Land Tenure

We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see the land as a community
to which we belong, we may begin to use if with love
and respect.

—Aldo Leopold
A Sand County Almanac, 1949

 

Each year our country’s base of productive agricultural land shrinks as more and more farmland is converted to homes and commercial development bringing about the speculative commoditization of the land, which renders it unaffordable for farming.

In 1995, to fight this trend and with the help of CSA members and Chuck Matthei, the founder of Equity Trust, Inc., we successfully purchased our 40-acre farm and protected it for future generations through a shared equity farm conservation easement. To establish this easement, the value of the property was split into two parts. The first part derived strictly from the farm's agricultural use—the amount that could be paid for the farmland based on the agricultural income we can reasonably expect to obtain from working the land. The second part was the remaining nonagricultural value that might result from competitive bidding to buy this farmland to develop as vacation, estate, or other type of property. These two quite different values were determined by appraisals conducted pursuant to the valuation criteria in California’s Williamson Act.

While we own the buildings and agricultural uses and equity of the property, Equity Trust owns the farm conservation easement. Traditional conservation agreements limit development and protect the natural resources on the land. Our easement also mandates that the land be actively farmed by a resident using organic or biodynamic methods, prohibits the use of genetically modified organisms, and limits the resale price to the appraised agricultural value at the time of sale. The farm will always be affordable to subsequent generations of farmers, and be actively used as a producing farm. The easement preserves the public’s interest in the property as a sustainable food-bearing resource and the farmer’s need to hold agricultural use rights and land security.

CSA members and interested foundations and individuals raised the $95,000 for purchasing the easement. This new form of conservation easement has served as a model for other CSA farms across the country in their efforts to achieve stable land tenure and preserve farmland.