Vermont Land Trust outlines easement stewardship, farm transfers and funding needs

Tracy Shao, president and CEO of Vermont Land Trust, told the Center of Agriculture on Jan. 24 that the organization has conserved large amounts of land in Vermont and is increasingly acting as an interim owner to help new farmers acquire farms.

"We've been, working since 1977," Shao said, and the trust now holds conservation easements on a large portfolio of properties. She said the land trust has conserved roughly 11 percent of the state and holds easements on hundreds of thousands of acres while stewarding 2,300 individual parcels.

The nut graf: Shao emphasized that the trust's conservation work is intended to keep land available for productive use, and that the trust’s ability to move land from outgoing to incoming farmers depends on a steady mix of state, federal and philanthropic funding. Without regular easement funding, the pipeline of farm transfers stretches years.

Shao described three main program areas: acquiring and stewarding conservation easements; activating conserved land through restoration, soil-health and flood-resiliency work; and improving farmland access for new and beginning farmers. She said Vermont Land Trust owns about 44 properties at any given time, and typically holds 10–15 farms to bridge the sale from an outgoing owner to an incoming farmer.

She gave specific examples: Lucas Dairy Farm, where the trust helped an incoming farmer purchase a conserved property from the Audette family; the DeFries farm in Waitsfield and Warren where the trust combined farmland conservation, riparian buffer protection and public-access easements and transferred the property to a next-generation farmer; and Hartwood Farm in Albany, which included a conservation easement combined with lease arrangements for other tenants.

On funding, Shao said Vermont Land Trust’s operating budget (separate from the pass-through funds used to buy easements) is about $7 million and that easement acquisition is funded through other channels, including the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB), USDA programs and philanthropy. She noted the statutory allocation that directs half of the property transfer tax to the Housing and Conservation Trust Fund and said that the trust relies on that sustained funding to meet demand.

Shao described the trust’s stewardship work as a growing and costly part of operations: "a lot of what we do is talking to landowners, hearing what they wanna do, and working with them to find a way to say yes that's within the bounds of the conservation easement," she said. She said the trust is campaigning to add to its easement-stewardship endowment to cover long-term costs.

The presentation also addressed climate and water-resiliency priorities, including use of conserved wetlands and river buffers to absorb floodwaters and active restoration (planting trees and shrubs) to accelerate water-quality benefits. Shao said the trust is returning to conserved lands from earlier decades with willing landowners to add new protections such as riparian buffers.

Shao and questioners discussed how easements affect land value: the trust pays for development rights based on comparative appraisals, so restricting development lowers the sales price and can make farms more affordable for buyers. She said that competing demand for farmland — including larger regional buyers — is putting upward pressure on prices for both conserved and unconserved land.

The presentation closed with Shao inviting further engagement and noting the organization’s continuing emphasis on balancing conservation with housing and economic development so that protected land remains productive and communities remain vibrant.