MINE HILL, N.J. — More rust than rustic, parts of John Paschal’s suburban farm are strewn with cars and their parts, remnants of the farmer’s former life running a body shop and junkyard: a bus, a shelf full of axles, a camper.
John Paschal feels that if his 80-acre farm is placed in the state preservation program, the payment will help him keep farming.
The setting is urban pastoral. Clogged roads surround the place, and an office park and a distribution center for Girl Scout supplies are down the road. Mr. Paschal’s 80-acre farm is less than idyllic, but it is the last in Mine Hill. “It’s been a labor of love,” he said.
Mr. Paschal, 72, grew vegetables until the deer started eating them, and now raises hay. In hopes of growing vegetables again, he recently applied for a state farm preservation program that would pay him 70 percent of the land’s market value — more than enough to build a needed fence around it — in exchange for a promise that it remain a farm forever. Over the last 25 years, the program has preserved more than 160,000 acres in New Jersey.
But the powers that be here in Mine Hill, a township of 3,700 people about an hour’s drive west of Manhattan, balked when they were first notified of Mr. Paschal’s plans, since the property could yield far more tax dollars if developed, perhaps, into a parking lot rather than a vegetable patch. Mr. Paschal’s farm, which is zoned for office and industrial use and operates as a farm under an exemption, is the last remaining piece of land Mine Hill could use to coax a developer.
“We have to do what’s best for the town,” Marc Sovelove, the president of the township council, said in an interview.
Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s proposed budget would cut $193,000 in aid to Mine Hill this year. To ease its financial problems, the township is sharing some of its services with the neighboring town of Wharton.
Mr. Corzine has urged that municipalities take such steps. “We’ve done all the things they said to do — we’ve received no assistance,” Mr. Sovelove said. “The reality we have to face is, we’re a small town, and we’re dramatically affected by factors outside.”
To enter the farm preservation program, Mr. Paschal’s land would first have to be rezoned by the township. In general, the state only accepts farms for the program with the approval of local officials, which is usually granted.
Susan Craft, executive director of the State Agriculture Development Committee, which administers the preservation program, said local towns were usually enthusiastic supporters because “most municipalities don’t want to see wall-to-wall development as they get built out.”
The New Jersey farm conversion program is one of the oldest and most successful in the country, and has eased what Ms. Craft said were residents’ frustrations with “constant conversion of the land.”
“People really do appreciate open places, some green space in their daily commute, and in their lives,” she said.
Frank Pinto, for 14 years the head of the agriculture development board for Morris County, which includes Mine Hill, said Mr. Paschal’s case was “the first time we’ve had a township not support a farm.”
But the dilemma posed by town officials — a choice between revenue and preservation — seemed to represent a false choice, he said. In the first place, Mr. Paschal could sell the land to the state or the county as open space, removing it completely from the town’s tax rolls. But if the farm entered the farm preservation program, Mr. Paschal would still pay taxes, though admittedly less than an office development might bring in.
Mr. Pinto said that an office building would need more municipal service than Mr. Paschal’s farm.
The debate over Mr. Paschal’s application occurs amid widespread concern about the future of farm preservation in New Jersey. In addition to the cuts in aid to cities and towns, Mr. Corzine is proposing to abolish the state’s Department of Agriculture, which administers the preservation program, and to disperse the agency’s duties among other departments.
The farm preservation program, under the governor’s proposal, could be transferred to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, an agency that Peter Furey, executive director of the New Jersey Farm Bureau, sees as more concerned with regulation than preservation. “We are going to be leery of entering farmland preservation without the secretary of agriculture being at the helm of the program,” Mr. Furey said.