The following draft legal documents for preserving farms, together with explanatory commentaries, are available for free download:
Farm Preservation Resources
Preserving Farms for Farmers Manual
Preserving Farms for Farmers: A Manual for Those Working to Keep Farms Affordable, presents projects that permanently protected the affordability of whole farms, including land, farmhouse, barns, and other infrastructure, and ensured their continued use for food production. It also provides model legal documents, a model agricultural easement with option to purchase and a model agricultural ground lease, with commentaries.
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Beyond Conservation Easements
If we’re serious about agricultural preservation, it’s not enough to protect the land alone…
This Equity Trust DVD discusses ways of going beyond traditional conservation easements to meet the new challenges posed by the growing market for rutral estates.
Gaining Ground
How CSAs Can Acquire, Hold, and Pass On Land
This discussion of land tenure and financing for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) was adapted from a chapter prepared by Chuck Matthei of the Equity Trust for Farms of Tomorrow Revisited, edited by Trauger Groh and Steven McFadden (Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association, 1997). It lays the groundwork for what has become our farms for farmers program, while setting forth ideas on how to balance individual and community interests, as well as practical ideas on developing a relationship with a land trust and on financing a farm purchase.
