OSU researcher: counties with more easements show signs of increased owned land and machinery investment

Dan Bigelow, an OSU researcher, presented findings from a study examining links between conservation easements and farm investment. Using county‑level measures across U.S. data and supplementing with satellite land‑cover filters for agricultural easements, his team found a negative correlation between development pressure and farm real‑estate leverage and, in many counties, that easement activity correlates with increases in land owned by producers, lower rent expenses, higher tractor counts, and a weaker increase in hired farm labor.

"Counties with more easements are associated with an increase in the percent of land owned by producers, and a decrease in rent expenses," Bigelow summarized. He cautioned that the national easement database used (voluntary contributions to the National Conservation Easement Database) is incomplete and that county‑level analysis is coarse; he recommended parcel‑level matching and satellite data to better test whether easements enable producers to access land‑value capital or instead reflect other local policies. Bigelow also noted Oregon’s pattern differs from many states, possibly due to state land‑use rules such as urban growth boundaries.

Commissioners asked whether easements lower market value, if incentives offset reduced market price, and how funding sources vary by state; Bigelow said the counterfactual valuation requires parcel‑level sale data and that funding‑source attribution is inconsistently recorded in the national database.