Agenda Item 1 - County Commissioners-Boards and Commissions – Annual Work Plans-Reports

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4 35 has dwindled to 3. Commodity milk prices can no longer support our local dairies. One way forward is to work to help create a local market for our Orange County dairy products, as a way to encourage more dairy farms and keep the ones still active. Dairy farming once represented a significant percentage of the County's farmland. Action is needed to retain enough infrastructure to support the existing dairy farms now. • The average age of our farmers continues to increase, causing concerns about retirement and farm succession planning. This is an ongoing issue despite the rising numbers of young people taking up farming. Our "senior" farmers control and farm a large percentage of the County's prime open farmland, thus creating the potential for a significant decline in active farm acreage over the next decade. • The majority of the new farm operations now being started in Orange County are small market crop farms, where crops are grown intensively on smaller parcels, to be sold locally at markets. • The APB supports the concept of creating a "Present Use Value Trust Fund" to support a grant program to promote local agricultural activities and increase local markets for food produced in the County. This is proposed to be funded by deferred property tax revenue collected by the County when farmland ceases to be used for agricultural purposes. When land is taken out of the PUV program, state law requires the owner to pay three years of deferred property taxes back to the County. Cabarrus County established a very successful program on this model. • Explore ways to educate farmers and prospective farmers about the many new agritourism opportunities that could be used to enhance and diversify farm income and bring visitors to farms • The newly-formed Food Council offers ways for the APB to become more involved in a range of initiatives to enhance local markets for farm products.