The Montgomery Town Board introduced a new agritourism law on Thursday, October 6.

Town Planner Maximilian Stach broke it down into two categories: the right to farm and agritourism. The right to farm protects local farmers and their right to keep farming despite newcomers to the area, while an agritourism law will provide extra revenue to farmers so they can keep up with agritourism practices.

Stach emphasizes that the right to farm will protect farmers from new homeowners who could potentially complain.“The Right to Farm is a set of regulations that are intended to alert homeowners moving into the town that farmers have the right to operate their farm in accordance with best practices and sometimes this may lead to undesirable impacts on their home [such as] odors, sights and sounds, but that they have the right to do it,” said Stach.

Stach further explains that the right to farm protects farmers by requiring complaints to be made to a town committee. In Montgomery’s case, this committee would need to be created upon the law being passed.

“It does establish a new committee of the town. The committee would be a town representative and a representative of the farming community. This is again a little model law of the county. The third member of the committee would be somebody that the complainant and farmer agree with.”

The agritourism law would make many well known practices, like farm-to-table restaurants and farmers markets, components of agriculture. In order to do this, farmland needs to be preserved and farmers need to afford to keep their farm going. To accomplish this idea, people who wish to practice agritourism in a space above 4000 feet (4000 feet and below only needs a building permit) will need to get permission.

“Only between 4000-10,000 square feet there’s an expedited site plan process that allows the planning board to review a sketch plan and a narrative. They make a decision within 60 days,” said Stach.

The public hearing will take place on Thursday, November 3.