Three Lehigh Valley farms, totaling 75 acres, will be preserved under a state investment program that protects them from future residential or commercial development.<\/p>\n
Gov. Josh Shapiro\u2019s office announced Thursday that more than 1,775 acres on 22 farms in 16 counties were part of an $8.8 million investment in state, county and local funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe farm families we are investing in today have remained resilient and committed to the noble work of growing the food that helps feed their neighbors \u2014 and we are proud to help ensure that their family legacies are embedded into our agriculture heritage for generations to come,\u201d state Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding said.<\/p>\n
Two Lehigh County farms received an investment of $297,000 from the state, $288,000 from the county, $3,250 from Lower Milford Township and $3,473 from North Whitehall Township. They are:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Richard K. and Nina Fair\u2019s 32-acre crop farm in Lower Milford.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Robert A. and Diane Schmidt No. 2, a 13-acre crop farm in North Whitehall.<\/p>\n
A Northampton County farm received an investment of $214,000 from the state:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Jonathan A. and Angela M. Templeton\u2019s 30-acre crop farm in Lower Mount Bethel Township.<\/p>\n
According to its website, Lehigh County has 421 preserved farms covering 28,770 acres. Northampton County has a similar program that has preserved 270 farms covering more than 20,000 acres since 1989.<\/p>\n
The state partners with county and sometimes local governments and nonprofits to buy development rights. By selling development rights, property owners ensure that their properties will remain farms and never be sold to developers.<\/p>\n
Since 1988, Pennsylvania has protected 6,726 farms and 667,360 acres in 58 counties from development, investing more than $1.8 billion in state, county and local funds.<\/p>\n
Outside of the Lehigh Valley, farmland was also preserved in Berks, Butler, Centre, Chester, Columbia, Cumberland, Erie, Franklin, Mercer, Mifflin, Monroe, Montgomery, Northumberland, Schuylkill and Wayne counties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three Lehigh Valley farms, totaling 75 acres, will be preserved under a state investment program that protects them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,433,157,182,5944,12279,139,3656,434,28,432],"class_list":["post-216680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-lehigh-county","tag-lehigh-valley","tag-local-news","tag-lower-milford-township","tag-lower-mount-bethel-township","tag-news","tag-north-whitehall-township","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}