RD424 - Office of Farmland Preservation Annual Report - December 1, 2014


Executive Summary:
This report presents the primary accomplishments of the Office of Farmland Preservation (OFP) for the period of December 1, 2013 - December 1, 2014.

Significant accomplishments for this reporting period include the following:

• OFP continued to work with key agriculture, conservation and government partners to refine the allocation process for state matching funds to local purchase of development rights (PDR) programs;

• OFP allocated $1.03 million in new state matching funds to eight local PDR programs;

• OFP worked with local PDR programs to permanently preserve 1,256 acres of working farm and forest lands in eight localities. OFP provided $1 million of the $3.96 million in total purchase price and transaction costs paid for these easements;

• OFP delivered ten workshops/presentations to a wide variety of audiences. Topics included OFP, PDR programs, farmland preservation tools and techniques, conservation easements, use value assessment, farmland loss data, the Virginia Farm Link program and the Century Farm program;

• OFP continued to oversee the Virginia Farm Link database. For the period of December 1, 2013- December 1, 2014, 43 active farm owners received 357 individual requests from 129 active farm seekers interested in discussing various transition options;

• OFP allocated $15,000 to Virginia Cooperative Extension in December 2013 for four workshops designed to help farm families and their service providers transition farms and farming operations to the next generation; and

• OFP continued collaboration with the Virginia Farm Bureau Young Farmers on the development of the Certified Farm Seekers (CFS) Program. For the period of December 1, 2013- December 1, 2014, eight farm seekers were certified and another 30 farm seekers submitted applications for the program.