, the county has preserved 249 farms for a total of 20,628 acres. About 70 farms are on the county’s waiting list.

To date, Northampton County has 12,099 acres preserved on 118 farms and a backlog of 30 farms that the county expects to be able to preserve with $6.18 million in 2012 funds.  

Keeping land in farming is smart, not just because it keeps taxes down but also because it’s important to have locally grown sources of food, Zehr said. Farms are good habitat for some wildlife and essential to the character of the Lehigh Valley.

But you can’t have local farms without local farmers and the average age of farmers in Lehigh County is 57, he said. “I think there’s three times as many farmers over the age of 70 as under the age of 35 in Lehigh County.”

Enter The Seed Farm. Located in Upper Milford, The Seed Farm is an agricultural-type business incubator designed to teach people how to farm. 

Lehigh County and the Penn State Cooperative Extension collaborate with The Seed Farm, a nonprofit near Vera Cruz to run the program.

“Basically, we’re growing new farmers,” Zehr said. 

So Zehr is right -- cows don’t go to school but thank goodness fledgling farmers can.