Steve Burns
WMAL.com

ROCKVILLE – (WMAL) 96-year-old Charlie Koiner has been farming on one modest acre of land in Silver Spring and bringing his produce to the farmers market there for decades. He has become a community institution, but his farm has been in danger of going out of business due to some dire financial straits.

“Maryland has an outdated definition of farming, where it says no matter what you’re doing on your land, even if you’re farming, we don’t consider it a farm for tax purposes unless it’s over five acres,” Councilmember Tom Hucker told WMAL. “In my view, there are folks that we’ve been overtaxing for decades and this is a very simple correction to the tax code.”

Hucker’s bill would allow “urban farms” to be taxed as farmland, and allow Koiner to stay in business.

“It’s incredibly popular with the community,” he said. “It’ll lower their property tax, allow them to stay on the land.”

In the process of trying to help Koiner, Hucker realized an even bigger opportunity for the county may be at hand. The exemption may spur others to follow in Koiner’s footsteps.

“There’s interest in locally-sourced food. There’s interest in reducing food miles and the miles food travels and the greenhouse gases associated with that,” he said. “And this will create jobs and give kids an opportunity to see where their food comes from.”

While urban land may still be more lucrative with condos built on top it, Hucker said green space is becoming a commodity.

“The land is worth a lot more if you just sold it to developers,” he said. “But that’s really not what the community would want.”

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