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the preservation of agriculture and forest land,” Copeland concluded.
“It’s quite likely that the General Assembly set a significant policy in motion with the passage of the Agricultural and Forestal District Act,” began J. Paxton Marshall, professor and extension specialist in the Department of Agricultural Economics at VPI.
“In planning and zoning of land, agricultural districts as we know them under present law, have been basically a dumping ground,” he maintained. He added that landowners didn’t want it any other way “because they didn’t want any zoning at all.”
Marshall noted several implications arising from last year’s passage of the Ag District bill by the General Assembly. Families that own farm businesses are now “given the opportunity to increase the certainty in which they make decisions” and so will improve farm property maintenance, according to Marshall.
By encouraging the preservation of the best soils in agricultural usage, Marshall maintained that the Ag District Act would lower the cost of production and therefore lower costs to the consumer in the long run.
Development Pressures
The Act is designed to discourage and reduce development pressures in districts, he continued, by excluding spending of public money except where the expenditure is farm related. “There is some misconception about what is quality land and where development pressures should go,” Marshall said.
He noted that efforts by some counties to put the
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