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Holding Down the Farm: High Land Prices Make Selling Tempting to Houston Farmers

Posted on: Monday, 16 January 2006, 09:00 CST

By Wayne Crenshaw, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.

Jan. 16--In a pasture alongside Cullen Road, holsteins graze on a spring-like day while Tal Talton prepares equipment to spray a wheat field.

Less than five minutes away from this peaceful country setting is the rushing traffic of ever-sprawling Warner Robins.

Standing outside their dairy barn Wednesday morning, Talton's dad, Neal Talton, motions first in one direction, then another, and then another and another, as he recounts the tracts of farmland nearby that have been sold in recent months to developers.

He recalls not so many years ago when there were 20 dairies in Houston County. Now there are only four. His farm is one of the few of any size left in north Houston County, where it's hard to find a place to stand and not see a home under construction.

Little by little, pecan orchards are becoming subdivisions and strip malls are being built on what had been cow pastures or cotton fields. In 1906 ruddy men in overalls guided plow mules from dawn to dusk over fields where in 2006 surveyors and developers wearing neckties stride and plan big-dollar projects.

With land going for $10,000 an acre and higher, it's getting harder every day for farmers to find a reason to remain in a business that already has enough challenges.

Yet Neal Talton isn't even considering selling the 1,300 acres that his great-grandfather bought a century ago. Talton owns the land along with other family members, including his father, longtime Houston County Sheriff Cullen Talton.

Decades of family sweat and toil create a bond to soil that money has a hard time breaking, and Neal Talton can't think of much else where he can make a living while spending time with his 20-year-old son.

"It's a great place to raise a family, and my son, he loves being on a farm," Talton said. "We have a great relationship."

GROWTH CAUSES PROBLEMS FOR FARMERS

In 1862, Ralph Dorsett's great-great-grandfather bought 202 acres in Houston County off what is now U.S. 41. The price was about $9 per acre. In 2004, Dorsett reluctantly sold 139 acres of that same tract for $40,000 an acre to the Houston County Hospital Authority.

As the fifth generation to farm the land, it wasn't really the money that enticed him to sell. He could see that the growth around the land and the increased traffic would make it more and more difficult to continue farming the property. Farming the tract requires moving equipment on the highway, and busy motorists don't take kindly to plodding tractors.

"I had second thoughts," Dorsett said of the sale. "I'd really rather be farming. It was just obvious I was going to quit farming there, and I didn't want to go off somewhere else. Every year it's harder to farm there. There's more risk in putting a tractor and equipment on the road."

He still farms the land by leasing it back from the Hospital Authority, which bought the property for possible expansion but has no current plans to build there.

At 66 and battling cancer, Dorsett isn't sure how much longer he can keep farming the land. He said the days of farming are about over in north Houston County.

"It's just a thing of the past," said Dorsett, who recalled when Watson Boulevard was a two-lane road and Carl Vinson Parkway was a dirt road. "There's a few fields here and there but for the most part it's in the past."

Farmers who own their land at least have the option of passing up the high prices developers offer. Many farmers, however, lease the land they farm. They are basically at the mercy of the owner if the land is sold for development.

Charlie Stewart, of Warner Robins, farmed land that he rented in Houston County until the early 1990s, when developers started buying it up. He now farms leased land in south Bibb County, but some of that is now being bought for commercial use.

"All my life I farmed in Houston County," he said. "I lost it all to development."

FARMING STILL SIGNIFICANT

Despite all the development and high land prices, farming is far from over in Houston County. The southern part of the county is still largely rural, even though subdivisions are cropping up there also.

County extension agent Willie Chance says there's more farming in Houston County than many people realize. In 2004, the total value of farm products in the county was $47.2 million, according to state calculations.

Chance said he expects 2005 will yield a similar figure.

Agriculture accounts for about 16 percent of the county's economy, he said.

Chance's expertise is in horticulture, but he has to double as the ag agent because the county currently does not have one and the state is not funding the position.

Jake Redmon, manager of Houston Fertilizer & Grain, has been involved in agriculture in the county for 25 years. The trend he sees is not only declining agriculture acreage, but more farmers leasing land.

Developers often buy land but aren't always ready to go forward with construction, or they might plan on holding it in hopes that the land value will go up. In the meantime they lease it to farmers. That means that what little farming is left in the northern part of the county might be on precarious grounds.

The other trend, Redmon said, is smaller farms. Many of his customers have tracts of just a few acres where they keep a couple of horses or grow a small crop.

But even more serious farmers think smaller, he said.

"I can remember when if you had 300 acres of wheat, that was a small farm," Redmon said. "A big farm was a thousand acres. Now 300 acres is a big farm."

The farm supply company, which has locations in Bonaire and on the west side of the county toward Fort Valley, is owned by Gov. Sonny Perdue. Redmon estimated that the company sells about 30 percent less fertilizer than 10 years ago, which he attributed mostly to the decline of farming in the county.

TAX BREAK KEEPS FARMERS GOING

Had it not been for an act of the Georgia Legislature in 1992 that created the Conservation Use program, there would probably be little farming at all in Houston County.

The law, a response to the urban sprawl of Atlanta and other metro areas that gobbled up farmland, allowed farmers a significant property tax break. If farmers agree not to sell the land for 10 years, they pay taxes on a fraction of the fair-market value.

Farmers interviewed were unanimous that without that law, it would be impossible to farm anywhere close to the high-growth areas of Houston County while paying the kind of taxes assessed on such property.

"About the only way I know of that you could do that is to grow marijuana," Dorsett said.

Dan Maddox, a land appraiser with the Houston County Tax Assessor's office, said there is actually more land in the Conservation Use program today than 10 years ago. But that's not because of additional farm acreage, he said. The increase is from more people becoming aware of the program.

Even people with as little as five acres can get the tax break. They just have to actually use the land for agriculture and agree not to sell it for 10 years. If they sell it early, the penalty is twice the money saved from the tax break.

For example, someone with five acres of land valued at $10,000 per acre would have paid $497 in taxes in 2005. The taxed value of land under Conservation Use can range from $143 per acre to $524 per acre, depending on the soil type. If the five acres of land were taxed at $500 per acre, the owner would pay a total of $24 in property taxes.

"I still have people come in that have never heard about," Maddox said.

'A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD'

Though they also grow wheat and other row crops, the Taltons rely primarily on the dairy for income. They milk 300 cows twice daily.

Part of what keeps his operation profitable, Neal Talton said, is that milk is perishable and therefore largely immune to competition from foreign imports. Farmers relying on row crops aren't so fortunate and are fighting low commodity prices while the cost of production goes up every year.

"If you are having a hard time making money, it's mighty tempting to sell your land," Talton said.

He figures it's probably inevitable that his farm will someday end up in the hands of developers, but he hopes that's a long way off.

He is not against growth, he said. In fact, he is a member of the Houston County Development Authority. But he laments the loss of open land.

"I like to see the county progress but when you love the land, it's kind of like a double-edged sword," Talton said. "When you love the land you hate to see it all go to houses."

To contact Wayne Crenshaw, call (478) 923-6199 extension 235 or e-mail wcrenshaw@macontel.com [mailto:wcrenshaw@macontel.com].

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.

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Source: The Macon Telegraph (Macon, Ga.)

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