Landowners looking to sell agriculture rights

FARGO, N.D. - The waiting list of rural property owners who want to sell the right to farm the land is growing, say conservation officials who want to preserve areas of native grasslands.

The so-called conservation easements are payments made to the landowners in exchange for a promise to keep the land in its natural state. There are several types and durations of the easements, which are attached to the deed of the property.

Some farm groups are opposed to those agreements, especially those that are longer than 30 years. Perpetual easements are illegal in North Dakota, but they are allowed on land owned by the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service.

"Perpetual easements are just a dirty word," said Brian Kramer, spokesman for the North Dakota Farm Bureau. "They tie the hands of any future producer to manage the land in any way, shape or fashion which is most beneficial to the next producer."

Even so, officials with Ducks Unlimited, a conservation group that sponsors easements, said landowners are lining up to join the program that includes specific grasslands in North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. Most of them are ranchers whose cattle are allowed to graze the land.

"It's a nice situation," said Scott Stephens, a Ducks Unlimited biologist. "We just need to find more money to get it done."

The grasslands area is known as the Missouri coteau, a range of wetlands and prairie potholes left behind by the retreat of a large glacier. It stretches in a diagonal pattern from northeast Montana through central North Dakota and South Dakota.

A total of 528 landowners within the coteau are offering 288,000 acres for perpetual easements, Stephens said. That includes 220,000 acres in South Dakota and 19,000 acres in North Dakota, he said.

Landowners generally receive about one-third of the fee title value for the land, Stephens said. They can get up to $200 per acre for conservation easements in South Dakota, but the going rate in North Dakota is typically about $100 an acre, he said.

The landowners are being placed on a waiting list until more money can be found for the program, Stephens said.

"Things were going well until we hit that hurdle," said Lloyd Jones, the Dakotas refuge manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "That is our biggest challenge."

The increase in interest comes at a time when subsidies in the latest farm bill encourage farmers to grow more crops, Jones said.

"If you're a farmer and you're looking at ways to maximize your income, you might look at the safety net in the farm program and conclude that soybeans can work," Jones said. "But I think there's a strong heritage of people ... interested in keeping their land in grass."

Kramer worries that some landowners are participating in the program only for the money.

"I think in a lot of those cases the landowners need a quick infusion of capital," he said. "Some of those folks say it keeps them on the farm. Maybe this generation, but I don't know if it helps future generations."

A study by Stephens using satellite images shows that more than 144,000 acres of native grassland across the coteau have been converted to cropland in the last 20 years. That's a decline of about 1 percent a year.

"At first that doesn't like seem like very high loss rates," Stephens said. "But over time it can build up."

Portions of a 680,000-acre grassland area in South Dakota - including Hand, Hyde, Faulk, Potter and Sully counties - had a habitat loss of 19,000 acres between 2001 and 2003, Stephens said.

Wildlife biologists believe the reproduction rates of grassland birds and waterfowl are better in areas that have large blocks of native prairie and wetlands. Much of the land is better suited for ranching than farming.

"We're talking a lot of hilly, rocky stuff that's meant to raise cows on," Stephens said. "It's clearly not the most productive farmland out there."

Delbert Ezslinger, a landowner near Ashley who has participated in the easement program, agrees that farmers should think twice about giving up prime cropland.

"But my land is a big difference from the Red River Valley," said Ezslinger, who gave up cropland rights to about 850 acres. "My grandfather and others dug up a lot of these little places in the prairies that should never have been dug up.

"I believe that native grass should stay native," he said.

Kramer said his group would prefer that all easements be limited to 30 years.

"That's one life span on the farm," he said. "Then it's the next guy's turn."