Persephone Farm was one of the first certified organic farms in Oregon.
As its owner seeks to hand it off to the next generation of farmers, that process could be notably easier thanks to a conservation easement that the Oregon Agricultural Trust helped put in place.
The change designates Persephone’s land as solely for agricultural use, a move that OAT said will maneuver around a common problem when farmland is sold.
“Anytime you transfer property, unlike some other assets you may have, it’s pretty valuable,” said Mark Hudson, OAT’s land program director. “And so taxes, fees and other legal considerations screw up the transfer, and that is a surprisingly common occurrence that is one of the number one reasons for our loss of farmland across the state.”
Hudson said that given Persephone’s location on the South Santiam River, it could have been desirable for homebuilding. That could have driven its value up to a point that it would have been hard for someone who wanted to continue to use it as farmland to afford.
A USDA report shows Oregon lost four percent of its farmland between 2017 and 2022.
In a county-level breakdown, those losses were most concentrated in north-central Oregon, particularly in Jefferson, Sherman and Wasco counties, which lost more than 700,000 acres of farmland total.
Oregon Agricultural Trust has protected 30,800 acres through conservation easements.
Hudson said its next project will be finding a new farmer to take over at Persephone, which has been operating since 1985.
