CABONNE councillors have put a new farmland rating policy out for public feedback.
The move came at the regular July council meeting last week and would see a new environmental category added to the existing farmland use areas.
The other farm rating categories are extensive, intensive, forestry and general.
Cr Andrew Rawson praised the new environmental farmland option.
“That’s an excellent reform and much needed and in fact follows really closely on the heels of the State Government reform act back in 2021, which suggested that there should be a completely separate environmental category,” he said.
“The fact that you’ve (municipal staff) gone down this route and produced something equivalent to that under the farmland category is an excellent thing, so well done.”
However, Cr Rawson did raise an issue with the “profit making” section of the draft policy.
“There’s a bit of confusion in the policy where it says that farmland has to be a profit making exercise which is reasonable for most of the categories,” he said.
“But in the case of the environmental subcategory there would not always be an opportunity to be making a profit out of land that’s effectively designed for conservation purposes.
“For example, if it goes there under a bio biodiversity stewardship agreement or a conservation covenant or any of those sort of things separate from say the carbon sequestration component, those ones may not actually have a dollar value involved in actual profit, whereas the carbon farming one might you know there might actually be some profit.”
The proposed policy does not outline what property rates land covered by the proposed environmental category might be liable for; rather it outlines what is and isn’t considered farmland.