GROWING A CROP OF NEW FARMERS Mike McCagg ccSCOOP News Ever wish you had a herd of cattle grazing outside your window? How about pristine rows of corn daily inching closer to the summer sky?   The Columbia Land Conservancy may have a way to fulfill your desire. CLC is formalizing a program that matches landowners with would-be farmers in an effort to reverse the trend of decreasing farms in the county and address the increasing demand for locally grown products.

Tom Crowell, Director of Outreach and Resource Development, said the CLC is creating a database of landowners and farmers and would-be farmers seeking land, in an effort to formalize a service it has provided in the past. "We have been doing this informally . . . and it occurred to us that this is something that we can do better and provide on a more formalized basis," Crowell said.

The database will include information from landowners on:

• Who has land available to be farmed? How much land do they have?
• Where that land is?
• What is the land is suitable for? For example, can corn be grown, is it better used as an orchard, or is it better suited as a hay field?
• What kind of infrastructure is there?

Information in the database from potential farmers will include:

• What do they want to farm?
• How much land do they need?
• Where do they live or want to operate from?

“Obviously, you want the land to be near where the farmer operates or it won’t work,” said Crowell.

Potential farmers or landowners with land to be farmed can call the Land Conservancy at 392-5251 or email Marissa Codey, Senior Land Protection Manager at the Columbia Land Conservancy: marissa@clctrust.org.

Codey said on Wednesday that the database presently consists of 20 or 30 land owners and an equal number of would-be farmers. However, she suspects there is many more of each in the county who are unaware of the database and will participate when they learn about it.

Farmer Hugh Williams said that utilizing leased land just makes sense. “I am not sure that owning farmland is a good investment for farmers. If you have are independently wealthy, then, yes . . . but otherwise, it’s not an appropriate thing,” he said. Williams, of Philmont, has been farming since 1961, for the past fifteen years in Columbia County. He primarily grows fruit and vegetables solely on land that he leases from a landowner who had sought conservation easements from the Columbia Land Conservancy.

Crowell explained that the easements limit the future uses of the land, and in some cases, landowners may qualify for some state funds through the farmland protection grant program. The program compensates certain landowners for the potential loss of income they might have generated had they developed their land. He said that the Conservancy currently has conservation easements on 20,000 acres in the county—“a lot of which is good land” and could potentially be farmed if the landowners agreed and there were a suitable potential farmer.

Matching landowners with potential farmers is a win-win situation, Crowell noted. The landowner can potentially get a reduction in the tax assessment on his or her property if the land is being used for an agricultural purpose; the farmer is able to practice or expand his or her farming activities without having to own land.

Lease agreements between farmers and landowners can vary greatly. Some agreements, Crowell said, allow the farmers free use of the land in exchange for maintaining the land appropriately. The landowners also benefit by paying less in taxes because of the agricultural property tax exemption. Other landowners charge the farmer a monthly lease fee or a percentage of their crop sales. Crowell said CLC is still looking to answer several questions on the financial side of the arrangement so it can provide better guidance to landowners and farmers—specifically should pay for improvements to the land and what assurances of future use should be provided to farmers who invest in a property for such things as a fence.

Regardless of the answers to those questions, Crowell, Williams, and Codey agree that lease arrangements have worked traditionally because both the landowners and farmers care for the land and want to see open space and a way of life preserved.