The Burlington County Farmland Preservation Program’s annual dedicated trust fund spending is now at $3.7 million for the year.
Two weeks ago, the program preserved five more farms, four of these farms being in the Pine Barrens.
“Whether in or out of the Pinelands, the public support for the program has remained strong throughout its 30 years of existence,” Farmland Preservation Coordinator Brian Wilson said.
In 2012, the Burlington County Farmland Preservation Program was ranked seventh on the national scale.
“I’m proud to be part of a program that’s been publicly supported and that year in and year out freeholders have held up as a priority,” he said.
Each year, the organization receives a new batch of farms. The 2015 batch consists of nine farms, seven of them being from the Pine Barrens area.
“The county administers the program based on the New Jersey agriculture retention and development act,” Wilson said.
This law has minimum standards for farms. The county can impose additional standards or criteria if need be, but Burlington County typically does not preserve farms that are less than 20 acres.
When preserving a farm, the program is only purchasing the developing rights to the farm, not the land as a whole. The process of preserving a farm takes about a year from the time of application to the time of closing the deal.
The county develops preservation funds using a portion of its dedicated property tax. As of this year, that tax has been boosted back to four cents for every $100 of assessed value of private property countywide and expects to generate nearly $18 million this year.
Folks in the organization enjoy not only financially aiding these people who poured so much time and devotion into their farms throughout their lives, but also interacting with them.
“We love meeting the landowners, learning their history and the sense of pride that they have in wanting to continue farm operations,” Wilson said.
Each year, the Burlington County Farmland Preservation Program sets out to achieve an acreage goal of 1,000 acres.
The preservations that were finalized on July 8 brought the total of farm acreage preserved in the past 30 years to more than 28,500 on 230 farms.
