The way you're portraying easements through the lens of small-scale farms in New England seems to miss an important role they can play for bigger commercial farms elsewhere.
Land is the most valuable asset on the US farm sector balance sheet, and it is commonly pledged as collateral when producers are trying to secure loans to finance farm investment. Because it's a durable asset, its value capitalizes the expected future stream of farm and non-farm income that would accrue to the landowners. However, the future non-farm income (e.g., from housing development) is basically inaccessible to producers who want to keep their land in agriculture. In other words, it is a form of illiquid capital because lenders do not typically use the land's market value as the basis for determining a producer's borrowing capacity. Putting an easement on the land is basically the only way producers can keep their land in agriculture and tap into the development-oriented component of their land assets' value. Otherwise, apart from estate tax considerations, it really doesn't make financial sense to permanently give up your most valuable property right for an income tax break. I don't like to toot my own horn (jk, totally do) but we did an exploratory descriptive analysis of the correlation between easement activity and farm investment that might be of interest: https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.70002
We don't have greenbelts here like London's, but the closest thing is probably Oregon's urban growth boundary policy. And it's not a leap to say that UGBs are almost certainly a primary reason why Oregon lags behind other states in easements, so it does seem like there's a clear tradeoff between easements and more top-down "smart growth" land use policy.
That's not to say that all easements are socially beneficial or that the existing framework isn't abused (look up "syndicated easements") but just that voluntary private land conservation initiatives should have a place in the discussion.
Also, easements on farms might not provide hiking trails, but they often provide important ecosystem services (e.g., habitat for migratory birds and animal species). To the extent that people value wildlife, working land easements are (or at least can be) nature!
In case you want to dive deeper into land-use history and politics of our friends across the pond, Sam Watling has a nice piece in Works in Progress on the origins and costs of the English greenbelt movement. https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-britain-doesnt-build/
Washington state law creates urban growth boundaries designed to force density and preserve rural and agricultural land. Twenty-nine counties are part of the program. It creates market distortions and second and third degree problems including overburdening streets, utilities and and public services while often increasing the cost of housing.
Good intentions but it's pushing down on a waterbed if there are not more comprehensive approaches to planning and development.
Urban growth boundaries in Oregon also surround cities with agricultural farmland btw. One negative consequence is higher housing prices but there are other approaches for that.
MY is considering this on a property by property basis. That is precisely wrong and why each sale is considered a flight 93 moment. If there is a master plan that allows for regulated growth while also saving what makes an area special, you would not get these dysfunctional fights. Think about the Adirondacks as a model.
I imagine Maine is different due to the desire for ocean shore properties but one way that easements work in the Midwest and Great Plains is that while the land might not be a nature preserve like Yellowstone it can still work as wildlife habitat or ways to reduce water runoff pollution (buffers as they are often sometimes called). And it can be key to getting the politics and economics to work as you can build a larger coalition with groups like Pheasant Forever, Ducks Unlimited and eco types that can appeal across the aisle. It's not an ideal system, but makes sense for a lot of the actors involved compared to alternatives.
I grew up in an outer ring suburb (now a mid ring suburb) in the northeast corridor and there was definitely an attachment to farming. People got really angry when a farmer would sell their land to a developer and the developer would put up a housing development. There were some upsides, like roadside produce stands, and the local milk from these farms was much better and also much more expensive. But usually, it was an attachment to the aesthetics of the small farm and people liking the idea that they lived in farm country even though they were within an hour of a major city and often worked in the city. It also meant that there was a lot of openish land around your house and people like that. So we had funds that would buy up suburban farms to preserve it as farmland that nobody wanted to farm.
Most of the time, when farmers got old, none of their kids wanted to farm, so they sold the land. Which makes sense because farming is hard work and it's very difficult to make money farming in an outer ring suburb. Sometimes one of the kids wanted a hobby farm but that's still a lot of work and that's on top of their regular jobs. The neighbors usually got upset that the farm was being turned into housing and were mad at the kids for not wanting to take it over, but none of the neighbors wanted to quit their jobs, buy the farm and become farmers.
What really struck me is that people really saw this as a moral issue: it was morally wrong to convert a farm into a housing development. I never really heard a detailed explanation of the moral reasoning behind this (people just got mad if you asked for it) but it was definitely seen as a moral issue. It would be nice if people thought through why they saw this as a moral issue and what morals they were defending, but that wasn't happening.
This is exactly my conclusion based on a decade of working as a planner and two decades of writing about development and planning. I’ve quoted this here before, but “all change is perceived as loss,” in the words of a wise researcher I once interviewed. She was talking specifically about parking policy but it applies to the wider context.
There’s this weird dance going on where NIMBY types will claim their concerns are about protecting the food supply, or endangered species or whatever, and then YIMBYs will argue back about how the food supply is actually fine and easements won’t protect wildlife or whatever, but really both sides know none of those things are really the heart of the issue. The real issue is that many people really, REALLY like having those “cutesy” farms around. They like it so much they are willing to pay a lot for it through lost tax revenue and slower economic growth. You can dismiss the preference for a green belt as a luxury— but Americans in 2026 enjoy a degree of material luxury unprecedented in the history of the planet, so why would it be surprising that they care about this kind of aesthetic luxury as well?
This comes up with solar power, too. People decry the loss of farmland to large solar arrays. Of course, we need both food and energy, but I think they often imply that we're losing natural areas, and that's not what farmland is.
There are also really desolate areas that will never be arable but have lots of solar potential, and there will be NIMBYs that still try to shut them down because they are a kind of natural area.
I think small farms are the rural equivalent of independent bookstores, etc. in a city. They have positive externalities beyond their market value in terms of making the environment nicer for the people who want to live in these places. If local governments subsidized places like this, I think people would be willing to pay some, but not too much, in higher taxes. Same for the indirect tax of NIMBY regulations.
They often do subsidize these small farms through favorable property tax rates for "ag" land, and sometimes other favorable rates (for utilities, for example)
Seattle metro has the Growth Management boundary, and I'm sure it's a YIMBY nightmare, but from my perspective it's a tremendous amenity to live within a short drive of 'bucolic countryside.'
I agree that farms aren't nature and, not being a Brit, have not developed a strong view re land use policy in the periphery of Greater London. But I do know there isn't that much actual nature left in the UK. They got rid of bears, wolves and even lynx centuries ago. The fox and badger are their "big" predators. They don't have much old-growth forest. The countryside is as close as they get to nature outside a few pockets of Britain. So I can understand wanting to preserve it, even though trade-offs should be weighed.
Something I think the outsize salience of "farming" in what's basically Americana consciousness-lore helps reveal is the fundamental role of what I like to call "aspirational aesthetics" in shaping people's development attitudes. By this I emphatically do not mean stuff like the study about similar kinds of building facades and their effect (or lack thereof) on NIMBYism. What I mean is the role of *how people feel* when they *abstractly think about* an image that comes to mind for them as a function of the availability heuristic, which I think is basically the extent to which most people engage in most issues.
Farms — not actual farms as practiced typically, but "farms" of just this sort — have positive valence here in the exact same ways "data centers" have negative valence here, totally independent of the operant functionality of any of them. And I think this basically generalizes.
Great article. One of my convictions is that we do not preserve nearly enough wilderness, and preserving this sort of "greenery" in the form of farms and heavily managed parkland (i.e. giant lawns) ends up absorbing all the nature-preserving demand while helping not at all.
You didn’t mention Oregon, which has large areas reserved as effective farm use outside the metropolitan areas (for example, not that far outside of Portland). It’s resulted in people buying say 40 acres, building a house and other buildings, and planting “Christmas trees” while they commute into Portland for their job. They never really tried to harvest the trees so they have now reforested the Willamette Valley in patches.
The way you're portraying easements through the lens of small-scale farms in New England seems to miss an important role they can play for bigger commercial farms elsewhere.
Land is the most valuable asset on the US farm sector balance sheet, and it is commonly pledged as collateral when producers are trying to secure loans to finance farm investment. Because it's a durable asset, its value capitalizes the expected future stream of farm and non-farm income that would accrue to the landowners. However, the future non-farm income (e.g., from housing development) is basically inaccessible to producers who want to keep their land in agriculture. In other words, it is a form of illiquid capital because lenders do not typically use the land's market value as the basis for determining a producer's borrowing capacity. Putting an easement on the land is basically the only way producers can keep their land in agriculture and tap into the development-oriented component of their land assets' value. Otherwise, apart from estate tax considerations, it really doesn't make financial sense to permanently give up your most valuable property right for an income tax break. I don't like to toot my own horn (jk, totally do) but we did an exploratory descriptive analysis of the correlation between easement activity and farm investment that might be of interest: https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.70002
We don't have greenbelts here like London's, but the closest thing is probably Oregon's urban growth boundary policy. And it's not a leap to say that UGBs are almost certainly a primary reason why Oregon lags behind other states in easements, so it does seem like there's a clear tradeoff between easements and more top-down "smart growth" land use policy.
That's not to say that all easements are socially beneficial or that the existing framework isn't abused (look up "syndicated easements") but just that voluntary private land conservation initiatives should have a place in the discussion.
Also, easements on farms might not provide hiking trails, but they often provide important ecosystem services (e.g., habitat for migratory birds and animal species). To the extent that people value wildlife, working land easements are (or at least can be) nature!
In case you want to dive deeper into land-use history and politics of our friends across the pond, Sam Watling has a nice piece in Works in Progress on the origins and costs of the English greenbelt movement. https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-britain-doesnt-build/
Washington state law creates urban growth boundaries designed to force density and preserve rural and agricultural land. Twenty-nine counties are part of the program. It creates market distortions and second and third degree problems including overburdening streets, utilities and and public services while often increasing the cost of housing.
Good intentions but it's pushing down on a waterbed if there are not more comprehensive approaches to planning and development.
Urban growth boundaries in Oregon also surround cities with agricultural farmland btw. One negative consequence is higher housing prices but there are other approaches for that.
MY is considering this on a property by property basis. That is precisely wrong and why each sale is considered a flight 93 moment. If there is a master plan that allows for regulated growth while also saving what makes an area special, you would not get these dysfunctional fights. Think about the Adirondacks as a model.
I imagine Maine is different due to the desire for ocean shore properties but one way that easements work in the Midwest and Great Plains is that while the land might not be a nature preserve like Yellowstone it can still work as wildlife habitat or ways to reduce water runoff pollution (buffers as they are often sometimes called). And it can be key to getting the politics and economics to work as you can build a larger coalition with groups like Pheasant Forever, Ducks Unlimited and eco types that can appeal across the aisle. It's not an ideal system, but makes sense for a lot of the actors involved compared to alternatives.
I grew up in an outer ring suburb (now a mid ring suburb) in the northeast corridor and there was definitely an attachment to farming. People got really angry when a farmer would sell their land to a developer and the developer would put up a housing development. There were some upsides, like roadside produce stands, and the local milk from these farms was much better and also much more expensive. But usually, it was an attachment to the aesthetics of the small farm and people liking the idea that they lived in farm country even though they were within an hour of a major city and often worked in the city. It also meant that there was a lot of openish land around your house and people like that. So we had funds that would buy up suburban farms to preserve it as farmland that nobody wanted to farm.
Most of the time, when farmers got old, none of their kids wanted to farm, so they sold the land. Which makes sense because farming is hard work and it's very difficult to make money farming in an outer ring suburb. Sometimes one of the kids wanted a hobby farm but that's still a lot of work and that's on top of their regular jobs. The neighbors usually got upset that the farm was being turned into housing and were mad at the kids for not wanting to take it over, but none of the neighbors wanted to quit their jobs, buy the farm and become farmers.
What really struck me is that people really saw this as a moral issue: it was morally wrong to convert a farm into a housing development. I never really heard a detailed explanation of the moral reasoning behind this (people just got mad if you asked for it) but it was definitely seen as a moral issue. It would be nice if people thought through why they saw this as a moral issue and what morals they were defending, but that wasn't happening.
The moral reasoning is they don't like change and shouldn't be forced to endure it - as near as I can figure.
This is exactly my conclusion based on a decade of working as a planner and two decades of writing about development and planning. I’ve quoted this here before, but “all change is perceived as loss,” in the words of a wise researcher I once interviewed. She was talking specifically about parking policy but it applies to the wider context.
There’s this weird dance going on where NIMBY types will claim their concerns are about protecting the food supply, or endangered species or whatever, and then YIMBYs will argue back about how the food supply is actually fine and easements won’t protect wildlife or whatever, but really both sides know none of those things are really the heart of the issue. The real issue is that many people really, REALLY like having those “cutesy” farms around. They like it so much they are willing to pay a lot for it through lost tax revenue and slower economic growth. You can dismiss the preference for a green belt as a luxury— but Americans in 2026 enjoy a degree of material luxury unprecedented in the history of the planet, so why would it be surprising that they care about this kind of aesthetic luxury as well?
This comes up with solar power, too. People decry the loss of farmland to large solar arrays. Of course, we need both food and energy, but I think they often imply that we're losing natural areas, and that's not what farmland is.
There are also really desolate areas that will never be arable but have lots of solar potential, and there will be NIMBYs that still try to shut them down because they are a kind of natural area.
I think small farms are the rural equivalent of independent bookstores, etc. in a city. They have positive externalities beyond their market value in terms of making the environment nicer for the people who want to live in these places. If local governments subsidized places like this, I think people would be willing to pay some, but not too much, in higher taxes. Same for the indirect tax of NIMBY regulations.
Organic farms/independent bookstores/NPR. 😡
They often do subsidize these small farms through favorable property tax rates for "ag" land, and sometimes other favorable rates (for utilities, for example)
Seattle metro has the Growth Management boundary, and I'm sure it's a YIMBY nightmare, but from my perspective it's a tremendous amenity to live within a short drive of 'bucolic countryside.'
Yeah, but let Seattle have it - we’ve done a ton on the YIMBY front compared to almost anywhere else.
And this is the real key--UGBs get more defensible if cities enact full on YIMBYism within the boundaries.
I agree that farms aren't nature and, not being a Brit, have not developed a strong view re land use policy in the periphery of Greater London. But I do know there isn't that much actual nature left in the UK. They got rid of bears, wolves and even lynx centuries ago. The fox and badger are their "big" predators. They don't have much old-growth forest. The countryside is as close as they get to nature outside a few pockets of Britain. So I can understand wanting to preserve it, even though trade-offs should be weighed.
Something I think the outsize salience of "farming" in what's basically Americana consciousness-lore helps reveal is the fundamental role of what I like to call "aspirational aesthetics" in shaping people's development attitudes. By this I emphatically do not mean stuff like the study about similar kinds of building facades and their effect (or lack thereof) on NIMBYism. What I mean is the role of *how people feel* when they *abstractly think about* an image that comes to mind for them as a function of the availability heuristic, which I think is basically the extent to which most people engage in most issues.
Farms — not actual farms as practiced typically, but "farms" of just this sort — have positive valence here in the exact same ways "data centers" have negative valence here, totally independent of the operant functionality of any of them. And I think this basically generalizes.
Great article. One of my convictions is that we do not preserve nearly enough wilderness, and preserving this sort of "greenery" in the form of farms and heavily managed parkland (i.e. giant lawns) ends up absorbing all the nature-preserving demand while helping not at all.
Unlike your take on dogs, this one is actually manifestly correct.
You didn’t mention Oregon, which has large areas reserved as effective farm use outside the metropolitan areas (for example, not that far outside of Portland). It’s resulted in people buying say 40 acres, building a house and other buildings, and planting “Christmas trees” while they commute into Portland for their job. They never really tried to harvest the trees so they have now reforested the Willamette Valley in patches.
Perhaps we should have legally required them to keep a mule as well (to eat the saplings).