American Farmland Trust: Issues & Programs - North Carolina Chatham County Success

Agriculture in Chatham County is meeting the challenges of a changing landscape head on. The county, located on the edge of North Carolina’s rapidly growing Triangle region, is still largely rural with land prices far below those found in neighboring Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. Chatham’s farmers are anticipating the impacts that a high demand for residential development and the tobacco buyout will have on their agricultural sector, with its many small farms and heavy dependence on livestock production. Public agencies, private organizations and individual farmers are joining together to address these impending changes and create a vision for the next generation of farmers in the county.

Chatham County’s Voluntary Agricultural Districts program was established in 2001 to offer landowners a set of incentives in exchange for restricting non-agricultural development for 10 years. It quickly became one of the state’s largest, with 21,000 acres of farmland enrolled. With the large poultry and livestock industries throughout the county, this program is very popular among farmers who want to inform political leaders and newcomers about the locations of active farming communities in anticipation of potential conflicts between animal agriculture and encroaching residential development.

Pittsboro, the county seat, has become the hotbed of sustainable agriculture in the state. It is the home to national and regional non-profit organizations, including the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, the Rural Advancement Foundation Internationa and the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association. The Central Carolina Community College has created a degree program for sustainable agriculture, which utilizes area farmers as instructors and draws beginning farmers from across the country. Piedmont Biofuels conducts alternative fuel research and provides biodiesel for its cooperative members. Chatham County Cooperative Extension has established a permanent staff position for a Sustainable Agriculture agent to assist the many small producers in the area that are catering to niche and direct marketing opportunities in the Triangle area.

Farmland protection also plays an important role in the county’s support for landowners. The Triangle Land Conservancy is collaborating with the Community College on a Working Lands Initiative to address the growing pressures on farm and forest land. Chatham County also includes several farms in the Sutphin Mill area, a community-based farmland protection project in which neighbors have banded together with the Piedmont Land Conservancy to protect 484 acres on five contiguous farms.

More information: Chatham County's VAD Program

For further information, contact the individual organizations mentioned above or AFT's Senior Director of Farmland Protection Programs Bob Wagner at 800-370-4879 .