The federal Farmland Protection Program uses easements and other interests in land to conserve agricultural land in order to "protect the agricultural use and future viability, and related conservation values, of eligible land by limiting nonagricultural uses of that land." (35) An
agricultural conservation easement is a voluntary restriction that individual landowners can use to keep the land available for farming and the restrictions of the easement are binding on future uses of the land.
To a large extent, both bills would concatenate the wide range of paid land diversion programs available under the 2014 Farm Bill into two major initiatives: the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the
Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP).
See also
Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, Natural Res.
Taxpayers pay to place environmentally sensitive croplands into conservation uses via the CRP, Wetlands Reserve Program, Grasslands Reserve Program, and the new 2014 Farm Bill's
Agricultural Conservation Easement Program.
(53.) See, e.g.,
AGRICULTURAL CONSERVATION EASEMENT [section] 8(c) (2002), available at http:// www.farmlandinfo.org/documents/37237/Macedon_NY_Easement.pdf ("New buildings and other structures and improvements to be used primarily for agricultural purposes may be built on the Property within the Farmstead Area.
It would create the
Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, which would coordinate the activities of the existing Wetlands Reserve Program, the Grassland Reserve Program, and the Farmland Protection Program.
An additional 2,000 acres of land could be preserved through an
agricultural conservation easement. To date, approximately 260 acres in the southern portion of the Washington County Grasslands have been purchased and protected by The Nature Conservancy--the first steps in making this goal a reality.
[Cost.sub.i] = cost of conservation action (e.g., purchasing an
agricultural conservation easement to prevent the loss of farmland benefits or the transaction costs of accepting a donated easement) of site i.
Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government developed the first
agricultural conservation easement program by a local government.
Several existing programs that retire or preserve wetlands and agricultural land have been combined in a new omnibus category called the
Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP), based on their use of long-term easements as a conservation tool.