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17 <br />Attachment 3 <br />MEMORANDUM <br />To: Agricultural Preservation Board <br />From: David Stancil, Environment & Resource Conservation Director <br />Date: May 12, 2003 <br />Re: Agricultural Priority Areas and the VFPP Ordinance <br />As the Board may recall, discussion of designating agricultural priority areas was one of <br />our prime topics in 2001 -02. A bit of background may be useful in this vein. <br />The adoption of new criteria for prioritizing agricultural lands (via Lands Legacy) came <br />as a request from the Board of Commissioners when Lands Legacy was adopted, to <br />modify the LESA -based model that was originally proposed. Accordingly, in March <br />2001, the APB adopted a set of criteria, after several months of discussion, that balanced <br />the interests of protecting prime farmland with that of threatened farmland in areas of <br />greater development pressures. <br />From that time we set out on the next step — identifying geographically where the priority <br />farmlands were. But before that was possible, a significant undertaking in its own right <br />was needed ... a project often discussed but never accomplished ... the actual mapping of <br />existing farm fields. After months of discussion and the diligent assistance of the USDA <br />Farm Services Agency and the NRCS /Soil and Water District, a draft of the fields map <br />was presented in late 2002. <br />During the same timeframe, another impetus for this mapping was recognized — that <br />needed updates to the Voluntary Farmland Preservation Program (VFPP) Ordinance <br />should perhaps be built around agricultural sectors or districts, and that the agricultural <br />priority areas mapping might also yield this result for the Voluntary Agricultural Districts <br />program. <br />Now, in the spring of 2003, we face somewhat of a "chicken- and -egg" syndrome. In <br />order to update the VFPP Ordinance, we need to complete the designation of Agricultural <br />Priority Areas. In order to designate Agricultural Priority Areas, we need to see where the <br />farm fields are to determine patterns of farm activity. <br />However, because of impending turnover in the Farm Services Agency office, we are <br />faced with several months of work to further refine and categorize the farm fields <br />mapping as planned into types of use (animal operations, tobacco, grains, grasses, etc). <br />I believe this upcoming delay provides an opportunity for us to step back and reassess <br />how to move forward. The fundamental decision is whether we have sufficient <br />