On Friday, a panel of national experts discussed trends that are impacting American agriculture and the land on which it depends—and how we, as farmers, ranchers, policy makers, agriculture and conservation leaders, can meet those challenges and seize opportunities to do more to save the land that sustains us.

Farm and ranch land is under pressure from both familiar and emerging threats.  What was once ubiquitous urban growth now takes many shapes, from solar arrays and warehouse sprawl to data centers and low-density residential development.  Attendees explored what is driving this conversion across the country and how proactive planning at the state and local level can help stem the loss of working lands and lay the groundwork for a permanent agricultural landscape.

The loss of America’s working lands poses a long-term threat to agricultural production and to the economies of rural states and communities. This session highlighted strategies that states and counties are using to stabilize their agricultural land base through a combination of economic incentives and short-term land conservation approaches, including Delaware’s agricultural district program, Massachusetts’ farm viability programs, and Idaho’s new law creating a county-based framework for agricultural protection areas.

This session showcased three types of approaches being used by government entities at the state, county and municipal levels to reduce agricultural land loss—California’s use of agricultural mitigation fees, Lexington-Fayette Kentucky use of growth management tools, and the combination of local planning and state regulation around solar development on agricultural land in New Jersey.

Land ownership has traditionally been the pathway for wealth generation in agriculture.  Yet land has become increasingly unaffordable for many producers.  Attendees heard how public Purchase of Agricultural Conservation Easement (PACE) programs and land trusts are using mechanisms such as Options to Purchase at Agricultural Value, resale price restrictions and affirmative covenants to farm in their easement deeds to maintain the affordability of protected working lands, and how Buy-Protect-Sell projects can be used to provide an affordable pathway to land ownership.

America’s aging farmers, ranchers, and agricultural landowners are leaving the farm.  This panel discussion with three NGO service providers focused on the issues that senior producers and landowners face in transferring their farm or ranch to a next generation producer, and some successful strategies and collaborations that public and private service providers are using to assist them in meeting their transfer and succession objectives.

A new Congress and Administration in 2025 provides opportunity to advance new (and old) policy ideas to support land access and farm and ranch transfer. This facilitated discussion focused on federal tax policies, on the Conservation Reserve Program-Transition Incentives Program (CRP-TIP), and on other ideas for increasing support through USDA and other agencies.

Focusing on the evolving use of agrivoltaics, this session looked at how agrivoltaics is defined and the types of agrivoltaics projects in use in the U.S. and elsewhere. Attendees explored research being done, state and local policy approaches around agrivoltaics regulation and incentives, and how agrivoltaics might be addressed in agricultural conservation easements.

Land trusts and public agencies play an important role in empowering farmers and ranchers who have conserved their land to access public conservation cost-share programs and private ecosystem service markets, making their operations more ecologically and economically resilient. This session featured the Texas Agricultural Land Trust’s pioneering additive conservation work, which TALT describes as at the “crossroads of land management, ecology, and economics” and focused on carbon offset credits, regenerative practices, and habitat enhancement, and the interconnected work of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and its State Conservation Commission, which are leveraging federal, state and local resources to incentivize conservation practice adoption on Pennsylvania’s 630,000+ acres of preserved farmland. The session also offered key findings from a collaboration between AFT and Minnesota Land Trust on piloting a stacked approach to whole farm conservation, including a conservation easement, management plan and contract, and an ecosystem services valuation tool.

Farmers, ranchers and landowners are facing rapidly changing environmental conditions—from drought and declining groundwater supplies to more extreme weather events to potential land contamination from “forever chemicals.” How are producers adapting, and what strategies are service providers and state and local governments deploying to address these changing conditions? Attendees explored voluntary, incentive-based approaches to groundwater conservation and conversion to low water intensity crops, strategies for lands impacted by PFAS, and one public agency’s focus on farmland retirement and repurposing.

Natural resource managers across the US are wrestling to understand how to make informed strategies given environmental change. Ultimately, the ability to withstand change must be balanced with a manager’s capacity to address it. This facilitated session explored new adaptive management frameworks for long-term decision making, especially focused on flexibility as conditions continue to change after initial strategies have been implemented. Attendees engaged in an interactive discussion to apply the frameworks to their own situations.

Quantifying the environmental benefits that working lands produce can help drive investments in farm and ranch land retention and protection. This session offered a look at tools and strategies that have been used to measure different ecosystem services—such as valuing ecosystem services provided by conserved ranches, quantifying the climate benefits of avoided conversion of farmland to development, analyzing landscape fragmentation, and working to assign monetary value to environmental processes.

Farmers, ranchers, and landowners have sold or donated agricultural conservation easements on nearly 8 million acres of working land. Yet there are a lot of misconceptions about easements. Attendees learned more about agricultural conservation easements—what they permit, what they limit, how they’re valued–and heard directly from a rancher about how conserving his ranch has impacted his business and his future.  Attendees also explored common myths and misinformation about conservation easements, and one agricultural land trust’s approach to easement education.

Public support for investments in permanent land conservation is strong when advocates make an effective case for them.  This session explored the variety of funding sources being used to finance the purchase of agricultural conservation easements (PACE), tools such as Cost of Community Services studies and economic impact assessments that help make the case for these investments, and campaign messages and strategies around investments in PACE that resonates with policymakers and local taxpayers.

Conservation tax credits have grown as a source of income to landowners for permanently protecting their farm or ranch land. Attendees learned how tax credits like the Colorado conservation tax credit is structured, and how Colorado Cattlemen’s’ Agricultural Land Trust and the Tax Credit Exchange help participating landowners with transferring these credits for cash. The session also explored ways that conservation tax credit programs might be tweaked to provide additional support to next generation of farmers and ranchers.

In this facilitated session, participants delved into issues that land trusts and PACE program staff are grappling within their working lands protection work. Topics were identified by participants at the beginning of the session; potential topics included easement deed terms and conditions, funding stewardship activities, working with successive generation owners of protected land, and challenges posed by utility and transmission lines siting.