IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED

Tuesday February 18, 2025

The conservation easement bill (SB207) will be heard by the Senate Ag Committee tomorrow (2/19) at 10:30am. So PLEASE if you have not yet sent Senator Harshbarger an email do so right now. You can copy and paste the information below or send your own message. It can be as simple as: PLEASE VOTE NO for SB207 and work with farmers to find ways for them to be profitable so they do not have to give up the rights to their land for money.

Senator Harshbarger’s email address is: sen.bobby.harshbarger@capitol.tn.gov

OR copy and paste the message below:

Dear Senator Harshbarger,

PLEASE VOTE NO for SB207. And here is why:

SB 207 creates “Farmland Preservation Fund.” Senator Johnson filed this bill last session, but it did not move forward.

He’s reintroduced the same bill with a few “guardrails” that don’t change the fact that he’s using tax-payer dollars to create a fund that will grant non-profit organizations millions of public dollars to purchase conservation easements (CEs) on private property.

The bill states: “A grant application must prove satisfactory to the Department of Agriculture that the farmland or forestland will be used for farm or forestry purposes.” But, remember no matter what “guardrails” Senator Johnson places on the Fund, the “conservation purpose” will always be the controlling factor on the land. The conservation purpose may allow farming and forestry practices, but the conservation purpose determines how many cattle can be grazed, what crops can be planted, how many acres can be farmed, and how many trees can be harvested – forever. The easement holder decides this, not the landowner.

There is also another “guardrail” that states: “Qualified easement holders shall not sell, transfer, release, or otherwise divest a conservation easement acquired by participating in the grant program.” Since these easements are in perpetuity, the landowner has no guarantee that the future easement holder will be of the same mindset as the entity they originally signed up with.

The bottom line is that all CE’s make the landowner the “servient” estate, meaning the CE owner has primary control of the land. This is why we tell landowners, it is their right to place a CE on their land, but when they do it is no longer functionally private property. Environmentalists years ago realized what they were creating were actually “conservation servitudes”, but they knew landowners would not take kindly to that nomenclature and they intentionally called them “conservation easements” because all landowners know and deal with “easements” on a daily basis. The agricultural easements will hurt the farmers’ ability to productively use their land, making it difficult to manage their land in a way that supports optimal crop production, animal husbandry, and sound management techniques.

This link has more great points. https://americanstewards.us/issues/conservation-easements/13-key-points-ce/

Respectfully,

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