Farmland

WHILE IT doesn't stop the economic pressures for development, a new Maryland law will help keep more farmland from turning into housing subdivisions and shopping centers. Owners of farms and other open space who donate land for preservation easements now can get a state income tax credit up to $5,000 over the next 15 years, with a total limit of $75,000. Maryland's 25-year-old farmland program has placed nearly 190,000 acres under protection, mostly by purchasing easements. The price is usually the difference between development value and farmland value.

MARYLAND HAS been a pioneer in farmland preservation. Its 146,500 acres protected since 1980 is more than double any other state, and its $128 million investment in agricultural easements is one-fifth of the U.S. total.So a story last week that Howard County was running out of money to continue purchasing development rights from farmers set off alarm bells. That, coupled with reports out of Carroll County about legislative mischief to ease development of farmland, was enough to stir speculation that Maryland was about to lead farm preservation on its way down.

VIRGINIA P. CLAGETT has been engaged in a 23-year battle to preserve farmland in southern Anne Arundel County.The Democratic state delegate knows the economic and development forces that would convert fields into subdivisions and shopping centers (and which she battled in her first political campaign in 1974) are still at work. But now they are much stronger.Like many of her South County neighbors, she worries that the county's new General Development Plan won't sufficiently protect the remaining farms.

Dirt-cheap doesn't apply to the soil of Maryland farms. The state has the fifth most expensive farmland in the country, and its value is increasing at more than double the national rate, according to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture survey. The average price of an acre of Maryland farmland, including farm buildings, rose 6.1 percent last year, to $3,500. This compares with a gain of 2.9 percent for the continental states as a whole, where the average acre of farmland was valued at $1,050.

Dairy cows and other livestock in Maryland graze on the sixth-most-expensive farmland in the country, according to a survey released last week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Fueled by the red-hot market for development, the average price of an acre of Maryland farmland, including farm buildings, is up nearly 38.6 percent from last year, to $7,900 an acre. That increase compares with a rise of 11 percent for farmland in the contiguous 48 states - the biggest gain in nearly a quarter of a century.

The corn yields are higher in Iowa and some might argue that the peaches are better in Georgia, but when it comes to producing the most money from each acre of land farmed, not many states top Maryland.Maryland ranks eighth in the nation in terms of the value of crops produced per acre of land, according to a recent survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture."Farm gate sales, the average revenue for each acre of farmland, is $733 in Maryland," said Ray Garibay, chief statistician with the Maryland Agricultural Statistics Service.

In a rare show of solidarity, factions that traditionally differ over how to shape Maryland's landscape are expected to call today for state and local governments to sharpen efforts to save the state's dwindling supply of prime farmland.The privately funded Chesapeake Farms for the Future Board -- made up of homebuilders, farmers, government officials and environmentalists -- is urging the state to direct its resources toward saving the most valuable and threatened land.In a 117-page report being issued in Annapolis today, the group is also asking counties to follow a land preservation model that demands strict zoning of agricultural land, clustering houses and acquiring farmers' development rights.

Maryland will receive $200 million in federal funds to convert up to 100,000 acres of farms and other land to forests and wetlands in an effort to help preserve the Chesapeake Bay, a spokeswoman for Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest said yesterday.Taking erosion control to an innovative next step, the bay plan will be a pilot project. It is the first in the nation under the U.S. Agriculture Department's new Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, said Cathy Bassett, press secretary for the 1st District Republican.

Two Carroll commissioners have reached a compromise on revising a contentious zoning ordinance that led the Maryland Department of Planning to threaten to cut the county's coveted land preservation funds. Commissioners Donald I. Dell and Julia Walsh Gouge said their proposed revisions, particularly one calling for clustering building lots on the least productive or untillable parcels of farmland, should be palatable to the state. Clustering building lots would leave more space open, and directing construction to untillable land would reduce the number of lots available for development.

For 22 years the state has saved farmland - more than 200,000 acres of it - by paying owners not to develop. Now, some who own farms that were protected in the program's early years have visions of a cash crop of houses. They are eyeing a provision in their contracts with the state that offers the possibility of buying their way out of the preservation deal after 25 years. Such escape attempts would be fraught with bureaucratic and financial hurdles. But the idea is tempting, because land values have skyrocketed.