Vermont Land Trust pitches expanded farm access, active forest management and climate-focused easements to legislators

Tracy Shell, president and CEO of Vermont Land Trust, and Alan Karnetz, who manages farm conservation projects in the Champlain Valley, outlined the land trust’s strategies for preserving working farms and forests during a presentation to a legislative committee. They described efforts to expand access to land for new and young farmers, support active forest management on conserved parcels, and add water-quality and flood-resilience restrictions to existing easements.

The land trust emphasized scale and capacity: Shell said the group has conserved about 11% of Vermont and holds roughly 2,300 conservation easements covering about 450,000 acres of forest and more than 1,000 farms. The organization owns 44 properties, has roughly 3,000 members, 47 employees and an operating budget of about $7,000,000, Shell said.

Why it matters: committee members pressed the organization on how conservation interacts with farm economics, housing and climate risks. As farmland values rise and the farming population ages, the trust presented tools designed to keep land available for agricultural use — including acting as a short-term owner, selling easements to reduce purchase prices for farmers, and supporting alternative ownership models such as cooperatives.

The land trust described several approaches they use to expand access and resilience. Those include: serving as a bridge owner while a community-based buyer organizes; preserving space for farmworker housing in easements where appropriate; enabling collective or cooperative ownership models; and revisiting older easements to add riparian buffers and other restrictions that improve water quality and flood resilience.

Alan Karnetz said the organization’s conservation easements "support active management of land," adding that some easements include more restrictive language around stream buffers or unique natural communities and that occasional "no cut" areas exist where ecologically necessary.

Presenters gave examples of recent transactions to illustrate the approaches. They described the Chapman Farm in Tunbridge, where the Vermont Land Trust purchased and is holding the property while the White River Land Collaborative organizes a collective-ownership plan. They said Bread and Butter Farm in South Burlington has been transferred to a new nonprofit now called the Agrihood Collective; the city of South Burlington provided financial support for that transfer and for housing-related planning tied to the farm operation. Shell and Karnetz also cited Heartwood Farm in Albany (sold to Andy Panessa and Marina Carlton), transfers benefiting the Lucas family in Orwell (about 400 acres conserved with VHCB and USDA funding) and other local transactions meant to make ownership affordable for operators.

On funding and values, presenters said the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB) and USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) are the primary public funding partners. Karnetz provided typical easement-payment ranges used in recent appraisals: roughly $1,500 to $2,000 per acre in many cases, with examples ranging to about $600,000 for a roughly 400-acre property (about $1,500/acre). He said the appraisals generally measure the difference between an unrestricted sale price and the restricted, conservation-value price; depending on location and parcel characteristics, easement payments can amount to roughly 40%–60% of fair market value or be higher in high-value towns.

Shell and Karnetz described a revolving pool of roughly $15,000,000 in debt capital the land trust uses to buy and temporarily hold farms so that they can apply conservation instruments and later transfer properties to new owners. They said, based on experience, holding ownership longer (up to five years in some cases) can increase the odds that a new operator will succeed because it allows time to develop the business and make infrastructure improvements.

Committee members asked about wetland and floodplain restoration programs. Presenters said they partner with federal programs such as the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) and state programs including the Department of Environmental Conservation’s river-corridor initiatives and the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP). Shell described returning to previously conserved farms to add "overlays"—additional restrictions tied to restoration and water storage—when climate change or new science indicates those measures would improve resilience.

The trust also described emerging pilot work: a soil-health project with the University of Vermont Extension and a private partner that pays landowners during a transition to practices intended to improve soil metrics and retain more water; and a voluntary, small-scale carbon aggregation pilot in the Cold Hollow region intended to test whether groups of landowners can participate in voluntary carbon markets.

No formal action or vote took place during the presentation. Presenters said they will return to the committee and remain available for follow-up questions.

Ending: The Vermont Land Trust told lawmakers it will continue combining easements, targeted ownership, public funding and technical assistance to keep land in working production while adding protections for water quality and climate resilience.