Georgia’s Farmland Fund Covers Almost 1,000 Acres

Georgia’s Farmland Conservation Fund has tentatively picked six projects covering almost 1,000 acres, after 25 applicants asked for more than $13 million from a $2 million pot. The same officials still cite a projected loss of nearly 800,000 acres of farmland by 2040.

Commissioner of Agriculture Tyler J. Harper and the Georgia Farmland Conservation Council made the first-round call on Sept. 2, 2026. Each project sits in a different county. Names, acreage by farm, and dollar awards stay unpublished until due diligence is done.

Six Projects, Six Counties, Almost 1,000 Acres

The council received 25 applications in the 2026 cycle, from mixed types of operations around the state, and those files added up to over $13 million in requests. State lawmakers had put $2 million in the fund when they stood it up. Asked-for money ran more than six times the cash on the table.

Harper said the department created the fund so farmers could permanently protect land from development, and that he was proud to see that effort become real. He also said many deserving applications will not be funded this time. Nineteen of the 25 files are in that group unless later money appears.

THE FIRST ROUND IN NUMBERS

The six projects tentatively selected for funding still have to clear title work, appraisals, and other checks before money moves. Harper’s office has said it will share more about this year’s awards after that process is finished.

We’re taking an important step forward in protecting Georgia farmland for generations to come.

Six projects have been tentatively selected through the Georgia Farmland Conservation Fund Program, representing nearly 1,000 acres of working farmland across six Georgia counties.… pic.twitter.com/VRlDQRrE9e

— Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper (@AgCommHarperGA) September 2, 2026

Applications opened Feb. 20, 2026, and closed May 20. The department had told applicants they would hear in August. The public list arrived on Sept. 2 instead, still labeled tentative.

Where the 800,000-Acre Warning Comes From

American Farmland Trust’s Farms Under Threat 2040 work put Georgia’s possible conversion at 798,400 acres of farmland, or seven percent of farmland, by 2040 if urban and low-density growth keep their recent pace. The Georgia Department of Agriculture rounds that study to nearly 800,000 acres and links to the same research. That is the figure Harper used when he opened the application window.

THE THREAT AFT MAPPED

• Rank: Georgia sits in the top four states for projected farmland loss by acreage, behind Texas, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
• Counties: Five of the ten U.S. counties with the highest share of land projected to convert are in Georgia.
• Soils: Nearly half of the converted land would be on the state’s most productive soil.
• Where: Most of the loss clusters around fast-growing urban centers, above all the Atlanta metro area.

Mallory O’Steen, American Farmland Trust’s Georgia program manager, said farmers were missing out on tools other states already use, and that permanent easements and zoning matter most around Metro Atlanta. The same report said smarter growth plus protection could spare over one million acres, $566 million in farm output, and 7,500 jobs.

The 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 9,939,313 acres in farms in Georgia, on 39,264 farms, with an average size of 253 acres. Farm numbers were down 7 percent from 2017. Market value of products sold was $13,239,372,000. Those census acres are a different land base from AFT’s land-cover map, which is why the trust’s seven percent should not be recomputed off the census total.

The Georgia Conservancy, which pushed for a state easement program for years, has said Georgia lost about 2.6 million acres of crop, hay, and pasture land between 1974 and 2016. Conservancy president Katherine Moore has sat on the farmland advisory council since late 2024.

Land Trusts File the Paperwork

The fund is not itself an easement program. It is a matching pot. A landowner who wants in has to bring a qualified easement holder, then that holder files the application. If the council picks the project, the state pays the holder, and the holder pays the owner for development rights. The owner keeps the farm and can keep farming. The holder keeps the easement.

Georgia law (O.C.G.A. 44-10-40 through 44-10-47) names who may hold: a state agency, a federal agency, a county, a city, or a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, usually a land trust. There is no minimum acreage. Land has to be in agricultural use, and a parcel that already got a conservation payout cannot come back for a second check on the same ground. The department will not score a file in public or tell an applicant why it lost.

HOW A FARM GETS IN

1. Find a holder: The owner reaches a land trust, county, city, or agency willing to hold a perpetual agricultural easement.
2. File together: The holder completes the state application with the owner and sends it to the Department of Agriculture.
3. Council vote: The department reviews the file; the Georgia Farmland Conservation Council selects awards.
4. Pay the rights: Awarded money goes to the holder, and the owner is paid for development rights that then stay off the land forever.

On March 2, 2026, Harper told a House Agriculture and Consumer Affairs hearing that the program is a 50/50 match with federal dollars. The federal side of that stack is USDA’s Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, which can cover up to 50 percent of the fair market value of an agricultural land easement. Harper’s own releases still describe USDA as allocating $450 million every year to match dollars inside state farmland programs. That $450 million is the national ACEP authorization from the 2018 farm law, not a check written to Georgia. States compete for it. A $2 million state pot can open the door. It does not reserve the federal money.

The statute also lets the department keep 5 percent of the fund for administration.

Pennsylvania’s Program Is 38 Years Ahead

Moore, speaking when applications opened, said agribusiness is Georgia’s central economic engine and that “twenty-nine other states have taken this critical step toward proactively protecting our farmland and farming landowners, and we are proud and ecstatic to join them.” Georgia’s law, Senate Bill 220, took effect July 1, 2023. The first application window did not open until Feb. 20, 2026.

Pennsylvania has been buying farm development rights since 1988. A June 11, 2026, state agriculture release put the lifetime tally at 6,726 farms and 667,360 acres of farmland in 58 counties, with more than $1.84 billion in state, county, and local money. In 2025 alone, Pennsylvania preserved 167 farms and 14,147 acres and spent more than $50.1 million.

TWO STATE POTS, TWO SCALES

American Farmland Trust has tallied purchase-of-easement programs nationwide at about 4.2 million acres and nearly $7.9 billion. Georgia is late to that club, and the first awards show the size of the check it brought.

The Commissioner Goes Back to the Legislature

Harper did not treat almost 1,000 acres as the end of the argument. In the Sept. 2 release he asked lawmakers for a larger pot in the next round.

Farmland in our state is under constant threat, and I look forward to working with the General Assembly to meaningfully increase funding for this critical program to strengthen Georgia’s #1 industry.

Tyler J. Harper, Georgia agriculture commissioner, Sept. 2, 2026, Department of Agriculture release

The 2027 application cycle, the department said, will reopen after the 2027 legislative session, “pending the discretion of the Georgia General Assembly to appropriate funds to the program to allow it to continue for another year.” There is no dedicated tax, bond, or lockbox. Each year is a fresh vote.

Governor Brian P. Kemp’s Budget in Brief for amended fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025 listed $2,000,000 to establish the Georgia Farmland Conservation Fund. The Conservancy has said that $2 million was the FY 2024 initial allocation, and that it spent the 2026 session asking for a formal, lasting source of money. Harper, in September campaign posts, has listed the fund next to a ban on hostile foreign nations buying Georgia farmland, as part of a record he is running on for another term. The leftover demand from the first round has not turned into a public fight. It has turned into a request for a bigger line item.

When the window opened in February, Kemp said he was proud to have signed SB 220. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, House Speaker Jon Burns, Georgia Farm Bureau president Tom McCall, and Georgia Agribusiness Council president Will Bentley all backed the launch. McCall said the land farmers work is borrowed from their children and grandchildren. That is the pitch the easement is built to serve, if the state keeps paying for it.

A Deed That Never Expires

A conservation easement under this program is voluntary and perpetual. The owner sells the right to subdivide, pave, or convert the land, gets paid, and can keep running the farm. The restriction is recorded on the deed. It binds the next buyer, the heirs, and whoever comes after them. Houses, warehouses, and data centers stay off that parcel. Farming is supposed to stay on it.

That is also the hard part for a family. The payment is a one-time check for rights that, on metro-adjacent ground, can be worth more as lots than as peanuts, cotton, or cattle. Once the easement is signed, later generations cannot cash out those rights if the farm hits a bad decade. They inherit a working farm with a thinner exit. For owners who want the land to stay in production, that is the point. For heirs who might have used a sale to settle an estate, it is a door that closes.

Because the state will fund no more than a match, and because USDA’s share is itself competitive, a land trust still has to assemble the rest of the purchase price. Small farms with thin title or no ready holder can stall before they ever reach the council. The six awards will show, once names are public, whether the first money went to the Atlanta fringe AFT flagged or to large inland tracts that were easier to close.

No Money, No 2027 Cycle

FROM BILL TO FIRST AWARDS

1. July 1, 2023: Senate Bill 220 takes effect, creating the Georgia Farmland Conservation Fund, the program, and the council.
2. Fiscal 2024: The state budget lists $2 million to establish the fund.
3. February 20, 2026: Harper opens the first application round.
4. May 20, 2026: The window closes. Twenty-five applications are in, seeking over $13 million.
5. September 2, 2026: The council tentatively selects six projects in six counties, covering almost 1,000 acres, with due diligence still ahead.

The 2027 round exists only if lawmakers put money back in the fund after the next session. Until then, the state’s answer to a 798,400-acre projection is six tentative easements and a request for a larger check.

Due diligence on those six files is the next concrete step. County names, farm names, and the dollars attached to each easement have not been released. The 19 applications that missed this round have no second window until the General Assembly says they do.