County farmers taking lands into their own hands

California used to be the final destination for prospectors. Now, one Californian prospector is interested in Boone County.

The pressure on Boone County land hit home with vineyard-owner Tom Vernon when NRLL, a land prospecting company based in Irvine, Calif., recently wrote him a letter expressing interest in purchasing his land.

“I was kind of surprised,” Vernon said. “I’ve lived here for quite a while. I have never received an offer to buy the property from out of state. To me, it reinforced the notion that there is a lot of interest in developing Boone County.”

Vernon’s 18-acre property is located southwest of Columbia, where property values have skyrocketed.

Boone County farmers and ranchers are increasingly feeling pressured by development, and the Boone County Smart Growth Coalition is working to explain the options available to landowners.

The coalition, along with Sustainable Farms and Communities and the Greenbelt Land Trust of Mid-Missouri, will hold a workshop on June 20 to discuss how farmers and ranchers can control the destiny of their land.

Bob Wagner of American Farmland Trust will guide the two sessions. The Boone County Smart Growth Coalition is paying $2,500 to have Wagner teach mid-Missouri farmers about land rights and options. Wagner said he thinks it will be the first workshop of its type in Missouri.

Farmers and ranchers who want to protect their land have several options, including government programs and the creation of agricultural districts, which provide a group of owners more land protection than they had individually.

Some owners opt to sell development rights to their land. Wagner said this strategy is popular across the country and will be one of the main focuses of the workshops.

Development rights are separate from other property rights. They can be sold or donated to a land trust to protect their land from development. Non-profit land trusts, such as the Greenbelt Land Trust of Mid-Missouri, will promise to hold onto the development rights, even if the other property rights are sold.

“It can be a sort of a win-win situation for the farmer and the community,” said Ron Plain, MU professor of agricultural economics. “A lot of people like to have green space, and farmers want to hang onto their land. The development rights approach that the American Farmland Trust will talk about provides the opportunity to maintain more farmland rather than be developed. In some states, like Vermont, it has been very successful in targeting key farm locations for acquisition of development rights so the state can maintain a very rural feel.”

MU rural sociology professor Rex Campbell said programs such as this primarily appeal to farmers and ranchers who want their children to stay in the family business.

“There is a relatively small minority of people willing to sell off their development rights,” Campbell said. “There will be some but not the majority. Most farmers view the possibility of selling their land for development as a major source of funds for retirement or other purposes.”

There are other incentives, as well.

“Selling development rights greatly helps them by reducing tax costs,” Campbell said. “If it can only be used for farming, which would happen after you sell the develop rights, it has a very different appraisal rate.”

As more people move into rural Boone County, land prices are soaring and conflicts have arisen. The new rural residents sometimes complain about odor and dust coming from farms and ranches, and routine tasks such as moving large farm equipment along rural roads has become a problem, Plain said.

Despite the decrease in affordable property in the county, farmers continue to need more land as mechanization increases average farm sizes.

The need for farmers to expand their farms has been a national trend for more than 70 years.

“One of the greatest concerns is the availability of land,” Plain said. “That is the most common thing I hear from local producers.”

“Farmers need to expand their sizes, and they simply cannot compete with developers or a person who wants to build a home,” Campbell said.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average Missouri farm grew about 3 percent in acreage between 1997 and 2002, and Boone County farms matched that growth. Still, the number of farms in the county dropped by 47, from 1,435 to 1,388, during the same period. And the county lost 2,323 acres of farmland.

Boone County Southern District Commissioner Karen Miller said the commission started exploring options for maintaining green space after the county’s visioning process in 2000.

“When the county had the visioning process, one of the top things that came out of it was that people wanted to preserve the rural character of Boone County,” Miller said.

Many residents said in study circles that they like rural aspects of Boone County as well as the amenities found in cities. Miller said that Vernon asked the commission if it would be interested in bringing in the American Farmland Trust to discuss rural resident’s options.

“Because we have so many sensitive areas in the county, like the sinkhole plain area and Rock Bridge park, it makes sense to look at something like this to protect our assets but also look to meet the housing needs in the future,” Miller said.