Farmland Conservation Easements in Monroe County, West Virginia

A real, funded program: 28 easements, 4,622 acres, since 2002

The Monroe County Farmland Protection Board, created under West Virginia's Voluntary Farmland Protection Act, has been placing agricultural conservation easements on working farms in the county since 2002. As of the board's own most recent published totals, the program has permanently protected 28 farms covering 4,622 acres -- with 2,175 of those acres donated outright to the program by landowners rather than purchased -- and has leveraged more than $2.6 million in state, federal, and non-profit funding to do it. That's a substantial, concrete track record for a rural county of Monroe's size, and it's consistent with the county's documented ranking as 4th among West Virginia's 55 counties in both number of farms and total farmland acreage: this isn't a program protecting land that wasn't valuable to begin with.

Two specific, named examples illustrate how the program actually works on the ground. In one project, the Farmland Protection Board partnered with the West Virginia Agricultural Land Protection Authority and USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service to fund a voluntary conservation easement protecting 85 acres of Ronnie Glover's farm in the county's Union District. In a separate, larger transaction, the Dickson family donated a conservation easement covering more than 600 acres of their Spring Valley Farm directly to the West Virginia Land Trust -- showing that easements here get created both through board-funded purchases and through outright landowner donations to outside land trusts.

How a conservation easement works, and what it means for a specific parcel

An agricultural conservation easement is a voluntary, permanently recorded deed restriction: the landowner keeps title, keeps farming, and can still sell or pass the property to heirs, but permanently gives up the right to subdivide it or convert it to non-agricultural development, typically in exchange for a payment reflecting the value of that forfeited development potential (or, as with the Dickson family's donation, without payment at all). Once recorded, the restriction runs with the land -- it binds every future owner, not just the person who agreed to it, and it does not expire on any schedule. If you're evaluating a Monroe County farm parcel, confirming easement status at the Monroe County Clerk's office is a standard, necessary step before assuming the land could later be subdivided or developed for a non-agricultural use like a subdivision or resort -- an easement can make land significantly cheaper per acre precisely because that potential has been permanently removed, which is either a dealbreaker or exactly the point depending on what you're buying for.

If you're the one considering an easement

If you already own, or are acquiring, working farmland in Monroe County and are interested in the program yourself -- whether to fund a purchase of your development rights or to donate an easement outright as the Dicksons did -- the Monroe County Farmland Protection Board is the direct point of contact, and it can also connect a landowner to partner programs like the WV Agricultural Land Protection Authority, USDA-NRCS, or an outside land trust such as the West Virginia Land Trust for larger or donation-based transactions. Given that the board has already leveraged over $2.6 million in outside funding across 28 prior easements, ask directly about current program capacity, funding availability, and how a specific farm's easement value would be calculated before assuming what your land might be worth under the program.