Money for farm preservation contingent on meeting new rules

(Baltimore Examiner) - Harford County boasts the third-best agricultural preservation program in the state and one of the top 10 in the nation, but officials fretted recently over whether they could meet strict new guidelines to keep state funding.
Under the 2006 Agricultural Stewardship Act, counties that want to continue receiving state money to preserve farms from development have to designate priority preservation areas and present detailed plans for saving 80 percent of the undeveloped land within them.
But Harford was struggling to choose an area that has the right balance of preserved land and farms that can be saved — especially given the decline in home sales that pay for most agricultural preservation programs. Continued

Photo: Broccoli, Canon EOS 5D