Help Preserve Bradford County’s Heritage

Helping Preserve Bradford County’s Heritage:
Become a Member of the Farmland Preservation Board
By: Megan Rought, Farmland Preservation
ATTENTION ALL FARMERS!! I have a few questions for you. How important is being rural and having beautiful wide-open spaces around you?  How important is your farmland to you? How important is it that the next generation carries on your legacy and continues to farm the same piece of ground that you have farmed for the last however many years? Maybe it was even handed down through multiple generations to you, and you want to continue the tradition. How much do you despise to seeing the next piece of pristine farmland be turned into a parking lot, shopping center, or some other sort of development?  If you answered that you land is very important to you, that you hope one day someone will continue farming your land and that you hate when you see a prime piece of farmland developed, then I have a great opportunity for you!

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Bradford County is looking for farmers to serve on our Farmland Preservation Board. For those of you who have not heard of the Farmland Preservation Program before, the whole goal of this program is to preserve land specifically for farming purposes and to keep prime farmland from being developed into anything else. Development is happening all around us, but this program will help to slow that development in essential farming areas. Here’s a brief explanation about how this program works… each year we receive an allocated amount of funding from the state and county to preserve farmland. Individuals whose land is currently being farmed, whether it be by themselves or a neighbor, can send in an application to the Conservation District. This application will be used to rank farms to determine which farms have the highest potential for developmental, the best farming soil, etc... The farms that have the highest potential for developmental and prime farming soil will be ranked towards the top of the list because, again, the goal of this program is to keep prime farmland from being developed. After the ranking takes place, the top farm(s) will be presented with an offer of up $1,000/acre to preserve their farm. If the farm accepts the offer, then the preservation process proceeds. The main job of a Bradford County Farmland Preservation Board member is to approve farms to be preserved in Bradford County and to help make executive decisions to keep the Farmland Preservation program running smoothly in Bradford County. We are in desperate need of members.  Without them, this program may be hard to continue to sustain. The Farmland Preservation board meets only four times a year. They meet at the Stoll Natural Resource Center and meetings usually take anywhere from one to two hours. This program is a great opportunity to help keep our proud farming and open spaces heritage alive in our community. If you are interested in becoming apart of the Bradford County Farmland Preservation Board or would like more information on the Farmland Preservation Program, please reach out to Megan Rought at (570) 485-3130 or Megan.Brown@pa.nacdnet.net.