A pair of lawmakers from Western Massachusetts pushed their colleagues to advance a constitutional modification that might broaden a particular tax benefit for farmers to permit extra companies to learn from a measure they argued would assist the beleaguered business.
The advocacy comes as the 2 legislators stated the farming business is shrinking in Massachusetts, with farm house owners growing old, land turning into dearer, revenue margins tightening, and prices of doing enterprise growing.
Rep. Natalie Blais, a Deerfield Democrat, stated native meals techniques are “really in crisis,” with Massachusetts ranked third within the nation by the American Farmland Belief for the share of farmland projected to be misplaced by 2040.
“We know that farmers are facing the real threat of climate change on a day-to-day basis. The uncertainty that they are facing daily is nothing compared to the uncertainty that they are facing in terms of cuts and freezes that we are seeing from the federal government right now,” she stated throughout a Tuesday afternoon legislative listening to on the State Home.
The modification from Blais and Sen. Jo Comerford of Florence targets a portion of the structure that offers the Legislature the ability to tax agricultural and horticultural land based mostly on the worth of the land for these functions quite than at industrial or residential charges.
However Comerford stated the constitutional language, which is supposed to assist farmers financially, has “an archaic limitation.”
“Only farms of five acres or more are eligible for this tax treatment,” Comerford stated. “This means that farmers often pay much higher commercial rates for farmland. This is now causing Article 99 to have the opposite effect of protecting farmland, and instead, it’s contributing to farmland loss, ironically, because of the high tax bills and the brutal downward economic pressure facing farms.”
The modification would take away the five-acre restrict, which Blais stated would permit extra farms to learn from the tax benefit.
“It is important to note that 30% of the farms in the commonwealth are under nine acres, so this would make a significant difference in helping to support our local food systems at this critical time,” Blais stated.
Rebecca Miller, coverage director on the Massachusetts Meals System Collaborative, stated the typical age of a farmer in Massachusetts is 59, and increasing entry to the tax measure would assist promote the subsequent technology of farmers.
“The development of land has gone unevenly, and that has resulted in farmland becoming fragmented across the states. We have farmers farming on pieces of land that are smaller than five acres. This amendment is one of the ways that we can provide real relief to farmers,” Miller stated.
The proposal earned a good report from the Income Committee final yr however didn’t advance any additional.
The committee’s Democratic chairs this session, Sen. Jamie Eldridge of Marlboro and Rep. Adrian Madaro of East Boston, stated they had been nonetheless reviewing the measure.
“Still diving into it. I’m just a couple weeks into this role and still very much in the learning phase,” Madaro advised reporters.
Committees should determine on proposals to amend the structure by April 30.
If a proposal advances out of a committee, it should be authorised by a majority of the Home and Senate throughout a joint session over two successive legislative periods. If the measure makes it that far, it will probably then be positioned on the poll to be ratified by a majority of the favored vote.
This course of is barely totally different from initiative petitions, which any citizen can suggest and try to position earlier than voters throughout an election in the event that they handle to safe sufficient signatures.
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