Renew America Success Stories

Farmland Preservation

 

Franklin Land Trust (FLT) aggressively defends small farms, rural communities and rural life from the onslaught of "suburbanizing" development. Through innovative partnerships with farmers, state agencies and other farmland preservation groups, FLT has protected 11 rural and farmland sites -- representing 1,036 acres -- from conversion to strip housing and other types of construction. 

FLT was founded in 1986 and made its mark a short time later through its preservation work at the Loomis Farm. Threatened with residential strip development, FLT devised a way to protect the farm by providing a combination of rural affordable housing with farmland preservation. This first-of-its-kind effort earned FLT attention from affordable housing and land conservation constituencies across the nation. 

Since then, among other accomplishments, FLT has: 

• Stopped strip development of 43 house lots on Albert Farm in Hawley, MA;
• Designed a land conservation plan through which 127 acres of managed timberland were donated to the New England Forestry Association for permanent preservation as a non-developable tree farm;
• Through deed restrictions and the sale of conservation homesites, FLT protected 40 acres of farmland that now serve as a permanent development buffer along the Bear River.

Program Highlights 

Loomis Farm 

• Through an innovative development plan, 180 core acres of the farm were permanently preserved and sold at below market rate to young farmers.
• Deed restrictions protected sensitive wildlife habitat on the land.
• To satisfy the need for housing, two affordable homes using traditional architecture were built for two local families.

• Franklin Land Trust worked with a young farm family to devise a novel way to broker the sale of development rights. In a three-way transaction, the rights were sold from the farmer to Franklin Land Trust, and then sold to the state's Agricultural Preservation Restriction Program. Franklin Land Trust created an innovative payment structure that maximized the farmers' after-tax income.
• The Donovan Farm is one of the largest certified organic farms in Massachusetts and has begun to test market its own brand of potato chips.

• FLT helped the Fitzgerald family sell the development rights to their 93-acre farm to the state's Agricultural Preservation Restriction Program. FLT then introduced a young farmer to the Fitzgeralds who intends to buy and work this farm as the Fitzgeralds settle into retirement in a small home on the edge of the farm property.

Vital Statistics

Program Management/Partnerships: The Franklin Land Trust administers farmland preservation programs and has formed partnerships and/or cooperative working relationships with the state's Agricultural Preservation Restriction Program, the Department of Public Works Scenic Highway Program, the Massachusetts Office of Communities and Development, the New England Forestry Association, numerous other local and state agencies, and local and national farmland preservation groups. 

Budget: $54,000 annual operating budget. 

Community Served: Farmers who would not have been able to extract equity from their property without destroying agricultural productivity; the towns for whom added growth means increases in municipal services beyond the expansion of tax revenues; and all citizens who value the rural quality of life. 

Measures of Success:

• Completed 11 projects that have permanently preserved 1,036 at-risk acres of farmland throughout five small towns in rural Massachusetts.
• Formed the Farm Promotion Association to bolster the local agricultural economy, thus keeping more land away from development conversion.
• Published "Combining Land Conservation with Affordable Limited Development," a publication detailing the first ever development/preservation initiative completed at the Loomis Farm.