Developers have been harvesting tax credits for years. Now Iowa’s farmers are getting a chance to pick something off the stalk and help the next generation.

Last spring, Gov. Vilsack signed into law a bill establishing the Agricultural Assets Transfer Tax Credit program. Also called the Beginning Farmer Tax Credit Program, it gives a state income tax credit to farm owners who lease any capital asset – land, buildings, machinery or breeding livestock – to a qualified beginning farmer.

The owners get a tax credit equal to 5 percent of the rental income received for a cash rental agreement, or 15 percent of the value of goods produced under a sharing agreement.

We need that kind of innovation to give young farmers a chance to get started. Otherwise, the high cost of land, machinery and inputs will just keep sending them to look for a job in town, and agriculture will quickly become dominated by conglomerates that are less interested in community and neighborliness. And less interested in spending locally, too.

As the 2007 legislative session draws near, it’s time to look at next steps. The Iowa Farmers Union and other groups recently sent a letter to Gov.-elect Culver in support of the predictable concepts: ownership, opportunity, prosperity, environmental stewardship, competition, health and democracy.

More interesting was their advice on what not to do: “We suggest avoiding a future Iowa farm economy that fosters serfdom, bankruptcy, pollution, low property values and special interest control,” the letter read.

If we don’t continue to innovate, if we’re not more supportive of small and medium-sized farming, serfdom is probably where the countryside is headed.

If that happens, we’ll be losing more than a few small-town Main Streets.

A state filled with proud, independent workers, with as many of them self-employed as possible, is very different from a state in which the marching orders come from a distant city, and most of the profits go there.

Serfs just put in their time. We want a state filled with people who find the days too short, and that’s the definition of a young farmer.