Our Focus on Farmland
With community support and the partnership of willing local farm owners, Jefferson Land Trust has permanently protected more than 20 local farm properties totaling nearly 1,600 acres.
Our Local Working Farms
Working farms are an essential part of our region’s cultural and physical landscape, shaping our economy, our local food security, and our ways of life. We all have a stake in keeping our shared lands open, productive, and healthy.
The Land Trust was founded in 1989 and for its first 14 years focused primarily on protecting and restoring wildlife and salmon habitat. Then, in 2003, the organization took a broader look at our local landscape and expanded its mission to include protecting working lands — the iconic farms and forests of our area.
The Importance of Local Farmland
Food Security
In Jefferson County, thriving farms feed our community in a variety of ways. They give us access to fresh, healthful food that’s grown and produced right here. Farms protect our local food security and help sustain our region’s rural character. Additionally, the joyful exchange of goods grown, produced, and sold by our own neighbors strengthens our ties to one another.
Economic Benefits
Working farms also benefit our economy by keeping money spent on food inside the county, providing jobs, and attracting tourist dollars from visitors who appreciate our vibrant local food scene and the beauty of rolling fields, picturesque barns, and wide-open vistas.
A 2021 special report entitled, The economic benefits of conserved lands, trails, and parks on the North Olympic Peninsula, found that, in addition to creating jobs, Jefferson County farms generate $9.8 million in farm products annually.
Wildlife
Farmland is also beneficial for wildlife, with many of them relying on these open spaces for foraging, migration, and shelter.
Changing Climate
And as we adapt to a growing population and a changing climate, farms are becoming even more important. Where crops and soils are nurtured, they absorb carbon and help cool our warming planet. Open farmland also retains rainwater, helping to reduce the threat of flooding.
Growing Threats to Farmland
Changing Hands
We know how important our farms and working lands are to the overall wellbeing of Jefferson County. But with land prices soaring and a generation of farmers planning to retire, farms are becoming more and more vulnerable throughout the U.S. In fact, according to the Land Trust Alliance, approximately 40 percent of the nation’s farmland is owned by people over 65, meaning that up to 370 million acres of farmland could change hands in the next couple of decades.
Changing Land Use
We’re losing these critical lands at an alarming rate. According to American Farmland Trust, every day across the nation 2,000 acres of agricultural land are paved over, fragmented, or converted to uses that jeopardize farming. And these national trends are mirrored here in Jefferson County, where we experienced a 12 percent decline in farmland between 2012 and 2017.
When farmland is taken out of production, it threatens our local food economy and security, our wildlife, the rural character of our landscape, and the opportunity for our children and their children to access fresh local food along the many other benefits our local farms have to offer.
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Our Impact
By partnering with farmers and ranchers to permanently protect their lands from development, we’re helping them meet their goals, maintain their ways of life, and preserve their legacies.
Farmland protection keeps the land intact, productive, more affordable for the next generation of farmers, and forever open to wildlife.
In fact, many of the local farms the Land Trust has protected have also set aside areas specifically for wildlife habitat, such as forested zones and buffers along salmon-bearing creeks.
Increasing the Pace of Farmland Conservation
Traditional Funding Methods
The majority of our farmland protection has been achieved using traditional land trust tools like government grants, but these can take years to secure. When farm owners want to sell or protect their land, and aren’t in a rush, we can take this approach.
Buy+Protect+Sell Conservation Model
However, if farmland is listed for sale on the open market, we must act fast to protect it using the buy+protect+sell conservation model. In this scenario, land trusts buy important farmland, protect it with an agricultural conservation easement, and then sell the land to the next farmer or rancher at a price that‘s reduced because of the conservation easement.
The limiting factor with this model is having access to ready capital when a property meeting our conservation criteria goes on the market or when we’re approached by a landowner looking to sell.
Innovative New State Programs
There are two Washington state programs designed to support the buy+protect+sell conservation model of farmland protection.
The programs work together to accelerate the pace of protecting at-risk farmland and keeping it in production, while also lowering barriers to land access for beginning, veteran, and/or historically underserved farmers and ranchers.
The Land Trust recently used funding from the Farmland Protection and Affordability Investment (FarmPAI) program to purchase farmland in Chimacum, place an easement on the property with funds from the Farmland Protection and Land Access (FPLA) program, and will sell the protected farmland to the next farmer at the reduced value.
The Flexible Opportunity Fund
Knowing that funding from these innovative new state programs is limited, Jefferson Land Trust has establish the Flexible Opportunity Fund to help us respond quickly to conservation opportunities important for our region.
This fund will help ensure we remain on the front lines of protecting working farmland, wildlife habitat, and forests in a market stressed by development pressures — increasing access to land for emerging farmers, small business owners, and communities historically excluded from land ownership.