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Barack Obama

Farmers seek more preservation incentives

Duane W. Gang
USA TODAY
Activists say most farmers need an incentive to donate the development rights on their land.
  • Farm bill signed Friday by President Obama includes more than %241 billion for preservation over the next decade
  • Most farmers need an incentive to donate the development rights on their land%2C activists say
  • Incentives expired at the end of last year

NASHVILLE — Conservation groups consider the new $1 trillion farm bill signed by President Obama on Friday a win — but not a clean sweep.

The law includes more than $1 billion for preservation over the next decade. Some say the money will only go so far and want Congress to act to extend tax incentives that made donating land for conservation financially feasible for many farmers. Those incentives expired at the end of last year.

"Could we spend twice as much money as they have made available in the farm bill? Yes, we could," said Russ Shay, director of public policy for the Land Trust Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based group that lobbies on conservation issues.

Most farmers need an incentive to donate the development rights on their land, Shay said.

"That is their savings bank," he said.

The enhanced incentives were part of the 2006 Pension Protection Act, a bill that established new funding requirements for certain retirement plans. They raised the tax deductions people can take for donating conservation easements — from 30% of their adjusted gross income in any year to 50%. If a donor qualified as a farmer or rancher, then up to 100% of income could be deducted.

The Conservation Easement Incentive Act, introduced last year by Rep. Jim Gerlach, R-Pa., would make the incentives permanent. Despite having more than 170 co-sponsors and bipartisan support, the bill remains stuck in committee.

The disappearance of farmland and the loss of the tax incentives worries Kenneth Bracy, 62, and his wife, Sandra, 60, who fret every time they see a new subdivision near their home on the Tennessee-Kentucky border.

They don't want that to happen to land they have worked for the last four decades.

In December, the couple donated conservation easements on more than 500 acres to the Land Trust for Tennessee, which has helped preserve more than 91,000 acres of land since 1999.

"Passing it on to the Land Trust, we'll pass it on to our children and our grandchildren," Kenneth Bracy said. "I just think it is a win-win for everybody."

Gang also writes for The Tennessean in Nashville

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