Across the U.S., acres of farmland are shrinking. Some in Northeast Tennessee are trying to slow that down

JOY MAZUR/SIX RIVERS MEDIA Editor's note: This is an initial story as part of an ongoing series about farmland preservation and efforts to sustain farming in Southern Appalachia. Reach out to ecaskill@sixriversmedia.com and jmanna-rea@sixriversmedia.com if you're a farmer in the area deciding on the future of your land. You can hear a symphony of birds, feel dew on the grass and an insect or two as the sun comes up on the land Allie Mills Neal's family has farmed for centuries. Thinking about a disruption to that system can bring her to tears. The number of family farms in the U.S. is shrinking with more than 6,000 farms lost in the state between 2017 and 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) census. Acres of farmland are dwindling too. Northeast Tennessee is included in that trend, and people like Neal are trying to make sure that hemorrhaging doesn't become uncontrollable in the corner of Northeast Tennessee. Farmers and others who work in land conservation say a culmination of factors are driving that loss — development, high land prices, the challenges that come with farming as a trade and who will inherit land when its owners pass away. Some are trying to address those factors through education, public policy, funding or trying new farming strategies with other landowners. "I couldn't imagine that feeling that I have when I drive by a field that's been sold and here they come in to turn it into a flat pad…I think of, once I die, I think of coming back, and if you came back and you saw the land that you had worked so hard on all those years," Neal said. "It just almost makes me want to cry." Nearly one million acres of agricultural land in Tennessee has been lost between 1985 and 2024 with more than 2 million acres having been developed, according to data verified by the USDA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the University of Tennessee. JORGELINA MANNA-REA/SIX RIVERS MEDIA While farmland acreage hasn't decreased as much as other counties across the state that include or neighbor populated cities like Memphis, Nashville and Knoxville, some want to ensure that development and land preservation can strike a balance. As the region continues to grow, so does the demand for affordable housing like the rest of the U.S. "We need land to be able to build houses as we grow," Treasurer of the Appalachian Resource Conservation and Development Council and a volunteer with the Land Trust for Tennessee, Roy Settles, said. "But it seems like our rate of development seems to be higher than the rate of our population growth." Settles sold land loans to farmers for years before retiring. He explained in the 1980s, land loans had up to 20% interest rates, but expenses were cheaper then. Now, the interest rates are lower, around 6.5%, but costs lay elsewhere. "When you figure the cost of fuel, land and a high interest rate and all those things being higher that does make it… more challenging in some way than it's been [before]," he said. Farmers are also an aging population. That's a long-term trend in the U.S — according to the 2022 U.S. Census of Agriculture, the average age of a farmer in the U.S. is 58 years old and continues to rise. More than two-thirds of Tennessee farmland is controlled by someone more than 55 years old. Lamb said the U.S. is experiencing a "generational transition crisis" as landowners age and the time for their property to pass on nears. "How that land transitions and to whom it transitions will shape the future of rural America," Lamb said. People in Northeast Tennessee are trying to plan for those incoming transitions. ARCD, a nonprofit organization that leads conservation efforts, hosts educational workshops aimed at connecting communities with local farms and educating farmers about navigating the future. "For over 15 years [ARCD] has come at it from an educational standpoint, because we respect the landowners' informed decision to sell, but we want to make sure that farm landowners know all the different options in case there is still a part of them that wants to keep their farmland in operation," said Emily Bidgood, strategic partnerships director at ARCD. Workshops teach older and newer farmers strategies to continue their operations. They also host workshops where preservation organizations and lawyers can teach landowners how to arrange what will happen to their land when they're gone. Last year, Gov. Bill Lee signed the Tennessee Farmland Preservation Bill into law. It implemented the Farmland Preservation Program, a grant program to incentivize landowners to enroll their land in a permanent conservation easement. A conservation easement is a voluntary legal agreement between a landowner and another entity like a land trust. That agreement limits what kind of development can happen on that property in the future. When Neal's family moved back to her family farm, they put land in Middle Tennessee into a conservation easement with the Land Trust for Tennessee. Continuing to farm her family's land in Northeast Tennessee is part of "the cause" for her. "We're in it for the cause, I guess for as long as we can all stand it, we're in it… because we do deeply believe in land," she said. Settles said there are around 2,000 to 3,000 acres in the Northeast region that have been permanently protected through a conservation easement through the Land Trust for Tennessee. "They can still keep farming it and their family can keep farming or somebody who ends up with it later on can keep farming that property," he said. The Land Trust for Tennessee, one land trust organization working in the state, has protected 137,000 acres of farmland across 76 counties in the state under a conservation easement. "[Conservation easements] are an important piece of trying to preserve the land that we have, because once that open space is gone, it's gone for good," said Dana Ensor, owner of Grand Oak Farm and instructor at ARCD. Other factors of land loss include wildlife loss — in Washington County alone, more than 9,000 acres of forests have been lost from 1985 to 2024. More than 2 million acres of forests have been lost in the state. "We often think about state parks and national parks, or state forests and national forests, as the main places where wildlife live," Lamb said. "These public spaces are essential for wild creatures, of course. But private working lands offer some of the most important wildlife habitats in many areas, especially in a place like Tennessee." Prioritizing the preservation of small-scale farming is also important to the farming community because it offers something less tangible than what you can see or feel. Lamb described it as one of the "closest societal connections that we have with the earth." "Family-scale agriculture requires a partnership and a mutual respect, I think, for the land itself and the communities who call it home," Lamb said. "It hinges on relationships and affection. Larger scale industrialized farming struggles to provide that same sort of intimate connection." Neal feels a version of that on her own farm. It's long, arduous and year-round work with early days and sometimes long nights. But it also reminds her she's a part of a web of connection that includes the wasp on her porch, the baby bird in her garden, the tree leaves that rustle a minute after a plane flies over or a cow grazing her land. She thinks about how Native Americans tended to the land she's on before she did, and what it meant to be a "regenerative farmer" before it had a name. "It's the best way to experience nature in its fullest… like I always tell my family... who else would be out at midnight walking up a hill in a lightning storm, trying to find a cow and a calf pair?" Neal said. "Because we work outside so much you see all these things that happen," Neal said. "Your eyes and your being pick up on it. You know the patterns of the trees. You know the patterns of the insects, you know the patterns of the birds… you feel like you become one within that system or within nature." Projections calculated by American Farmland Trust in partnership with Conservation Science Partners and the University of Wisconsin-Madison show that Northeast Tennessee could lose more than one million acres of farmland between 2016 and 2040. "I hope people realize that we've got to do something differently," Lamb said. "Or else we're going to look around in a few years and realize we've made a tremendous mistake, and we've lost something that cannot be replaced." Jorgelina Manna-Rea is a Report for America corps member reporting on issues relating to the environment.