3.  Land Use Planning 

Land use planning issues are increasingly impacting upon farmers and the farming community as subdivision, rural residential development, urban encroachment, the intensification of agriculture and Government legislation impact upon the rural / urban interface. Government’s need to better manage this issue as it will only worsen as competition for finite land resources intensifies into the future.

• Land use planning is generally defined as the process of organising the use of lands and their resources to best meet people’s needs in accordance with the land’s capabilities.  The main agricultural land use planning issues include land use conflict, subdivision, Government planning legislation, the development application approval process and the integration of natural resource management issues. 
• Traditionally agriculture land use planning issues were mainly prevalent in the regions surrounding major metropolitan centres on the coast. This is not surprising given that 85% of Australia’s population is located in coastal regions. In more recent times however, agricultural land use planning issues are being experienced throughout Australia.  
• Problematically, farmers views regarding subdivision, one of the key agricultural land use planning issues, has several fronts;
    Some farmers wish to retain the ability to subdivide their agricultural land to provide a potential income source if required.  The verage age of farmers, drought, declining agricultural terms of trade and rising land prices have provided an added incentive in this regard. 
    Other farmers conversely believe that agricultural land should not be unduly fragmented by subdivision as this reduces the amount of productive land available for agriculture, increases the potential for land use conflict while increasing the price of agricultural land making it more difficult for farmers to gain economies of scale.
• Farmers are increasingly impacted by legislation which impacts upon the daily operations of their business and the land use planning area is no exception.  Planning legislation in NSW is governed by the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979.  This Act sets out the state, regional and local environmental plans to guide planning and development decisions. This Act was recently amended to ‘reduce the costs and delays associated with development applications and under certain circumstances to allow the State Government to override a councils planning and development function’. Planning in agricultural regions is generally covered by Local Environmental Plans (LEP) within which Local Councils use zoning and development regulations to control how land is used.
• Poor Local Government decisions relating to subdivisions/ housing developments are frequently made on adjacent land to farming enterprises causing land use conflict and avoidable costs to Local Council and farmers.  Conversely, some Council’s are using LEP’s and/ or Development Control Plans to deter farming development in their region under the guise of preventing land use conflict. 
• The State Government has recently developed a Standardised LEP in which all NSW Local Government’s must use as a template to amend their LEPs within the next 2-5 years.  The Standardised LEP aims to impose a common set of provisions, zones and definitions across all NSW LEPs while allowing flexibility for Local Governments to determine provisions such as minimum lot sizes. 
• While recent trends suggest a centralisation of planning powers by the State Government, Councils still retain the ability to impose LEP provisions which are in excess of the Native Vegetation Act.  Eg Tree Preservations Orders and wildlife corridors nullify exemptions under the Native Vegetation Act.  NSW Farmers' Association is concerned and is lobbying against this trend.

The objectives for this priority area are:

• Securing rural LEPs that adequately take into account farmers concerns regarding land use conflict, native vegetation and threatened species regulations and which ensures that rural Councils adequately consult with farmers prior to LEP amendments over the next 2-5 years.
• Secure DOP/ DPI approval on a methodology to quantitatively determine minimum lot sizes within LEP’s as well as funding to obtain more accurate local data to feed into such methodology. 
• Investigate options that potentially reduce land use conflict and address farmers concerns regarding the current land use planning framework eg  mandatory section 249 certificate clauses regarding the externality impacts of agriculture, reciprocal rights obligations on neighbours so that they must also adhere to the buffer zones stated in the Protection of the Environment Operations Act to help prevent houses being built too close to adjacent farming enterprises and Transferable Development Rights to allow development rights to be traded between low and high density areas.