Farmers fear erosion in land-rights payment program

Crown Farm annexation case dealt setback to farmland preservation efforts, some say

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Brian Lewis⁄The Gazette Richard Biggs checks an irrigation in a strawberry patch at his Rock Hill Orchard in upper Montgomery County.

The strawberries that grow plump and juicy on his Rock Hill Orchard in upper Montgomery County will ripen in a few weeks, he said, helped by the recent rainfall.

As the seasons become drier, and as his farm ages, Biggs wants to invest in new irrigation units, plus another tractor and building repairs.

This year he’ll have the money to buy them, he said, from selling the majority of his transferable development rights, a county program that compensates farmers for keeping rural open space in a time of development.

While Biggs has already profited in the past year from his sale, other county farmers lost an opportunity last week to cash in on up to $11 million worth of TDRs at a major development site, the Crown Farm near Gaithersburg where a major housing development is planned.

The County Council, which approved an annexation request for the farm, decided to ignore the TDRs that the developer would have to buy on the Crown property.

Instead, the developer must donate $2 million to an agricultural easement plan and give the county a much-needed high school site, the council said.

The decision comes as a major blow to the farm preservation program, which could take years to recoup, experts say.

The money given to easement affects fewer farmers, and TDR prices are likely to plummet, negatively impacting land equity across the county’s protected agricultural reserve.

‘‘Farmers are disappointed,” said Wade Butler, co-owner of Butler’s Orchard and chairman of the county’s agricultural advisory committee. ‘‘It’s certainly a setback and a lost opportunity.”

When the county carved out the agricultural reserve in 1981, a stringent zoning region, farmers were given TDRs

to help compensate them for not being able to build many houses on their land.

They can sell those rights — which are fetching up to $40,000 each — to developers who want to build in designated ‘‘receiving areas,” or more urban parts of the county.

Crown Farm, if it were developed under county regulations, is the site of 282 TDRs that the developer would have to buy from area farmers.

That significantly large ‘‘receiving site” was lost, or overlooked, at a time when opportunities to replace them around the county are slim, said John Zawitoski, director of planning for the county’s farm preservation programs.

‘‘That’s one of the last large tracts,” he said. ‘‘It’s going to take years to make up the capacity.”

When demand plunges, he added, so do prices.

A 2005 study by the county’s research department found that 900 to 1,300 additional TDRs on ‘‘receiving sites” are needed to keep the program in balance.

With the Crown Farm loss, the program is even further behind.

The issue was at the center of a long and contentious debate during a County Council meeting last week, where calculations of the total amount of applicable TDRs on the property were muddied by a very preliminary plan.

Council members said the issue was too complex to fully tackle.

Some say the $2 million donation to the agricultural easement program will equally support farmers.

The county uses that money to buy land that farmers want to sell and preserve it as open space.

But far fewer farmers are a part of this easement program, said Jeremy Criss, the county’s agricultural services manager, taking away potential benefits from a broader group that own TDRs.

Developers buy TDRs directly from farmers without county involvement.

‘‘From an economic perspective, we would like to have those private negotiations continue,” Criss said.

While Butler says that the council decision was a setback, he recognizes that officials are dealing with many pressing needs.

The school site is a significant plus for the county, he said, and farmers understand that.

But he doesn’t want officials to lose sight of the program, which can have tremendous benefits for farmers like Biggs. Biggs’ 135-acre orchard north of Damascus is filling with cherries, strawberries and patches of flowers, and he is looking to upgrade equipment soon.

Biggs sold his TDRs in the past year, when development in Clarksburg made them a competitive item.

‘‘We want to remind [officials] that this program has been around 25 years, and receiving sites come along very grudgingly,” Butler said. ‘‘We’re not giving up.”