Neighbor News
107 Farm Acres Preserved
Federal And State Grants Help Hunterdon Preserve 107 Farm Acres
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: October 18, 2019
Contact: Matt Holt, Freeholder
Find out what's happening in Flemingtonfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Federal And State Grants Help
Find out what's happening in Flemingtonfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Hunterdon Preserve 107 Farm Acres
Hunterdon County’s Freeholder Board recently took actions which will gain over $885,000 in federal and state agriculture grant funds for the preservation of two farms, totaling over 107 acres, in Franklin Township.
Freeholder Matt Holt, the Board’s liaison for Planning and Land Use, said, “Farmland preservation remains a major priority for this Board, as proven by the nearly 34,000 acres that have been preserved over the years. And we always welcome the assistance of funding partners, like the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the State Agriculture Development Committee (SADC), that help to offset major portions of the cost.”
A required Natural Resources Conservation plan was approved by the Freeholders for the 71-acre Vartiker farm in Franklin on September 17th. The plan paves the way for a $335,000 preservation grant from USDA’s Agricultural Conservation Easement Program – Ag Lands Easement (ACEP-ALE) that, together with a like amount from the SADC, will preserve the farmland at no cost to the County’s Open Space Trust fund.
The conservation plan for the property establishes best practices for safeguarding prime soils and was developed at the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
The Freeholder Board also approved, on October 1st, the preservation of the 37.55-acre DuBrow farm in Franklin through the Planning Incentive Grant (PIG) program, where the SADC provides $163,597 toward the easement purchase and the County and Township will each provide $52,053 from their respective Open Space funds.
Hunterdon County will hold the easement on both farms.
“With SADC providing nearly $500,000, the USDA granting $335,000, and the Township putting forward over $50,000 to preserve these farms, we ensure that the County can reserve its preservation funds for other future projects. The staff did an outstanding job bringing these funding sources to the table,” Holt concluded.
