By Susie Cagle
grist.com
California’s super-productive farmland is being overrun by development projects. Sprawly exurban housing development and even solar projects threaten to gobble up all the Golden State’s arable land. As of 2007, California was home to more than 25 million acres of cropland, but that’s shrinking by more than 1 percent each year, according to the American Farmland Trust.
All’s not lost, though: Two proposed bills could give a boost to California agriculture big and small, and potentially change the way the Golden State develops over the coming years.
First up: The Urban Agriculture Incentive Zone Act, AB 551. This would set up an optional program for counties to give residents breaks on their property taxes so long as they’re using the land to grow food. “One of the biggest obstacles to expanding urban agriculture within California is access to land. This legislation provides an incentive to private landowners to make more land available for urban agriculture, while at the same time enabling them to do so at a lowered cost, which is especially critical for the viability of commercial urban farms,” according to San Francisco based urban think tank SPUR.
Continued: http://grist.org/news/two-new-bills-aim-to-save-california-farmland-from-rampant-sprawl/
