More than 124 governmental entities concerned about suburban sprawl and farmland implemented farmland preservation programs preserving 1.67 million acres at a billion. We ask how effective these programs are in slowing the rate of farmland unique 50-year 269 county panel data set on preservation programs and farmland Mid-Atlantic States, we employ the propensity score matching method to find strong evidence that these programs have had a statistically significant effect on the rate loss. Preservation programs on average decrease the rate of farmland loss by 2.2 percentage points; a 30-42% decrease from the average 5-year rate of 7.31%.