The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Saving Farmlands

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. Robert MacNeil is off tonight. Suffolk County, New York -- seventy-five miles out Long Island from New York City -- made some agricultural history a few days ago. It paid two farmers more than $600,000 just to make sure their farms were forever preserved as farms. The Suffolks say the farmlands program is the first of its kind in the country, but there may soon be others because there is growing concern about how the nation`s best farmland is disappearing under pavement, housing developments, shopping centers and other products of people and progress. Nationally, five million acres a year are developed out of existence -- over the past ten years enough land to make up an area as big as the State of Nebraska.

There is a move in Congress for some kind of federal action. A House subcommittee held hearings over the weekend in Iowa and Minnesota, in fact, on one aspect of the problem. Tonight, a look at the options and the problems involved in trying to halt the disappearance of the nation`s farmland. And the best place to begin is with the Suffolk County story. Suffolk, on Eastern Long Island, has a population of 1.3 million people. It`s one of the nation`s ten fastest growing counties. Since 1950 its farmland has been reduced by half. But there are 56,000 acres remaining in cultivation; that`s thirteen percent of the entire county, and enough to still make it New York State`s number one agricultural county.

The average farm in Suffolk is between one hundred and two hundred acres and the dominant crop is potatoes. This land is part of 131 acres of potato fields that will remain potato fields, one of the two farms Suffolk County purchased the development rights to September 29. $357,000 went to the Talmage family, headed by Nathaniel Talmage, age 75. His grandfather began farming this land in 1882. The chances of continuing the family farming tradition seemed bleak until the county paid to preserve the land.

NATHANIAL TALMAGE, Baiting Hollow, New York: Ten years ago, the way things seemed to be going with the disappearance of farm ownership of land here, you couldn`t encourage the younger generation, a grandson Bill, to figure on farming here on the Island. It looked as though the end was approaching. And now we can look forward with confidence that this is still our farm and we can still farm it. And it`s a wonderful place to bring up children, too, as you can see from some of these. (Laughing.)

We feel that there`s countless acres of land throughout the United States where houses can be built very well. On prime farmland there`s a limited amount, and once it`s paved over it`s gone. And with the increasing population, food is always going to be needed; and to lose any such land would be just almost criminal, it seems like.

JOHN TALMAGE, Baiting Hollow, New York: If all the farmland on Long Island disappeared there`d still be productive capacity, enough in the United States to feed our population. But also one might ask the question, is there some safety in having our production spread around a little bit. For instance, if something happened to our transportation system, either manmade problems such as strikes, or catastrophes of one sort or another, there are a lot of people living on Long Island and having the reserve of the food production -- at least some food production on Long Island -- should add a little safety to living here. And one of the things that having nearby farmland gives us is the opportunity to get some fresh produce. And if it`s all produced in California you`re pretty much committed to eating a good share of your fruits and vegetables in processed forms, which are fine but I think all of us like to have some in-season fresh produce.

NATHANIAL TALMAGE: Another important reason why this saving of farmland is so important, we use a lot of water for irrigation; nevertheless, we use only about a quarter of the available water on this farm for our own purposes. This reserve is available for other purposes and other uses, in the village and eventually maybe to be pumped to other areas of Long Island. If this were all paved over, Eastern Long Island would be faced with a serious water problem, as they are getting to be faced with in Nassau County and other places where the population is so dense.

LEHRER: The quaint charm and the open space of Eastern Long Island appeal to tourists and weekend residents from the city. Tourism is Suffolk County`s second largest industry, after agriculture. Farmers believe that if farms become a relic of the past much of the appeal of the country for tourists will be gone, and so will the fresh vegetables.

TOM HALSEY, Water Mill, New York: This is a Katadhin variety potato. It`s the variety that we grow primarily here on Long Island because of its high yield and its fine quality for both boiling and baking.

LEHRER: Tom Halsey has over one hundred acres in potatoes on land that`s been in his family since 1740. Inheritance taxes which might have forced him to sell much of his land to developers have instead motivated him to support the new law saving farmland.

HALSEY: Inheritance taxes, as you probably are aware, are based on the highest and best use of the land. The highest and best use of this land is for developing, unfortunately. I would like to use it for agriculture forever, but the highest and best use is for developing. Now, development of the land relates directly to its right to be developed. If the right to be developed can be severed from the land, then inheritance taxes will be based on agriculture instead of development value. Now, the farmer -- or the landowner -- cannot afford to sever that right without being compensated for it. So the county is proposing compensating them for that right by paying them for the right. Now obviously, since we`re talking about two rights, development right and agricultural use value right, the county will only be paying for part of the value. In other words, the county will not be paying for the entire value of the farm, they will be paying for just the development value. And the agricultural value will remain in the hands of the farmer.

CAROL BUCKLAND, Reporter: Could you give me comparison figures, say, on your land here -- how much would an acre of this land be worth in terms of agricultural rights and how much in terms of development rights?

HALSEY: Well, right now the value of this land as a bulk sale to a developer would be about $6,000 an acre. I feel that the value of this land for farming is somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000 an acre. Consequently I have bid in the development right plan my acreage to sell development rights in the neighborhood of $4,500.

BUCKLAND: For how long does the county buy the development rights?

HALSEY: The county buys them forever. Once the county buys these development rights they are sterilized forever, with the exception that the regulations permit a county-wide referendum to return the development rights to the land or to use them for some other purpose.

BUCKLAND: Do you sense any loss of control of what was your land you owned, you could do with it?

HALSEY: Well, to be sure there is a loss of control of what you can do with the land. But if I have to sell it to a developer to pay the inheritance taxes upon my mother`s death, or my son have to sell the land upon my death, certainly he would have lost control then. I have never had any intention of developing this farm, and I certainly have no plans for it in the future. So as far as I`m concerned the development rights are nothing but a burden to me at this point, and if I can get rid of the development rights without jeopardizing the value that my family has worked for for so many years -- in other words, if I can get at least a reasonable return for those development rights -- I will be very anxious to void my farm of the potential for development.

LEHRER: That voice asking the questions belongs to our agricultural reporter, Carol Buckland. There are many other farmers in Suffolk County like Tom Halsey who want to join the Talmages in selling off their development rights. The program has just begun, the county plans to eventually spend $55 million to buy the rights on 15,000 acres before it`s through. The man behind the Suffolk program is the county`s Chief Executive, John Klein. Mr. Klein, we`ve heard what the farmers have to say. From the county government`s perspective, why was it so important to save the county`s farmlands?

JOHN V. N. KLEIN: The farms are an economic resource, they`re an environmental resource and they`re a recreational resource. Suffolk County, with the second largest population within the state among suburban counties, is nonetheless the largest agricultural producing county in the State of New York, with about $70 million worth of economic turnover. In addition to that, the fifty-some-odd thousand acres of open space in agriculture is an enormous environmental resource which speaks for itself.

Oddly enough, in an urbanized society, the utilization of that farmland for open space is also a recreational resource for Suffolk County, and people actually enjoy taking their children and their families to those natural resources to view them, to see a farm in active agricultural production. But probably the most important ancillary benefit from this program, in addition to preserving agriculture as an industry, is the fact that it is a hedge against total suburbanization of our region as suburban sprawl moves from metropolitan New York out toward our eastern extremity of the county. And that, from a socioeconomic standpoint, is enormously important.

LEHRER: Mr. Klein, did you try any other methods to stop this suburbanization of Suffolk County before you went to the development rights idea?

KLEIN: Well, we didn`t try anything other than this system because we explored in great depth all of the alternatives and this was clearly the only one that addressed the farmer`s question of the loss of his property on liquidation, on death, high property taxes and the temptation to liquidate his equity while he still could. And this is the primary device or primary weapon in the arsenal of preservation that we think is going to work.

LEHRER: All right.$55 million is a lot of money. Where does that come from?

KLEIN: That`s the proceeds of a thirty-year bond issue floated by the county as the money is required. That debt service will be paid by the current and future residents of Suffolk County as the bond issue is paid out. But it is an enormously valuable investment; we are buying out future deficits, very simply. No one today would deny the fact that suburbanization and urbanization creates an enormous tax deficit wherever it takes place. So while we`re putting out $54 million in the form of proceeds of a bond issue, at the same time we`re hedging against substantial future deficits.

LEHRER: You mean you`re not losing potential tax revenue; if this land was developed to a higher use, wouldn`t you get higher property taxes as a result?

KLEIN: Just the converse is true. If you permit it to be developed for single family residences -- and we did very careful economic studies of this through our planning department -- if you take a hundred acres, let us say, and it`s zoned for quarter acre, and you build a house on each of those under contemporary standards with contemporary prices, without getting into the details of the arithmetic suffice it to say that the first year alone of full occupancy the cost of educating the children from those houses on that hundred acres exceeds by $140,000 the total tax contribution of all of the houses without regard to police and fire and all of the other municipal services you have to provide. So the minute you let it go down the chute -- suburbanization -- you are guaranteeing a built-in deficit that future generations have to cover. And so this investment in the purchase of the value of the development rights extinguishes that potential forever and avoids that deficit.

LEHRER: Finally, do you think this Suffolk County plan has application elsewhere in the country, or is there something special and unique about your county that made this work?

KLEIN: I think it`s applicable elsewhere under circumstances where the facts are essentially the same. Obviously if the value in another part of the country of the land is equal for its highest and best use, as Tom Halsey just put it, to that for agriculture this has no application. Obviously it also has no application in an area where it is difficult or impossible or constitutionally barred to use funds for this purpose. But we`ve heard from, I would say, forty-eight out of the fifty states in this country inquiring about this proposal, so I`m certain that it will be replicated elsewhere and probably many times.

LEHRER: All right, thank you, Mr. Klein. Although different than Suffolk`s, there are a number of other programs going on around the country to help preserve farmland for farming. More than forty states give farmers some kind of tax break by assessing their land at its agricultural value rather than at its market value for development. Federal state taxes were eased under the 1976 tax reform, and that also permits assessment based on farm value rather than development value on inherited land. Several states -- California and Oregon, for instance -- are using zoning laws to keep development out of farmlands, and other states including Vermont have a development permit system -- certain types of development in farmland areas must get an official go-ahead. And, as I said earlier, Congress may take some action as well.

Representative James Jeffords is a Republican from Vermont. He is the sponsor of a bill to create a National Agricultural Land Review Commission. Congressman Jeffords serves on the House Agriculture Committee. First, Congressman, how serious is this farmland situation? Are we at a now-or- never point, as some have suggested?

Rep. JAMES JEFFORDS: Yes, I think we are. The problem is, it`s not demonstrated right this moment. The crisis is coming, and it`s coming rapidly. We`re losing, as you`ve already indicated, some five million acres a year of cropland; about a million to two million of that is prime agricultural land. Of the prime, we`ve only got about 24 million surplus acres. That means in a decade or two we`re going to have a real serious problem-and start eating into marginal lands to produce our food. So it`s a coming crisis, and it`s a crisis we should face now.

LEHRER: The analogy to the energy crisis immediately comes to mind. Is that a valid analogy?

JEFFORDS: Yes, it is, and it`s valid in many ways; in fact, the energy crisis is part of this crisis too because the energy shortage is going to put demands on land and going to put more land out of circulation for farm purposes.

LEHRER: I was thinking more of the psychological standpoint. There is a lot of land out there, and there`s no food shortage....

JEFFORDS: Absolutely, and at a time when we`ve got wheat we don`t know what to do with and good crops of corn. I think it`s sort of like the towering inferno, though; I mean, we`ve got a great party going up stairs and lots of food, but down below the foundation`s on fire and it`s crumbling.

LEHRER: All right. Let`s move to your bill. It would set up a commission to tackle this problem. How would it work?

JEFFORDS: It has several purposes. One is what we`re doing here tonight -- focusing public attention on it in a crisis which isn`t quite immediate. Second, it would really find out where we are. We don`t have all the facts as to how we`re losing all the land, or just all the ways we`re losing it, in many ways. Thirdly, it would give us some pilot projects to see if there are some other answers besides the one that Suffolk County has, to help states and local governments to find out where there are other alternatives. And finally, we`re trying to get our federal house in order because it`s amazing, but we`ve got some federal policies which were just totally in conflict to preserving agricultural land. In fact, right in Suffolk County right now they`re trying to preserve their land and we`ve got one federal agency which is trying to take six hundred acres of prime agricultural land for a cemetery when there are six thousand federal acres there where I`m sure they could find it ...

LEHRER: This is in Suffolk County?

JEFFORDS: Suffolk County. So right when the people there are trying to put their money up to stop the real problem, we`ve got the federal government going in and grabbing land for a purpose which they have other land they could use. So those are all the reasons for the bill.

LEHRER: Is it your feeling that this problem should be resolved basically by the state and local governments, or is the time already here when the federal government is going to have to step in and do something?

JEFFORDS: Well, the time has not come for us to have a federal land use plan or anything like that. But the time has come for the federal government to assist in finding some real solutions to the problem, and that`s why the bill is directed towards helping state and local governments and getting the federal house in order rather than dictating any kind of federal policy as to what should be done at this point. I think we have time enough to let the states and local governments solve it.

LEHRER: All right, sir. Another perspective now from Congressman Steven Symms, Republican from Idaho, a state rich in both farmlands and farmers. He serves on the House Agriculture, and Interior and Insular Affairs Committees. Congressman, how serious do you think the vanishing farmlands problem is?

Rep. STEVEN SYMMS: In my own state we definitely have a problem as far as the expansion of urban sprawl into farmland, and when we get to the bottom of it we find that one of the biggest causes of the problem is the federal intervention in the state in the first place: federally owned lands that will not be released to put into farmlands through the Desert Entry Act, the Carey Act; all the bureaucracy that goes with the Department of Interior in the, state that`s a federal state, where sixty-four percent of the state is owned by the federal government; and then federal loan policies with respect to building homes and so forth that encourage people to sprawl out into the farming areas and build their homes out there.

Then the other perspective is -- the problem I see with the Jeffords bill is that it is the first step towards federal lans use planning. Even the proponent of federal land use planning, like the Sierra Club who testified before our committee, they say that`s why they`re for the bill. I know Congressman...

LEHRER: Step one, is that right?

SYMMS: Step one is to get federal land use planning. Congressman Jeffords is not for federal land use planning, but some of the proponents of a federal zoning czar in Washington push this as a conceptual idea.

LEHRER: What`s wrong with the federal government trying to preserve the farmlands?

SYMMS: Well, the problem is that the federal government doesn`t own the farms, in the first place. And America is the place where the miracle of people being allowed to own their own land and produce. It`s interesting that in the Soviet Union, where they do have federal land use planning and federal land controls they don`t have these problems of urban sprawl and things because they can tell the people what to do; but they have to buy the wheat from the United States of America, and of course in some cases we have to extend them the credit so they can afford to pay for it because they`re not capable of producing that. But in America, where people were allowed that basic right of free men to own their own land, we`ve produced plenty of food. And so my contention is that the necessity for a bill at this point in time to point this out is not necessary. Now if the people in Suffolk County think they can afford to pay for those rights on the land for development, that`s fine. I don`t have any objection to the Suffolk County people doing that as long as they`re not getting the federal treasury to come in somehow and subsidize them in some other way. Now I`d like to get to the bottom, and maybe our friend from New York, Mr. Klein, can explain that to us, of how much money they get from the federal government in the county; also, how many people that live on Long Island work in New York City, where we`ve had to have the federal government go in and bail out the mismanagement of the city. Because the only difference between the government in Suffolk County and the one down here in Washington is in Washington they`ve got a printing press and they print phony dollars to pay for it.

LEHRER: Well, staying on the subject of farmland for a moment, let`s ask Mr. Klein: have you had any help at all from the federal government in your project?

KLEIN: Certainly not in this project. We`ve gotten a lot of encouragement. The Soil Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture has evidenced a lot of interest in it, but we haven`t sought or obtained any assistance in implementing the program. We were faced with what is clearly a crisis situation in the loss of our farmland; in addition to the fact that it was, as I indicated before, economic, environmental and recreational, it`s a basic component of the quality of life where we are. And those 1,300,000 people that I represent are not totally dependent upon the federal largesse, although we`re very supportive of Congressman Jeffords` efforts to put other localities which haven`t had the pressures and haven`t had the initiative to get going, in a position of trying this or a similar method of preserving farmland.

LEHRER: Congressman Jeffords, what about Congressman Symms point that really what this is is a first step toward federal land use control?

JEFFORDS: Well, of course you can always make that argument any time the federal government tries to do anything. But I think you have to realize that when you have a problem of this dimension, which is nationwide and has many facets, that if we`re ever going to solve it we`ve got to have some help from the federal government with respect to the studies and helping local governments like Suffolk find different types of programs. In order to do that, you`re going to take the expertise of experts, and perhaps some financial help in pilot projects in order to be able to get them off the ground to find the answers. Granted, it could go beyond that someday, but I certainly would fight against it and I know Steve Symms would.

SYMMS: I would say that he deserves congratulations for focusing attention on the problem, because it is definitely a case where you see this happening. Anybody with eyes can drive out West to Boise, Idaho and see the houses being built on farmland.

LEHRER: I noticed a story in today`s Wall Street Journal, in fact, was talking about that everybody was going to Idaho, an t ere s a paragraph here -- I won`t read the whole thing, but it says, "The boom, how ever, hasn`t come without headaches, as farmland gives way to congested streets lined with fast food franchises, the state`s traditionally slower way of life gives way to tempers and tension," and then it has a little quote about somebody getting mad at somebody in a traffic jam. So there`s something here .Why have not the people in Idaho, at the state or local level, tackled this problem?

SYMMS: We have tackled it, and there`s a great deal of controversy about it, but of course the pressure is on us because of the fact that I mentioned earlier -- that a great deal of land in Idaho is held by the federal government, sixty-four percent of it.

JEFFORDS: So I`m sure Steve would agree with me in this sense, that that part of my bill which is aimed towards straightening the federal house I think he`d probably agree with, and we have our own problems.

SYMMS: And conceptually, we have a problem, like in the midst of a national forest where the Congress decides to make a wilderness area, that maybe someone has a piece of private property in the middle of it, and so the federal people want to come in and buy that farmland or ranch or whatever. And in the case of that, I would think that in that area it would be proper for the federal government to buy those easement rights and leave the people alone there that are in the area.

And I wouldn`t have a philosophical argument with this, but from a constitutional standpoint I think the idea of having people in Washington who look at it as "our" farmland, it`s not their farmland. That farmer has worked all his life and he`s been forced to pay taxes on the land, he suffers under inflation that`s caused by the federal government, then he has tax laws that confiscate the land in case he happens to die; members of his family have to then pay these outrageous, outlandish state taxes so it breaks up farms and so forth. So these are problems that the farmer has that cause more problems. Rather than just having a GS-14 bureaucrat sit down here and decide that this piece of ground should be farmed and that one should have a parking lot, and then you put me in there -- I`m a farmer in real life -- and so I probably would say, "Let`s tear up the parking lot..."

LEHRER: You mean you`re not a congressman in real life? (Laughing.)

SYMMS: Well, what I mean is my occupation is farming. And so I`d probably say, "Heck, let`s go tear up the Safeway parking lot and put a garden in there." But somebody else may be the bureaucrat and turn around and say, "Let`s..."

LEHRER: Let me ask Mr. Klein a question which I think is relevant to the point you`re making. Your program, of course, in Suffolk County is completely voluntary. A farmer does not have to sell his or her development rights if they don`t want to, is that right?

KLEIN: I was about to jump in on that point. That`s exactly correct. From the inception, while the county has the power of eminent domain not only to acquire full title but to acquire development rights, as a matter of policy we have declared that under no circumstances where there is a farmer who is in agricultural production and does not want to sell and does not want to be disturbed, will we touch him. If he wants to pay the full tax bill in property taxes, that`s obviously his prerogative. But the participation in Suffolk County is totally voluntary, and these people that you`ve seen tonight, the Talmages and the Halseys, are second, third, fourth and fifth generation farmers who want to stay there but who were being driven out by high taxes and who are now given an option, which option never existed before: they can get in the program or stay out, but if they get in, why, they reap the benefits of that participation and the county...

LEHRER: Speaking of getting in and getting out, we`ve got to get out; we`re out of time. Mr. Klein, thank you very much in New York. Congressmen, thank you both for being here. Tomorrow night Robert Mac Neil and I will be back. I`m Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.