It’s conventional wisdom among politicians (of both political parties) that development is good for rural counties because “it increases the tax base”. Converting farmland into residential subdivisions, commercial businesses and industry is supposedly beneficial for funding schools, infrastructure and county government in general. But is this really true?
Not according to Joel Salatin, a Virginia farmer and a columnist for The Epoch Times. In a recent article, Salatin challenges the assumption that residential or commercial development would be the “highest and best use” for open land, productive farms and forests, which enjoy lower property taxes. He claims that the opposite is true, and he brings the receipts.
Salatin, a nationally known promoter of regenerative farming, quotes two important studies to back up his claim. One study, by the Piedmont Environmental Council, shows that even at its low tax rate, farmland subsidizes residential taxpayers. This is because the cost of providing government services to farmers is substantially lower than governing homeowners. Trees, cows and corn don’t require schools, welfare agencies and large numbers of “first responders”.
A 2025 Cost of Community Services study by the American Farmland Trust and the Natural Resources Conservation Service confirms the Piedmont study. This report, which compiles 176 individual county assessments across the United States, shows that agriculture requires only 37 cents of government cost for each dollar of property tax paid. By contrast, residential development costs local governments $1.16 for every dollar of taxes collected. Individual counties differ, but overall, agricultural tax revenue subsidizes residential development.
The report concludes that working farmlands and productive woodlands generate more public revenues than they receive back in public services. The problem is that trees and cows don’t vote, and residential homeowners outnumber farmers. Local governments do everything they can to encourage residential development. This is more a vote-getting scheme than a fiscally sound policy.
Salatin brings up an important point. It’s widely known that the vast majority of rural counties in the United States vote conservatively. They’re overwhelmingly “red”. But America’s cities and suburbs are reliably “blue”, meaning that they consistently vote for ever-bigger government and ever-larger entitlement programs. Hence, development is a growth industry for politicians and government employee unions. Development permanently changes the political landscape in favor of public employees and people dependent on taxpayer-funded benefits. It’s an almost unstoppable trend.
Anyone looking at these studies can easily see the unfairness. The attitudes and policies of local politicians, always hungry for more tax dollars, should infuriate rural farmers. “Economic development” is overwhelmingly sold to rural communities as a positive goal, and most people never question it. But, in a sense, farm families are paying for their own destruction.
To conclude his editorial, Salatin put forward two possible solutions. First, a privatized “pay-as-you-go” educational system, giving families school choice and creating a competitive marketplace for education. Second, lowering farm tax rates while increasing property taxes on residences. Of course neither of these options is politically realistic unless, as he suggests, farmers register their livestock to vote. Given that our elected representatives seem perfectly okay with allowing non-citizens to vote, that option might be easier to accomplish than you might think.
An Adams County resident since 1997, Steve Boehme is a local Adams County businessman and political commentator, who published the Adams County CROSSROADS magazine from 2005 until 2019.
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