News

Farmers eye options for preserving agricultural land

‘We can’t afford to put off preserving farmland,’ Linda Odom Pryor told fellow farmers last week during a presentation on options for saving agricultural land.

By Bill Moss, Published: May 4, 2024

Apple orchards become subdivisions, a forest is chain-sawed for a distribution center and the suburbs creep into the agricultural heart of the county. Studies rank North Carolina among the most threatened states in terms of loss of farmland and Henderson County is among the most endangered.

“We can’t afford to put off preserving farmland,” Linda Odom Pryor declared to a group of fellow farmers last Thursday night. “Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to hear from Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler and he announced an alarming projection that North Carolina could lose up to 1.6 million acres of agricultural land within the next 17 years. To put the magnitude of those 1.6 million acres in perspective, take a moment and imagine the land area of Jackson, Haywood, Transylvania, Buncombe and Henderson County. The amount of projected loss would encompass an area equivalent to those five counties. That is just unfathomable to me.”

Pryor, an Edneyville farmer who is active in the Farm Bureau Federation, was speaking to a roomful of 75 farmers and public officials to open a presentation at St. Paul Mountain Vineyards organized by the farm community to explain options for protecting farmland from residential and commercial encroachment. So-called food security is one driving consideration. “Food requires agriculture. Agriculture requires land” is a motto of the farm preservation movement.

“Agricultural land loss affects everyone and there are serious implications when food and fiber production are decreased,” Pryor said. “Preserving farmland is good for the economy, environment and a safe and affordable food supply and the rural character of our county.”

‘As long as the flag is flying …’

Evan Davis, director of the N.C. Agriculture Department’s farmland preservation division since January of 2022, described the state’s main tool for preserving farms. Agriculture conservation easements buy the farmer’s development rights, ensuring that the land remains in production while barring commercial development, subdivisions, dumping of trash, commercial billboards and non-farm structures.

“Anything related to the ag operation would be allowed,” Davis said.

The meeting last week was organized independently from the county’s new Farmland Preservation Task Force, which gavels its first meeting to order on May 13. Davis emphasized that no one would force a farm conservation easement on anyone.

“I want to make clear that this is a voluntary program,” Davis said. “This is something that landowners have to want to participate. And with this program, the land remains in private ownership. There are no land transfers, no condemnation. The conservation easement is going to be focusing on one property right and that is your development right. So through this program the development right will be purchased, the ability to develop the land will be restricted, but you still maintain ownership of the land.”

It’s important for the landowner to accept, too, that farm conservation easements are perpetual.

“What that means is — I love this phrase — as long as the flag is flying the easement will be in force,” Davis said. “This is a very important decision not only for yourself but for those who come after. The easement runs with land, so the next owners, whether that’s through a sale or transfer or inheritance, the land will be subject to the same restrictions.”

Easement preserves ‘right to farm’

Preserving farmland is important, Davis said, because agriculture accounts for $103.2 billion in economic value, or 16 percent of North Carolina’s gross state product. Land in a conservation easement remains on the tax books, he added, and agricultural lands are “net providers of local tax dollars rather than net users.”

Other funding sources for farmland preservation are local bond issues, rollback taxes counties collect when land goes out of farm production, sales tax increases approved by county voters and the USDA’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program. Davis ticked off the reasons why a farmer might want to consider an agriculture conservation easement.

“The land remains in private ownership. You still own the fee-simple to the property,” he said. “That means you have the right to privacy. You can enforce your trespass. The easements we record do not allow public access. Right to farm — honestly, that’s the purpose of program. We want to make sure that you’re able to engage in any type of agricultural, horticultural, forestry operations.”