Butler County has been a player in the Agricultural Land Preservation program since its inception and continues to add farms to the portfolio.

The number of farms in the county enrolled in the program, which protects farms from nonagricultural development in perpetuity, reached 77 last year and two more are in the process of being added this year.

More than 8,000 acres of farmland will be preserved when the county closes the sale of the development easements on those two farms.

Those figures were among the highlights of the 2024 annual report on the program that Sheryl Kelly, environmental specialist and recycling and farmland coordinator, presented June 18 at the county commissioners meeting.

“It's a pleasure to do this job,” Kelly said to the commissioners.

She began her report reiterating the Thiele dairy farm in Cabot was in the first round of approved preservations in the state in 1997, which came after the program was established in Act 43 of 1981. Fifty-eight counties now have preservation programs.

“The purpose of the program is to preserve agricultural soils, the highest quality soils, so they’re available in the future for (agricultural) production,” Kelly said.

She said farmers who participate in the program sell or give conservation easements to the county in exchange for perpetual protection from nonagricultural development.

Farmers must be in their township’s agriculture security area before applying to the county agricultural land preservation board to get accepted into the program, Kelly said. Agriculture security areas protect farmers from nuisance complaints and ordinances that would hinder operations, she added.

“There’s a lot to this. It’s more complex that it appears,” Commissioner Kim Geyer said.

She said the board uses a complicated scoring system based on soil quality when considering applications.

“We want to preserve the best soils in the entire county,” Geyer said.

Farms are required to apply to enroll at least 50 acres, but smaller tracts will be considered and get extra points in the board’s scoring if they are adjacent to a previously approved farm, Kelly said.

A map that she plans to post on the county website will show the preserved farms. Farms with the highest quality soils will be shaded in green.

“It shows our scoring system is working. Farms with high quality soil are beginning to be clustered,” Kelly said.

The process to preserve a farm usually takes a year, but can take two years, she said.

To pay for the program, the county certifies to the state an amount of money for easement purchases and the state provides a grant based on the county contribution. Typically, the county receives $1 million from the state, she said.

To date, over $28 million in state and county funding have gone into the preservation program. The funding ratio equates to 82% in state money and 18% in county money, she said.

“The nice thing about it is this money goes back to our farms, which in turn goes back into our communities,” Kelly said.

Some farm owners donate easements to preserve their farms, she added.

Through her work with municipalities, she said she has seen a lot of comprehensive plans in which residents express their desire to maintain the rural character of townships.

“They always say we want to preserve our rural areas. This is a means to help with that,” Kelly said.

Clinton Township has a municipal agricultural land preservation program in which the township buys the easements, she said.

“One distinction we have here in Butler County, we are the first county on this side of the state to have a municipal participation program,” Kelly said.

Each member of the county’s preservation board is a farmer, which exceeds the legal requirement to have at least three farmers on the board, she said.

“It's a real pleasure to administer this program and our board is wonderful,” Kelly said. “They really know the program and they know what the farms need.”

She said board members know a lot about other people’s farms, including acreage, road frontage, crops and even who has the biggest tractor.

Geyer commended Kelly, saying she works well with applicants, gathers information for the board and works with appraisers and attorneys in the easement closings.