Region. 'Development credits' for farmers

Sydney’s fringe farmlands can be saved from being swamped by suburbia if residents in already-populous areas accept taller high-rises, at the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance's,Hungry for Change, food summit. The high-rises would be built by developers who pay farmers to stay on their land by buying ''development credits''. Under the scheme the Government would allocate the development credits to farmers in the Sydney basin as an incentive to keep farming, said town planner, Ian Sinclair. The farmers could then sell the credits - likely to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars - to developers, who could trade them for planning permission to increase the density of their projects in built-up areas in the metropolitan area, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.