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Vermont Land Trust urges more tools, funding to speed farmland transfers
Summary
At a legislative hearing on H 3 86, Maggie Doan of the Vermont Land Trust described the organization's farmland-access work, pilot tools such as interim ownership and lease‑to‑own, and gaps in legal help, tax incentives and housing that limit new farmers' ability to buy land.
Maggie Doan, Farmland Access Program manager at the Vermont Land Trust, told a legislative hearing on H 3 86 that the trust uses conservation easements, interim ownership and other tools to keep farmland in production and make it affordable for new and beginning farmers.
Doan said the Vermont Land Trust (VLT) conserves thousands of acres and layers farmland-access work onto ecological protection, but rising land values and an aging farm population are creating new pressures. "Our work is really to support the transfer of farmlands, in Vermont to keep it owned by farmers and in agricultural production," Doan said.
The testimony described several existing VLT tools. The trust holds conservation easements and sometimes fee ownership, keeps options to purchase at agricultural value on many easements, and has developed a lease-with-option-to-purchase model. Doan said VLT raised patient capital to provide buy‑and‑hold financing: "We have 15,000,000 in debt capital that's available to buy and hold farms."…
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