You don’t have to be very old to remember the days when the East End of Long Island was mostly farms. Peconic Land Trust president John v.H. Halsey remembers well. He grew up on Wickapogue Road in Southampton Village. “In 1970, there were 1,000 acres of farmland between the hospital and Mecox Bay, and my family’s farm was right in the middle,” he said. “Today, 150 acres are left in farming.”
After moving to California and establishing a career working with nonprofits, Halsey came home for a visit in the early ’80s and was so dismayed by the speed with which farmland was turning into houses that he decided to do something about it. 2023 is the 40th anniversary of the founding of Peconic Land Trust, a nonprofit organization started by Halsey that has guided the preservation of 14,000 acres of woodlands, wetlands and meadows in Suffolk County, 6,000 of them for farming.
There is nothing surprising about people with money wanting to live somewhere as picturesque as the East End, but the inevitable result is land values far beyond what food farmers can afford. The miracle is that during a period of a few decades when the acreage on Long Island devoted to agriculture plummeted from 150,000 acres to 37,000, the Peconic Land Trust was still able to save land from development and to seed and support scores of small farms that contribute to the quality of life on the North and South forks today.
The Peconic Land Trust works with the owners of land to make the county, state and town land preservation programs more accessible and offers estate planning services to farm families who want to profit from their land and see it continue to be farmed. In addition to helping broker sales that meet the financial needs of the landowners, the Trust works to match farmland with farmers by selling or leasing it at prices that make sustainable farming possible, while also supporting new farmers.
John v.H. Halsey, president of the Peconic Land Trust, has guided the preservation of 14,000 acres of woodlands, wetlands and meadows in Suffolk County, 6,000 of them for farming. (Photo credit: David Benthal)
Halsey said it was the sale of one particular farm that triggered his desire to start the Peconic Land Trust. “In 1980, I came back from the West Coast for about six weeks and literally the farm next door to me had a for-sale sign on it. I knew the family very well and they explained that they had a $2.2 million inheritance tax and they did not know how to pay it.” Halsey’s neighbors were in a contract to sell their farm, but the sale took five years to settle, and the proceeds were eaten up by taxes and penalties, leaving them with little. When Halsey realized that the same kind of thing was going on all over the North and South forks, he decided to put his experience with nonprofits to work in his own back forty.
Long Island Farm Bureau director Rob Carpenter has seen Peconic Land Trust become the go-to resource for farmers who need help navigating the legal and bureaucratic thicket of land preservation. “I think that the work the Land Trust is doing is so complicated and so difficult,” he said. “When you talk about preserving land, there are so many issues involved: deeds, easements, appraisals, estate taxes and the values of land.”
Fred Lee is a second-generation farmer who runs Sang Lee Farms, an award-winning organic farm on the North Fork, with his son Will and his son’s partner, Lucy Senesac. Lee currently leases about a third of the land they farm from Peconic Land Trust, a relationship that goes back 16 years to a time when Lee was transitioning his family farm from a wholesale business to a direct-to-consumer model with a farm stand and Community Supported Agriculture program selling organic and specialty vegetables to local customers.
Sang Lee Farms leases about a third of the land they farm from Peconic Land Trust, a relationship that goes back 16 years. (Photo credit: David Benthal)
The key to making the model work was the availability of land at a reasonable price, and the Trust made it happen. The land Lee originally leased on Cox Lane was later sold to Tom Geppel of 8 Hands Farm when Lee moved to the acres he now leases from the Trust a few miles from Sang Lee’s Peconic home farm. It’s a relationship that has spanned nearly two decades, two generations and countless fresh ginger roots and pristine heads of oak leaf lettuce. “I don’t know if I can say enough good things about the Peconic Land Trust,” Lee said. “Our lives are better because of their involvement in the farm community. We couldn’t produce the crops that we do without the farmland availability.”
There is a deep practicality in the Trust’s approach to land preservation, including the belief that no matter what the crop, farmland is better than land full of roads, houses and infrastructure. “We’ve seen an extraordinary increase in the price of farmland,” Halsey said. “People buy protected farmland and they just mow it. It’s important we embrace all sorts of farms: equestrian farms, horticulture, wineries, as well as sod farms.”
Complementing the Trust’s mission to preserve land is their mission to make as much of it as possible affordable for food farming. New players on the North Fork such as the Soloviev Group have bought thousands of acres of farmland with a range of goals, including investment and agriculture. “The Solovievs have resources that most people don’t have. It’s all the more important for us to acquire what we can and make sure it gets into the hands of farmers at an affordable price.”
The Trust also offers a five-year program to would-be farmers as well as those with experience putting their enthusiasm and hard work together with best farming practices to create a sustainable business. Photo credit: David Benthal
Dan Heston is Peconic Land Trust’s director of agricultural programs and a 26-year veteran of food agriculture. He helps would-be farmers as well as those with experience put their enthusiasm and hard work together with best farming practices to create a sustainable business. Owing to the current romance with the farming lifestyle, there are plenty of candidates. “You are not unpopular if you are a farmer,” Heston said. “About half of them are young people. Ours is a five-year program, and we start them with one acre for one year. If it’s all working, they can continue on and expand.” The Trust handles some of the infrastructure, and equipment and encourages regenerative practices such as low-till and no-till agriculture. Those who successfully complete the program are eligible to lease farmland at a low enough cost to make a viable business.
“Farm preservation was the hook for me, but our mission has been, from the beginning, preserving Long Island’s working farms, natural lands and heritage. It’s those special locations that resonate with you, like the scallop pond where I grew up fishing,” Halsey said. “Whether a property owner is a farm family, an owner of wetlands or woodlands, we always start with understanding the goals, needs and circumstances of the landowners.”
According to Carpenter, the Trust is a resource that landowners on the East End have come to rely on. “We would be very far behind if it wasn’t for what the Land Trust does. Each deal is a little bit different, a little bit nuanced,” he said. “My hat is off to them and their 40 years of this tremendous work.”
