One or more interviews with the owner are essential in order to determine 

 the personal circumstances surrounding the owner's decision to submit an agri- 

 cultural preservation application. In many cases, the prospect of retirement 

 and the necessity of "cashing in" on the land is often the most important reason 

 for submitting an application. Estate settlement and the division of assets 

 among heirs can be another motivating factor. Financial problems such as fire, 

 or dairy cow brucellosis and crop failure can also place a farm in jeopardy. 



Sometimes the personal and financial problems of the owner may not be so 

 immediate, but the land may be valuable from a development standpoint and the 

 temptation to sell too hard to resist. Many farmers have sold house lots or 

 parcels of land to pay back taxes, or put children through college, even thugh 

 they hated to do so. In many cases, the whole character of the neighborhood has 

 changed, and the local attitudes are so pro-development that an individual may 

 decide to sell and move to another area. 



The third major criterion, the significance of the farm to the state's 

 agriculture, is another way of saying "how significant is the agricultural 

 resource of this property and how does it relate to other farms in the area." 

 The parcel's economic viability for agriculture is related to this criterion as 

 well . 



Since agriculture is scattered throughout the state, the Massachusetts APR 

 Program is statewide in nature. No particular region of the state has been 

 targeted for farmland preservation. Each parcel of land before the Agricultural 

 Lands Preservation Committee must bear some relationship to the farming activi- 

 ties in the area, however, and only after careful consideration is the Committee 

 interested in protecting an isolated farm. The farm must be large enough to 

 stand on its own as an economically viable unit, and it must be significant in 

 terms of its production and an asset to the local community or region. The 

 Program administrators are concerned about the prospect of protecting an indivi- 

 dual property, only to have it fail agriculturally and become an island of 

 restricted land beyond the mainstream of the agricultural economy. 



Accordingly, we are attempting to create blocks of protected farmland by 

 adding other land near farms already protected so that the overall viability of 

 the farming area is maintained. The protected land can be in different 

 ownership, but it must contribute to the integrity of the farming area. 



Parcel size is not necessarily a critical factor. For example, we have 

 protected a seven acre field. But this field was a natural add-on to a large 

 dairy farm which came to depend upon the field's production. If developed into 

 house! ots, the field would have detracted from a larger farm and degraded the 

 quality of the area for farming. Protecting that small field had significance 

 far greater than its size alone. 



There are many collateral benefits of protecting a farm beyond its agri- 

 cultural production capabilities. The most important of these in Massachusetts 

 are scenic open space and watershed protecti on . In many cases communities iden- 

 tify with these benefits more readily, and they can be very important locally. 

 It is rare for a large farm in this state not to have important environmental 

 attributes, which have long been identified by the community in their open space 

 or growth policy plans. 



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