Legislation Quick Search
03/28/2024 07:14 PM
Pennsylvania State Senate
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?chamber=S&SPick=20130&cosponId=11817
Share:
Home / Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda

Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda

Subscribe to PaLegis Notifications
NEW!

Subscribe to receive notifications of new Co-Sponsorship Memos circulated

By Member | By Date | Keyword Search


Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2013 - 2014 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted: February 21, 2013 03:38 PM
From: Senator Charles T. McIlhinney, Jr.
To: All Senate members
Subject: Memo #8 - Agritourism for farmers
 
In the near future, I plan to introduce legislation that would provide greater opportunities for Pennsylvania’s farm families to responsibly build structures and engage in agricultural product marketing and agritourism enterprises on their farms without local interference.

Many families owning smaller farms are finding it difficult economically to continue their farms in their current state. To sustain their farms in the future, more farm families are considering changes to their on-farm operations to increase efficiency of farm production and provide families with additional income from the farm. However, local zoning, land development and construction regulation, and the bureaucracy and cost in obtaining local governmental approval of proposed projects stifle farm families’ ability to make these needed changes. At the same time, reasonable standards for land development and building structures must be established and met by farm families who use land and engage in enterprises to improve the economic viability of the farm.

My legislation, the Family Farm Initiative and Enterprise Land Development Act (FIELD), proposes to create and establish within the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture a Farm Enterprise Standards Board whose responsibility would be to identify and develop uniform minimum land development and construction standards for agricultural supporting structures, and agricultural marketing and agritourism enterprises. The Board will be authorized to determine whether a proposed agricultural building, agricultural marketing or agritourism project meets the minimum standards established by the Board. Farms whose agricultural building, marketing or agritourism project meets the uniform minimum standards by the Board will be excluded from the minimum zoning, land development and construction standards imposed by local ordinances and the requirement for local government approvals.

Please contact Gail Reinard at 787-7305 if you have any questions.



Introduced as SB722