Virginia Beach (city), VA
Virginia Beach's Agricultural Reserve Program (ARP)
South of Virginia Beach's Green Line, the city has spent three decades paying farmers to permanently give up development rights on their land. As of the most recent fiscal-year figures, more than 11,000 acres are enrolled -- and the program is still actively growing. Here's what that means if you're buying, selling, or considering enrolling land in the area.
This page covers what's specific to Virginia Beach (city). For the general explanation, see the national guide.
A three-decade program that is still actively growing
Virginia Beach's Agricultural Reserve Program (ARP) has been running since the mid-1990s, and it is not a legacy program coasting on old enrollments -- it is actively adding acreage every year. As of the city's fiscal year 2025 close, 11,358 acres were enrolled in ARP, capturing 992 separate development rights permanently removed from the city's buildable land supply. FY2025 alone enrolled 467 acres, well over the program's internal goal of roughly 300 acres per year, and city officials have attributed the strong year in part to landowners finding ARP's installment-purchase terms especially attractive amid stable interest rates.
The pipeline behind that number is real and current, not speculative: for fiscal year 2026, six ARP applications were already in progress projecting another 587 acres of enrollment, with at least seven additional applications in line for review. For anyone evaluating land south of the Green Line -- whether as a working farmer, a buyer hoping to keep a large tract undeveloped, or a landowner weighing whether to enroll -- this is a program with real momentum right now, not a dormant one.
How ARP actually works
ARP is a purchase-of-development-rights program: the city buys the right to ever develop a qualifying farm parcel beyond agricultural and open-space use, typically through an installment-purchase agreement that pays the landowner over a period of years rather than in a single lump sum, while the landowner keeps title, keeps farming, and can still sell or pass down the property -- just without the development rights, which are permanently retired regardless of who owns the land afterward.
That permanence is the entire point of the program: it is designed to keep the city's southern agricultural area functioning as farmland indefinitely, insulating it from the same suburban development pressure that transformed Virginia Beach's northern two-thirds over the second half of the 20th century. Applications are evaluated by the city against factors like the land's agricultural value, size, and location relative to other already-enrolled or already-protected parcels -- a pattern of building contiguous protected acreage rather than scattering easements randomly across the rural south.
What this means if you're buying, selling, or already own land in the Agricultural Reserve Area
If you're evaluating a specific parcel south of the Green Line, confirm its ARP enrollment status directly with the city before assuming any future subdivision or development potential -- an ARP-enrolled tract has permanently forfeited that potential, which is either a dealbreaker if your plan involves development or exactly the point if you want land that will stay agricultural and low-density for the long term, insulated from a neighbor eventually selling to a subdivider.
If you already own, or are acquiring, qualifying farmland in the reserve area and are weighing whether to enroll, the program's current momentum (467 acres enrolled in FY2025, hundreds more already in the FY2026 pipeline) suggests real, ongoing city appetite and funding for new applications -- but confirm current program capacity, the installment-payment structure, and this cycle's application timeline directly with the city's Agriculture Department, since funding availability and landowner demand can both shift from one fiscal year to the next.
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- Preserving Farmland and Rural Heritage in Virginia Beach — City of Virginia Beach (accessed 2026-09)
- Virginia Beach's farmland preservation program grows with interest from landowners — WHRO Public Media (accessed 2026-09)
- Agricultural Reserve Program — City of Virginia Beach (accessed 2026-09)
- Agricultural Reserve Program FAQ — City of Virginia Beach (accessed 2026-09)
Last reviewed 2026-09