To Save Farms For Farming
East Hampton Town is discussing using the community preservation fund to further protect farmland by purchasing “enhanced development rights” on land that has already been preserved for farming.
Under the town’s purchase of development rights program, farmland remains in private hands, but the town pays for the right to limit its use to farming, which could include a variety of activities defined under state law, from tree nurseries to horse farms. And in some cases, although the original program was intended to help support traditional agricultural endeavors, preserved farmland becomes nothing more than a large lawn.
The purchase of an enhanced easement could allow the town to impose further restrictions on what could take place on the land, limiting it to traditional row crop farming, for instance.
East Hampton Town had first looked to Southampton, which has already adopted an enhanced development rights purchase program that prohibits certain things across the board, such as using the preserved farmland for sod fields, nurseries, wineries, or horse farms. But members of the East Hampton Town Agricultural Advisory Committee have recommended a different system that they say would allow farmers the flexibility needed for profitability.
During the Dec. 6 East Hampton Town Board work session, Alex Balsam, a farmer and attorney who is chairman of the committee, suggested that the town evaluate sites on a case-by-case basis and craft individual agreements with landowners regarding future use of their land.
The agricultural advisory committee wants farmers “to have the ability to adapt their businesses and stay economically viable,” Mr. Balsam said during the work session. “We do not want to restrict certain types of agriculture in favor of others. Farmers need flexibility in their model if they are going to survive. There is not a one-size-fits-all answer here.”
The committee is recommending that the town impose what it called four “backbone” provisions when enhanced development rights are purchased. They include a provision that the land cannot remain fallow for more than two years — if it is unused for that period, the town would be able to offer it for lease to a different farmer. If sold, the property would have to go to another bona fide farmer, and the sale price would be limited to the value of the underlying land, adjusted for inflation.
The enhanced easements as recommended by the committee would mirror Southampton’s rules in that they would apply to 80 percent of the parcel of land. The remaining 20 percent could still be used in an alternate way that still complies with zoning rules.
According to Melanie Cirillo, the Peconic Land Trust’s director of conservation planning, Southampton Town has purchased enhanced easements on six parcels since the rules were adopted in May 2014. The Peconic Land Trust worked with Southampton on its language and is working with East Hampton on its own rules for enhanced easements. The trust, in fact, completed such a purchase with Southampton, buying the 33-acre Danilevsky property later in 2014, selling the development rights and enhanced easements, and then selling the land to qualified farmers.
“It is okay that [East Hampton] allow more flexibility for the farmers because you do have a smaller amount of farmland available — 1,400 acres left, and in Southampton there’s about 6,500 acres,” Ms. Cirillo said on Tuesday. “So the farmers that are left want to keep all their options open. They want to have the ability to have viable farming on their property and not be so limited.”
According to an April 2015 letter from the East Hampton Town Agricultural Advisory Committee to the town board, one local farmer, Peter Dankowski of Wainscott, who has already sold the development rights to his farmland, has stepped forward with interest in selling additional easements on two of his parcels on Wainscott Hollow Road.
He may well be the first to take advantage of an enhanced development rights program, should East Hampton adopt it.
The committee’s recommendations appeared to be well received by the town board.
“I appreciate that you want to keep this general and open to future adaptation,” Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc said. “I also appreciate looking at this on a case-by-case basis. It’s sort of different from the general operating procedure.”
“I’m comfortable with the four backbone provisions,” Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said.
East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell brought up the idea of going so far as to use the preservation fund to buy the farmland outright and then lease it to the farmers, but Mr. Balsam and Ms. Cirillo both said farmers would object to that idea.
“It’s very important that farmers are the best stewards of the land. They use it for collateral, they use it to invest in their property,” Ms. Cirillo said. “You can’t do that if you only rent the land.”
When it came to a discussion of the next steps, Mr. Cantwell said “the ball is in our court,” and Michael Sendlenski, the town attorney, said he would work with the town board and the community preservation fund committee to draft language for East Hampton’s version of the policy.