Sustaining Utah’s Agriculture

Representative Jack Draxler (Logan, Utah) proposes a fund that will finance conservation easements on private land.  In the past 10 years, the state of Utah lost 500,000 acres of farms and ranches.  To slow the conversion, the bill proposes an Agriculture Sustainability Investment Fund.  If passed, the legislation will reallocate funds generated from an existing tax source.

The revenue source for the bill is a tax levied when owners sell farmland for development.  Similar to Idaho’s land use approach to property taxes, agricultural land in Utah benefits from an exemption to market valuation for ad valorem taxes.  The tax districts levy their rates on  real estate appraised values.  For farms and ranches, the appraiser determines an agricultural production value, not the real estate  market value.  When the owner sells the property, a rollback provision levies a tax  on the residential (development value) of the parcel for a predefined period.

Historically, the rollback tax generated $8-10 million annually.  Under the proposed legislation, the counties will direct the revenue to a Sustainable Agriculture Investment Fund.  A citizen’s committee selected from local Conservation Districts will guide the distribution of the dollars for the specific purpose of acquiring conservation easements on the property of willing landowners.  The draft of the pending bill  will be posted in the Working Lands Bibliography when the authors release the document.

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