Washington Farmland Trust

Conservation: every day, we work to protect one of our most valuable natural resources: Farmland. We protect Farmland forever by working with landowners to remove their farm's development potential, or by purchasing at-risk Farmland with the goal of leasing or selling it to a local farmer. Conservation makes Farmland more affordable and helpskeep it productive into the future.

Stewardship: Washington Farmland Trust's stewardship program directly supports the health of our conserved farms, because we know that simply protecting Farmland from future development is not enough to ensure it remains viable and productive into the future. After all, healthy farms invest in our soil, water, and habitat creating resilience in the face of a changing climate. Productive Farmland feeds communities, builds economies, and provides a livelihood for farmers. The core tenant of our stewardship program is to ensure that the natural resources on our conserved farms are protected, to keep the land in farming forever. In order to ensure the land we protect thrives into the future, we support farmers in their efforts to improve water quality, wildlife habitat, and soil health on their farms. We provide a variety of resources and assistance, ranging from volunteer restoration and connections with technical advisers to our micro-grant program, advancing farm sustainability. With each of these efforts, we rely on local conservation districts, cost-share programs, and other partnerships to implement our shared goals of sustainable land management.

Farm to farmer: farm to farmer is a program of Washington Farmland Trust that aims to help farmers find land, build capacity, access resources, and ultimately, thrive as business owners and stewards of the land. We offer personalized support to current and aspiring farmers, farming collectives and cooperatives, farm organizations, and Farmland owners in Washington. We work with program participants to co-create plans that advance their farm business and Farmland stewardship goals, and partner with service providers such as lawyers, realtors, financial institutions, and community development organizations to provide direct support to our participants.

Community engagement program: through the Trust's community engagement program, we provide community members with an opportunity to learn about our cause first hand either on the farm or closer to home. We host events so that attendees can dig into local farming issues and create opportunities give back through volunteering. We also show up at partner events in the communities where we work to build relationships and local connections.