Spanish Peaks Library District

All states in the Intermountain West assess farms and ranches at their agricultural use value. Some states extend some form of preferential use value assessment to land managed for its value for wildlife, natural resource conservation, outdoor recreation, and open space -not just for commodity production. Property tax laws and assessment practices in other states create obstacles for landowners who want to manage their private land for natural resource...

Focused on Agricultural Act of 2014 Title II: Conservation, which provides funding for thirteen conservation programs. The Conservations Title's purpose is to ensure the provision of clean water, abundant and safe food, the protection of wildlife from excessive disruption, and a conservation of the agricultural way of life.

The Conservation Stewardship Program functions by encouraging stewardship on agricultural lands, cropland, grassland, pastureland, rangeland and non-industrial private forest land by providing financial assistance to producers who meet program requirements.

The Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (AECP) is to provide easements for the long-term restoration and protection of environmentally sensitive lands from being developed or converted to non-agricultural uses. The program focuses on conserving agricultural land as well as wet-lands and their related benefits. These two functions are evaluated separately, maintaining some of the distinction implied by having separate programs.

The Regional Conservation Partnership Program is new for 2014. RCPP serves to integrate regional and watershed level management of natural resources and conservation activities and to facilitate cooperation between state or local government, producer associations, and producers. Projects that the program focuses on include water quality and quantity, soil erosion, wild-life habitat, drought mitigation, flood control, and other regional priorities

Congress established the Farmland Protection Program (FPP) in the 1996 Farm Bill to limit nonagricultural uses of certain agricultural lands. The program was renamed the Farm and Ranch Land Protection Program (FRPP) for the 2002 Farm Bill, and changed back to the FPP in 2008. The objective of the Farmland Protection Program is to help farmers and ranchers keep their working agricultural land in agriculture. Producers voluntarily sell conservation...

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), enacted in 1985, provides payments to farmers to take highly erodible or environmentally sensitive cropland out of production for ten years or more to conserve soil and water resources. It is the federal government's largest private land retirement program. The program is administered by the Farm Service Agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), with technical assistance provided by USDA's Natural...

There are fifteen titles in the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (known as the 2008 Farm Bill). Our focus is the conservation title, Title II, which has seven main conservation programs: the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP), the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP), the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), the Farmland Protection Program (FPP),...