ATLANTA – State Rep. Chas Cannon recently introduced House Bill 1052, which is aimed at providing flexibility in the Conservation Use Valuation Assessment statute for non-family farm entities and allowing them to rent farm land that is currently enrolled in CUVA.

“As the code reads today, if a CUVA qualified family farm wanted to lease their farm land to a non-family farm entity, it would breach the underlying CUVA covenant for the landowner,” Cannon said. “CUVA is a 10-year agreement that, with local tax assessor offices, allows favorable tax treatment for agricultural land. This favorable tax treatment is designed to protect property owners from being pressured by the property tax burden to convert their land from agricultural use to residential or commercial use. In other words, it’s intended to be an incentive to keep undeveloped land undeveloped. This is an important topic in my district.”

“The CUVA statute requires that family farms be related to each other by blood or marriage within the fourth degree of civil reckoning,” Cannon added. “Many farming operations today are unrelated individuals who have formed an LLC for liability protection and to split operating costs — that makes them non-family farms. and a non-family farm cannot lease farm land from a CUVA qualified landowner because it would breach the landowner’s covenant. So, we spent a good deal of time working on this bill with legislative counsel. We also spoke with local tax assessors, ACCG, as well as the original CUVA statute author Richard Royal, to come up with this language. I want to thank the Georgia Agri-Business Council, Georgia Farm Bureau, Georgia Forestry Association, Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper and others for their support of this legislation.” The bill incorporates all of the original CUVA qualifying restrictions for eligibility but would allow some flexibility for non-family farm entities. The goal of the legislation would be to maintain the integrity of the CUVA statute, while also providing some leeway in the law to reflect the state of today’s farming operations.

HB 1052 passed the House with a vote of 166-2 and now awaits action by the Senate.

For more information on HB 1052, please click here.