The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) announced funding for the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, which efforts to conserve various farm and watershed easements. Robert Bonnie, USDA’s Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation, shares some insights about the program:
“One of the challenges we face in agriculture is that we’re increasingly losing land to development. A lot of its prime agricultural land. Some of it’s actually important habitat for grass and birds or other species important to water quality. And so this is a program that helps keep those family farms and families by purchasing the development rights basically purchasing. From land owners, the ability to develop. So it’s an incentive for them to keep those lands in agriculture and it’s a way that we can balance both agriculture conservation and the needs of those families.”
Robert Bonnie, USDA Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation
Funding from the Ag Conservation Easement Program will dedicate $138 million to support 138 individual easements across the country.
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