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Ohio is making progress in preserving farmland by passing agriculture-friendly legislation and moving forward with transfer development rights (TDRs) but more needs to be done.

That was the message of the fifth annual Farmland Preservation Summit held Dec. 7, 2005 in Reynoldsburg. Hosted by the Ohio Department of Agriculture, the meeting brought together farmers, landowners, local officials, residents and agency personnel to discuss the status of farmland preservation in Ohio.

Workshops focused on how to protect farmland and create local agricultural easement programs. Speakers included representatives from the County Commissioner’s Association of Ohio, Greater Ohio campaign, Ohio Preservation Alliance and American Farmland Trust.

Preserving large blocks of farmland is the best way to ensure farming’s viability, agricultural leaders said.

"All players in farmland preservation talked about what has been accomplished and where we’re going in the future," said Chris Henney, director of OFBF’s agriculture ecology programs, who attended the meeting.

Since 2002, 50 farms totaling 10,308 acres have been preserved in perpetuity as part of the Clean Ohio Agricultural Easement Purchase Program (AEPP), Henney said. In three years, AEPP has received more than 1,000 applications but only had enough funding for 50 farms, he said. The program has allocated $12.5 million so far.

Ohio has 82 agricultural easements on more than 15,000 acres in 33 counties and thousands more are held by local authorities, according to the American Farmland Trust.

Henney said there is interest in introducing legislation that would set guidelines for TDRs, which involves transferring the "rights to develop" from one area to another. The development rights of an area to be protected are transferred to community-designated areas that can accommodate growth through existing infrastructure.

Henney said TDRs are important because they involve landowners, developers and local officials working together to identify what land should be preserved for farmland and what land for development.

During the meeting, speakers also discussed the status of several pieces of agriculture-related legislation, including agriculture security areas, anhydrous ammonia penalties and minimum lot sizes. (See story on page 1.)

Some of the concerns that experts addressed included insufficient resources available for farmland protection, lack of sufficient coordination among existing agricultural programs and little opportunity for locally driven farmland protection policies.

"We are preserving some farmland but there is a lot more we can do. Local communities need to be more active in developing land use plans," Henney said.