New Jersey Supreme Court rules that alterations to field destroyed it for other agricultural uses, criticizes state for failing to give clear guidelines on what’s allowed on preserved agricultural land
Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:
The owner of preserved farmland in Franklin Township violated the law when it excavated and leveled 20 acres in building temporary greenhouses, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled yesterday.
In a 38-page decision, the court found the resulting destruction of “prime’’ soil constituted a violation of deed restrictions on the preserved land even though new buildings for agricultural purposes are a permitted use.
To farmland advocates, the case is significant because it upholds one of the prime purposes of farmland preservation: retaining those lands permanently for a variety of agricultural uses by future generations.
“The preservation of high quality soil and open space for future generations is one of the chief aims of the Farmland Preservation Program,’’ Justice Barry Albin wrote for the court. “Although Quaker Valley had the right to erect hoop houses, it did not have the authority to permanently damage a wide swath of premier quality soil in doing so.’’
It all started with a hailstorm in 2007
The case involved a family farm of 120 acres that became part of the farmland preservation program in 1993. The Matthews family had owned the farm for over a hundred years, harvesting corn, wheat, oats, soybeans and hay on the land.
The dispute arose a decade after Quaker Valley Farms LLC, a wholesale horticultural business, purchased the deed-restricted land in 1997. In September 2007, a hailstorm damaged a crop of chrysanthemums on a 20-acre field, saddling the owner with a million-dollar-plus crop loss.
