Farmland Protection in the Stillaguamish Valley

As Snohomish County continues to grow, protecting farmland is becoming more crucial every day.

For the last four years, we’ve worked to implement the Regional Conservation Partnership Program in the Stillaguamish River Valley. One of the goals of this program is to enroll agricultural lands into conservation easements to protect farmland from development. 

Photo credit: Lorenzo Townsend

An agricultural conservation easement permanently protects a farm from future development while keeping it available for agricultural use. Under the conservation easement, the family can continue to farm the land or sell it to other farmers in the future.

So far, three farmers in the Stillaguamish Valley have enrolled 257 acres of farmland in the program.

As one of the agencies in this effort, we are grateful for our funding and working partners who made protection of this farmland possible: Washington State Department of Ecology’s Floodplains by Design program, Washington State Conservation Commission, Stillaguamish Tribe, Washington Farmland Trust, and Forterra. 

Eric Schuh, Senior Resource Planner at Snohomish Conservation District, has acted as lead on the project over the past four years. 

“Keeping agricultural lands intact and actively being farmed provides not only locally produced food for the public,” says Eric, “it also provides habitat for wildlife, protection from future flooding, and preserves the rural characteristics of our river valleys that so many of us enjoy.” 

Beyond those working to protect farmland, we are grateful for our landowners who are willing to keep their land working to provide local food, and for protecting natural resources permanently.

Snohomish Conservation District is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year. Our roots began with farmers back in 1941 and the priority to maintain viable agriculture continues to this day.