Conservation Easements in Highland County, Ohio

Ohio's farmland-preservation program, and Highland County's own record

The Ohio Department of Agriculture runs a farmland-preservation program that pays landowners to place a permanent agricultural easement on their land -- typically funded jointly with USDA and administered locally through a nonprofit land trust that serves as the program's local sponsor. In Highland County, that sponsor is Cardinal Land Conservancy (formerly known as the Southern Ohio Farmland Preservation Association), which also serves neighboring Adams, Brown, Clermont, Hamilton, and Warren Counties.

Highland County has at least two specific, documented examples on record. In 2016, a 76.758-acre agricultural easement was placed on a farm owned by Kim Hiatt, as trustee, in Penn Township's Careytown area, through a combined effort of the farm owner, the Ohio Department of Agriculture, USDA, and Cardinal Land Conservancy. Separately, the 220-acre Geer Farm, owned by Donald and Cheryl Geer, has Cardinal Land Conservancy listed as its local sponsor for farmland preservation. The program remains active statewide: in 2026, the Ohio Department of Agriculture announced roughly $6 million in new farmland-preservation commitments across the state.

What an agricultural easement actually does to a parcel

An agricultural easement under this kind of program is a permanent, recorded restriction that runs with the land regardless of who owns it -- it doesn't expire when the property is sold, and a future owner is bound by it just as the original one was. In exchange for the easement payment, the landowner (and every owner after them) generally gives up the right to subdivide the property for non-farm development or to convert it to most non-agricultural uses, while retaining the right to keep farming it, pass it to heirs, or sell it to another farmer.

For a buyer, that means a parcel already under one of these easements comes with real, permanent limits baked into the title -- generally a feature for someone who wants to farm the land or hold it as protected open space, and a real constraint for someone hoping to eventually develop or subdivide it. The easement itself, once recorded, should show up in a standard title search, but it's worth asking directly rather than assuming, especially on larger tracts in the parts of the county (like Penn Township) where this kind of program has already been active.

What to check before you buy

Three concrete steps for a Highland County parcel: (1) ask the seller or a title company directly whether the property carries a recorded agricultural easement, conservation easement, or similar deed restriction -- and if so, ask for the recorded easement document itself rather than relying on a verbal summary of what it allows; (2) check the Highland County Recorder's index for any easement recorded against the parcel or, for a larger tract that may have once been part of a bigger farm, against the original larger parcel it was carved from; and (3) if you're specifically interested in placing your own land into this kind of program rather than avoiding one already in place, contact Cardinal Land Conservancy directly, since program funding and eligibility criteria (acreage minimums, soil quality, and available state/federal funding) change from year to year.