Governments look to save disappearing farmlands

“I couldn’t hardly go by there without that gut-wrenching feeling in my stomach that good farmland was going to be torn up,” the Bradley County dairy farmer said. “I don’t think anyone could understand that feeling other than a farmer.”

Farmers across Tennessee and Georgia have seen encroachment on agricultural land in recent years, as suburban neighborhoods and commercial development replace crops and hay fields.

Local and state governments and private organizations are enacting policies and planning ahead now so they can protect farmlands.

But some farmers, like Bernard Sims, prefer to shift their land to development. Sims, a dairy farmer of 41 years who is using part of his Catoosa County land for a subdivision, said population pressures made him change his business model.

“Either I roll with it or I get rolled over,” he said. “If we roll back 35 or 40 years ago and close the gates, that’d be fine. But we couldn’t, and we can’t.”

While the bulk of development has occurred in Middle Tennessee, Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia, farmlands surrounding Chattanooga also feel the squeeze of residential development, agricultural experts say.

The amount of farmland in Tennessee and Georgia is declining, with each state losing 300,000 acres of farmland between 1999 and 2004, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures.

Between 1999 and 2004, Tennessee dropped from 89,000 farms to 85,000 farms, although most of those operations earned less than $10,000 in sales annually, according to USDA data.

During that same period, Georgia stayed level at 49,000 farms, although the number of the smallest and largest farms decreased while middle-tier farms increased, data show.

Two acres of farmland disappear in America every minute, and Tennessee and Georgia were among the 10 states experiencing the greatest prime farmland loss between 1992 and 1997, according to the American Farmland Trust, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

Heifner said he’ll tolerate the development around him and keep farming until he’s ready to retire. While he has had some offers to buy part of his land for residential development, he said he’ll look at diversifying his operation with other assets before he considers selling.

“When it’s been in your blood and your family for generations, you don’t just walk away,” he said.

Prime farmland often is the most valuable property for residential developers, since it has good soil without too many rocks and is easy to drain, said Rhedona Rose, director of public affairs with the Tennessee Farm Bureau.

Northwest Georgia has attracted substantial residential growth in the last decade, and the agricultural community has suffered, said Betts Berry, who raises beef cattle on the Walker-Catoosa county line.

Berry, who serves on Gov. Sonny Perdue’s agriculture advisory commission, is watching Farming Rock Meadows, a 110-acre, 270-home subdivision, go up across from part of her land. She said that while growth is inevitable, development such as neighboring Farming Rock Meadows threatens the pastoral quality of life she cultivated with her husband and two teenage sons on land her family has farmed for more than 140 years.

“It affects me personally because it’s right next door,” she said. “It affects all of us in agriculture because it’s pushing us out.”

Northwest Georgia’s appetite for housing has increased land values, which makes it harder for farmers to buy more land to keep their farms profitable, said Norman Edwards, University of Georgia extension agent for Walker County.

“You start paying taxes on it (and) it adds up pretty quickly,” he said.

Edwards said Georgia has two covenants that give farmers tax breaks. One reduces the percentage of property tax farmers have to pay, while another is based on soil productivity, he said.

“It is a little bit of help there for the farmers,” he said. “But it’s not going to keep all the farms intact forever.”

Tom Womack, spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Agriculture, said the state has a greenbelt program through county government that provides farm owners a property tax break based on the current use value of their land.

“That’s a very important program for many years for those people who want to continue keeping their property in forestland or farmland,” he said.

Some organizations, like the Land Trust for Tennessee, are encouraging farmers and other landowners to put their land in conservation easements, which limit future development of property while allowing landowners to retain ownership.

The Land Trust for Tennessee has protected more than 9,000 acres of viable farmland through conservation easements, and the group discusses conservation options with an average of 500 landowners annually.

Jeanie Nelson, president and executive director, said the organization is targeting the South Cumberland Plateau and Sequatchie Valley. She said educational sessions have let conservationists share options with landowners in an area that could grow greatly in the future.

“People have asked us to come and tell them about how this might work,” she said. “They’re smart to be thinking ahead to what they want their region to be like.”

The 2005-06 state budget, recently approved by the Tennessee General Assembly, includes $5 million for agricultural revitalization. The funds will be used for a system established nationwide to track disease, a livestock improvement program to promote investment in cattle production and farm diversification and promotion.

Womack said economic pressures facing farming are similar to those of many other industries.

“If we can provide Tennessee farmers the option of staying in the farm and being competitive in some other areas, that’s what we’re trying to do,” he said.