Agricultural Security Areas

[SusanSmith2]

First time posting to GeoNet so I'm hoping that I'm doing this correctly! 

In any event, I'm curious as to what attributes/fields you all have in your Ag Security Area data....

[ChadKopplin]

Susan here are the criteria for including a farm in the Ag. Security Area program with the Pennsylvania D. of Ag. Ag. Sec. Handbook.

Evaluation Criteria The following factors shall be considered by the planning commission, advisory committee, and at any public hearing: (1) Land proposed for inclusion in an agricultural security area shall have soils which are conducive to agriculture. This factor will have been satisfied without further consideration if at least 50% in the aggregate of the land to be included in an agricultural security area falls into one of the following categories: land whose soils are classified in Natural Resources Conservation Service Capability Classes I through IV, excepting IV(e); land which falls within the Natural Resources Conservation 8 Service classification of “unique farm land”; or land whose soils do not meet Capability Classes I through IV but which is currently in active farm use and is being maintained in accordance with the soil erosion and sedimentation plan applicable to such land. (2) Use of land proposed for inclusion in an agricultural security area shall be compatible with local government unit comprehensive plans. Any zoning shall permit agricultural use but need not exclude other uses. (3) The landowner may propose to include all of his land, regardless of zoning, in an agricultural security area. (4) The land proposed for inclusion in the agricultural security area, and any additions which are proposed subsequently, shall be viable agricultural land. (5) Additional factors to be considered are the extent and nature of farm improvements, anticipated trends in agricultural economic and technological conditions and any other matter which may be relevant. (6) The existence of utility facilities on the proposed area shall not prevent the adoption of such area as an agricultural security area nor shall the rights of utilities with respect to the existing facilities be disturbed or affected by such adoption.

[LauraSimonetti]

Susan,

In Mifflin, we have a list of the parcels that are in Ag Security and we maintain that on a regular basis.  By maintain, I mean that we check to see if any new parcels should be added based on splits from current Ag Security parcels, etc.  There are definite rules and regs as to what can be considered an ASA property, as Chad has described, but our Ag Security properties have the same info that is contained in our everyday parcel database.

laura

[CheriePrentice-Brown]

Susan - In Lebanon our CAMA data has a field for ASA.  We do a definition query off of our Tax Parcel Data - Joined to CAMA off the ASA field.  Thus far it has met the needs of both our office and the Conservation District

[SarahWeigle]

Susan,

In Adams, our ASA layer started with just the basic parcel owner/ location info. This was fine for adding/ removing one property at a time. But when the 7 Year reviews would come in or a municipality would ask us to verify property owners, acreages, etc as they were in the process, I found it was sometimes difficult to select the properties we were checking or making a map for, without manually selecting each one. Our CAMA does not indicate if the property is in an ASA. So we added fields to indicate when the ASA was recorded, when the last 7 Year review was recorded, and an ASA # (if applicable). Several of our municipalities have more than 1 ASA, so this makes it easier to select which properties we're verifying. We don't always get the recorded information from the municipalities, so occasionally we have to look through Register & Recorder to update these fields.