A new sign now helps farm owners celebrate being a part of Delaware’s Agricultural Lands Preservation Program.
In the program, landowners voluntarily preserve their farms through a two-phase process.
The first phase being the land becoming an Agricultural Preservation District which is a ten-year agreement where it’s agreed to use the land for agricultural purposes only.
In the second phase, the landowner is paid to sell their farm’s development rights – if they choose – to permanently preserve farmland which is also known as an Agricultural Conservation Easement.
“The program is now close to 30 years old, and we have over 1100 farms that have permanently preserved their plan in the agricultural land preservation program, so we wanted to create a sign that commemorates those properties. This sign is available for free to anybody who owns land protected by an agricultural easement,” said Jimmy Kroon the administrator of the Delaware Department of Agriculture.
The program has taken off during the Carney administration with the Delaware Ag Department securing $78 million in state funding with additional funding from county and federal sources.
In that time 33,409 acres of farmland on 403 family farms have been preserved, the highest in the program’s history.
“So when the program originally started they had – it’s kind of an unofficial goal – of preserving 50% of the state's farmland and that would be 300,000 acres, so we're a little over halfway there, we preserved 155,000 acres, so it’s about 29% of the state's total farmland at this point,” said Kroon.
The new sign is only for landowners who have preserved their farm, and can be placed anywhere on their farm or in front of their land.
Kroon adds the new sign is for landowners who preserved their farm and want to promote the program. They can request a sign at de.gov/aglands.