ATLANTA – Legislation doubling the acreage Georgia farmers can set aside for conservation in exchange for a property tax break easily cleared the state Senate Wednesday.
Senators voted 51-1 in favor of a constitutional amendment that would let Georgia voters decide in a statewide referendum next year whether to let farmers set aside up to 4,000 acres of farmland as conservation property, up from the current limit of 2,000 acres.
Expanding Georgia’s Conservation Use Valuation Assessment (CUVA) program was among the recommendations issued last fall by a Senate study committee that held a series of hearings to consider ways to preserve farmland. Georgia has lost about 2.6 million acres of farmland during the last 50 years to residential and commercial development.
CUVA was launched way back in 1991, Sen. Sam Watson, R-Moultrie, the constitutional amendment’s chief sponsor, said Wednesday on the Senate floor.
“Agriculture has changed,” Watson said. “Our family farms are getting much larger today.”
The Senate also passed a separate “enabling” bill accompanying the constitutional amendment by the same 51-1 margin. The enabling measure sets the voter referendum to coincide with the November 2026 general election and specifies that the measure would take effect on Jan. 1, 2027, if the referendum passes.
Both the constitutional amendment and enabling bill now move to the Georgia House.