Florida communities have put in place a combination of planning tools to ensure the continuing presence of agriculture and prevent the development of productive farmland – the infrastructure for agriculture. Those tools recognize that viable agriculture is the backbone of maintaining a functioning network of agriculture, open space, and natural areas and that a range of strategies should be used to ensure the value of agricultural land. They also recognize that any program to maintain agriculture must address the current pressures on farming and that if the income generated from agriculture is not sufficient to sustain farming, or if development offers a higher return, agricultural land will be converted to development. Tools to preserve the viability of agriculture, many of which are described in this section and the Natural Systems Conservation chapter of the toolbox (for example, Land Acquisition), include techniques that use the development associated with growth to protect rural lands in ways that maintain the value of those lands remaining in agriculture (for example, the Purchase and Transfer of Development Rights Programs and Florida’s Rural Land Stewardship Program). Tools to sustain agriculture also include establishing programs that offer economic incentives to farmers, such as community-supported agriculture, creating a supportive local regulatory and business environment, and green payments, which provide another source of farm income in addition to crops. The common principles for planning for rural lands (highlighted in the Natural Systems Conservation chapter of this toolbox) also apply to planning for Florida’s agricultural lands.
Resources
Much of the information for the descriptions of farmland conservation tools is taken from materials published by the American Farmland Trust [www.farmlandinfo.org] and its publication, Saving American Farmland: What Works; Holding Our Common Ground – Protecting America’s Countryside, by Tom Daniels and Deborah Bowers [Island Press, 1997]; The Purchase of Development Rights, Agricultural Preservation and Other Land Use Policy Tools – The Pennsylvania Experience, by Tom Daniels [www.farmfoundation.org/1998NPPEC/daniels.pdf]. In Florida, information on planning tools to conserve farmland and on Florida’s agricultural industries is available from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services [www.doacs.state.fl.us]; 1000 Friends of Florida [www.1000fof.org]; the Conservation Trust for Florida [www.conserveflorida.org]; the Florida office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources and Conservation Service [www.fl.nrcs.usda.gov], which has field offices throughout the state; and the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences [www.ifas.ufl.edu] Agricultural Extension offices.
