03/21/2008

Associated Press

A retired farmer worried about Indiana's shrinking agricultural acreage has donated the development rights to his family's 140-acre farm to a conservation group dedicated to preserving farmland and natural areas.

Eugene Myers, 89, stood outside a barn on his South Bend area property Thursday as he announced his arrangement with Wood-Land-Lakes Resource Conservation and Development Inc. to preserve his farmland long after he is gone.

"We need farms around yet," he said. "I'd like to see it preserved."

Myers is believed to be the first St. Joseph County farmer who has used a conservation easement to preserve his land, said John Newsom, regional manager for Indiana Farm Bureau.

Under the agreement, Newsom said Myers can still leave his land to anybody he wants to in his will, and it can still be bought and sold. But the development rights have been donated to the not-for-profit Wood-Land-Lakes.

The Angola-based group's coordinator, Kathy Latz, said it was the conservancy's responsibility to make sure Myers' land is never developed.

A future owner could let it return to its natural state, but the owner can't allow any of the acreage to be developed for stores, factories or more than one house, she said.

Wood-Land-Lakes was formed in 1994 to preserve farmland and natural areas in Elkhart DeKalb, LaGrange, Noble, Steuben and Whitley and adjacent counties. It now protects more than 1,000 acres from development across northern Indiana.

Myers and his wife, Mary, lived in a farmhouse on their property until May 2007, when they moved to a retirement home. Mary died in September, and Myers started working in October on the conservation easement.

"I think she'd be very much in favor of it," he said of the conservation agreement.

Myers grew up on 100 acres of the property, farming with his father. In 1939, he bought the additional 40 acres. He used the land, which he now rents to another farmer, to grow corn and soybeans and raise chickens for the eggs they produced.

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Information from: South Bend Tribune, http://www.southbendtribune.com