Farmland Preservation
The 2000 Appropriation Act provided funding to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) for establishing the Virginia Agricultural Vitality Program. The 2001 Session of the Virginia General Assembly added § 3.1-18.9 through § 3.1-18.12 to the Code of Virginia, which continued the Virginia Agricultural Vitality Program as the Office of Farmland Preservation (OFP). The powers and duties of the new OFP are parallel to the responsibilities of the Virginia Agricultural Vitality Program. Section 3.1-18.12 of the Code of Virginia also requires that the Commissioner submit a written report on the operation of OFP to the chairmen of the House Committee on Agriculture and the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources by December 1 of each year.
The following are the specific powers and duties of OFP, as established in § 3.1-18.9 of the Code of Virginia:
- To develop, in cooperation with the Department of Business Assistance, the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation, the American Farmland Trust, the Virginia Land Conservation Foundation, the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, the Virginia Association of Counties, and the Virginia Cooperative Extension, (i) model policies and practices that may be used as a guide to establish local purchase of development rights programs; (ii) criteria for the certification of local purchase of development rights programs as eligible to receive grants, loans or other funds from public sources; and (iii) methods and sources of revenue for allocating funds to localities to purchase agricultural conservation easements;
- To create programs to educate the public about the importance of farmland preservation to the quality of life in the Commonwealth;
- To provide technical, professional, and other assistance to farmers on matters related to farmland preservation; and
- To administer the Virginia Farm Link program established pursuant to § 3.1-18.11.
By establishing the Virginia Agricultural Vitality Program, and subsequently OFP, the General Assembly was attempting to address two issues that threaten the future viability of the Virginia agricultural sector. The first of these challenges is the aging farm population and the difficulty young farmers have when entering the profession. Statistics describing this problem are quite dramatic. The average Virginia farmer is 56 years of age. According to economists at Virginia Tech, more than 70 percent of Virginia farmland and a significant percentage of Virginia’s farm businesses are expected to be transitioned over the next 15 years from the current generation of farmers to either a new generation of farm businesses or to other businesses seeking to develop farmland for non-agricultural purposes.
The second challenge relates to the rapid loss of farm and forest land to developed uses in Virginia. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Resource Inventory, between 1992 and 1997 Virginia lost 23,260 acres per year of agricultural land to developed uses, and 44,640 acres per year of forest land to developed uses. Combined, this is almost 68,000 acres of working farm and forest land lost to developed uses per year during these five years. This fragmentation of the land base puts new pressures on farmers and foresters who now face a public that is increasingly divorced from agriculture, and who are not accustomed to the sights, sounds and smells associated with working farms and forests.