This is where owning land — and being assessed taxes that don’t make sense — comes back to bite us.
To cover the property taxes, he might rent the land to another farmer or take part in the federal Conservation Reserve Program, which rents farmland for environmental restoration.
This family could have rented this land on a 99 year lease and worked it as if it was their own all this time. By the same thinking, tax the land in the towns and cities for its highest and best use, since that’s where the money will be spent anyway.
The CRP takes land out of production:
[F]armers enrolled in the program agree to remove environmentally sensitive land from agricultural production and plant species that will improve environmental health and quality. Contracts for land enrolled in CRP are from 10 to15 years in length. The long-term goal of the program is to re-establish valuable land cover to help improve water quality, prevent soil erosion, and reduce loss of wildlife habitat.
but I don’t see any reason why all farmland isn’t assessed rents instead of taxes, to keep farmers on the land, with land treated as a productive asset rather that a speculative asset on some hedge fund’s books.