20 Mill Rd, Morgantown, PA 19543

Effective Agricultural Preservation District

The purposes of the Effective Agricultural Preservation District are: To protect and promote the continuation of agriculture in areas with primary agricultural lands, per the Governor's Executive Order of October 14, 1997. Those areas being preserved farmland, farmland in agricultural security areas, farmland enrolled in Act 319 of 1974 Clean and Green or Act 515 of 1996, as amended,[1] and land capability Classes I, II, III and IV; To support the Governors Executive Order regarding the irreversible conversion of primary agricultural land to uses that result in its loss as an environmental and essential food and fiber resource across the State of Pennsylvania; To strengthen and preserve strong agricultural activity where farming is a viable component of the local economy; To promote agricultural land uses and activities and uses which act in direct support of agriculture; To protect and stabilize the essential characteristics of these areas, to minimize conflicting land uses detrimental to agriculture enterprises, to limit development which requires highways and other public facilities in excess of those required by agricultural uses and to maintain large contiguous agriculture parcels; To maintain the land resource base, that is, agricultural parcels or farms in sizes which will permit efficient, profitable agricultural operations; To keep separate agricultural land use and activities from incompatible residential, commercial, and industrial development, and public facilities; The regulations set forth in this section seek to achieve the protection of land for agricultural purposes which is a legitimate zoning objective under the state planning statutes; To put into action the goals of the Caernarvon Township Comprehensive Plan, which contains the goal of preserving agriculture and farmlands and promoting them as a part of the local economy; To support the goals and land use plan of the Berks County Comprehensive Plan which, determined that Caernarvon Township is an area which needs to be preserved for agricultural uses