ATLANTA – Farmers may soon get more tax relief under a decades-old program designed to keep agricultural land out of developers’ hands.
The Georgia Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved legislation from the House of Representatives that seeks to double the acreage farmers and other agricultural producers can place under a protective covenant in return for smaller property tax bills.
The final passage of House Bill 90 in a 47-3 vote comes as farmers, timber producers, poultry growers and other agricultural producers are reeling from the damage wrought by Hurricane Helene last fall.
The legislature has considered other ways to help them, including the passage by a 50-1 vote Tuesday of House Bill 223 offering temporary tax breaks and tax credits related to the recovery.
But the protective covenant legislation is a play for the long term. It could encourage more property owners to keep working their land for years to come by bolstering their bottom line.
“It’s a tool to allow family farms to continue to grow and expand,” said Sen. Sam Watson, R-Moultrie.
HB 90 would only take effect if voters agree to amend the state constitution in November 2026. The Senate also passed HR 32, a companion measure that adds a ballot question asking if the existing conservation tax program should cover 4,000 acres per owner, twice the amount of land currently allowed.
The Conservation Use Valuation Assessment (CUVA) Program was adopted decades ago. It lets each landowner put up to 2,000 acres under a protective covenant. The land must be used for farming, growing timber or other agricultural production. The property is then valued and taxed at less than what it might sell for as plots for a new subdivision or office park.
Properties are instead assessed and taxed using a formula based on current use, annual productivity, and real property sales data of other conservation use properties.
A similar measure stalled last year, leading to a special legislative committee that studied the problem of vanishing farmland.
Three out of four of Georgia’s 159 counties — and one in seven jobs — rely on agriculture and forestry, the Senate Study Committee on Preservation of Georgia’s Farmlands learned. Their final report noted a conundrum, though: if lawmakers expand CUVA to preserve those economic pillars, they also could undermine potential growth in the local property tax base due to unrealized development.
Counties and local governments may push back as land is taken off their tax digest, Katherine Moore, president of the Georgia Conservancy, told the committee when it met last year. Other states, such as Florida, have responded by paying local governments for their foregone taxes.