LOWER MT. BETHEL TWP., Pa. – A local crop farm will be preserved as part of Pennsylvania’s Farmland Preservation Program, Sen. Lisa Boscola announced on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The 31-acre farm is located in Lower Mount Bethel Township and owned by Kevin Brent, Denise M., and Brayden W. McErwen, according to the news release.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Officials say that the total investment to preserve the farm is $230,944 with the Commonwealth investing $17,131 and Northampton County investing $213,812.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce again, working collaboratively, the Commonwealth and Northampton County have made this investment to ensure another 31 acres of farmland will continue to benefit our region and our Commonwealth. Preserving farmland to ensure that it is available to farm for future generations by protecting it from future development is critically important for our region\u2019s quality of life,\u201d Senator Boscola stated. \u201cThrough farmland preservation, we ensure Pennsylvania\u2019s farming community remains the backbone of our state\u2019s economy and an irreplaceable resource that benefits our environment, crop and livestock industries, rural communities, and grocery shoppers.\u201d<\/p>\n
At its meeting on Thursday, the State Agriculture Land Preservation Board voted to preserve an additional 2,354 acres on 27 farms in 13 counties across Pennsylvania, protecting them from future residential or commercial development, according to the news release.<\/p>\n
With Thursday’s action, the Commonwealth\u2019s Farmland Preservation Program has now protected 6,648 farms and 661,035 acres in 58 counties from future development across the Commonwealth, the news release details.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOWER MT. BETHEL TWP., Pa. – A local crop farm will be preserved as part of Pennsylvania’s Farmland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,1391,12367],"class_list":{"0":"post-58744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-_homepage_top_stories","9":"tag-bethlehem","10":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","11":"tag-bethlehem-news","12":"tag-bethlehem-area","13":"tag-slate-belt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58744","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=58744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}