Less Talk, More Money: Inside Haywood County's Fight to Save Its Farmland Before It's Gone

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 29, 2026

A farmer in Haywood County once told a developer he would be driving a coal truck in hell before a house went up on his land. Don Smart, president of the Haywood County Farm Bureau, does not soften his opinions, and on the subject of farmland he has plenty. "We waste it," he says of American land. "You go into European countries, they don't waste it."

That blunt frustration sits at the center of a quieter, more technical fight playing out in front of the county commissioners. It is not about anger at developers. It is about money, and specifically about $568,000 that is already sitting in county coffers.

Here is the short version. When a Haywood farm gets sold off and converted to houses, the county collects what is called a rollback tax. Over the last five years, those taxes from lost farmland have added up to more than half a million dollars. Right now that money disappears into the general budget. A group of farmers wants it redirected to save the farmland that is left. Less talk, they argue, and more money.

The $568,000 Already on the Table

The mechanics are simpler than they sound. Farmland in Haywood gets a property tax break for staying in agriculture. When the owner sells and the land leaves farming, the county claws back the prior three years of that tax break. That clawback is the rollback tax.

Between 2020 and 2025, Haywood lost more than 6,600 acres of combined farm and forest land. The rollback taxes on those conversions came to roughly $568,000. Every dollar of it went into the general fund, spent on whatever the county spends money on.

Terry Rogers and Brandon James, both farmers, brought a proposal to commissioners this spring with a different idea. Take the money generated when farmland disappears and use it to protect the farmland that remains. Build a standing kitty, fed automatically every time a field becomes a subdivision.

Commissioner Tommy Long, a cattle rancher himself, floated a similar concept and asked County Manager Bryant Morehead to study how other counties handle their programs. Brandon James put the stakes plainly at the March meeting. "Don't matter who you are," he told the room. "If we don't have the land to produce food, we're all going to starve."

Commissioners have not enacted the proposal. It is in the research phase, which in county government can mean anything from a few months to a slow fade. But the logic is simple. The destruction of farmland would fund its own defense.

Forty Years and Thirty Thousand Acres

To understand why farmers are pushing now, look at what has already vanished.

Four decades ago, Haywood County held nearly 80,000 acres of farmland. Today the number is under 50,000. That is more than 30,000 acres gone, a loss of better than a third in a single working lifetime. By some estimates the county has lost roughly 80% of its prime farmland, the flat valley bottomland in places like Crabtree, Bethel, and Jonathan Creek that grows the best crops and also makes the most coveted home sites.

The trend has not slowed. Between the 2017 and 2022 federal agriculture censuses, the county shed about 3,000 acres. The mountain valleys that make Haywood beautiful are exactly the parcels developers want, and a pasture with a creek and a ridgeline view sells for far more as lots than it ever will as grazing land.

This is the tension Tommy Long keeps returning to. Easement payments, the money offered to keep land in farming, do not come close to what a builder will pay. A farmer weighing retirement, with no clear successor, faces a hard math problem. Ryan Manning, the county's farmland preservation coordinator, notes that the average age of a North Carolina farmer is about 60. The people holding this land are not getting younger, and the offers are not getting smaller.

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A Head Start Most Counties Never Got

Here is the part that surprises people. Haywood is not behind on this. It is ahead.

While many North Carolina counties woke up to farmland loss only after the bulldozers arrived, Haywood started talking about preservation in 1980, long before development took hold. "It was so new to people that nobody understood it," Bill Yarborough, chair of the Haywood Soil and Water board, told commissioners at a June 15 meeting.

The county was an early adopter at nearly every step. It established a Voluntary Agriculture District in 1994. In March 2007 it became just the second county in North Carolina to adopt the stronger Enhanced Voluntary Agriculture District program, which locks in a 10-year commitment that cannot be revoked and renews automatically every three years.

That groundwork has produced real results. Conservation easements now protect more than 2,700 acres across 33 parcels in Haywood, agreements that permanently bar development while keeping the land privately owned and working. The Soil and Water District manages about 24 of those parcels and is steadily adding more. At the moment it is racing to finalize eight more agreements that would preserve another 436 acres through about $1.5 million in funding.

"Now where we are, we have a waiting list of people that are actually wanting to do this," Yarborough said. That is the good news and the problem in one sentence. The demand to preserve is finally there. The money to do it is not.

When the Math Doesn't Math

Haywood's waiting list runs straight into a wall built in Raleigh.

The state funds most easements through the Agricultural Development and Farmland Preservation Trust Fund. Last year, counties across North Carolina asked it for roughly $46 million. The state handed out about $5 million. The state rejected one of Haywood's own applications in the last cycle, and another is still pending in the current one.

"The math just doesn't math there," said Duane Vanhook, the Soil and Water District director. "A lot of counties are going to be really hands-tied as to how much we're going to be able to do moving forward with those numbers."

The gap is not a one-year fluke. Demand for preservation funding statewide runs in the tens of millions while recurring money sits closer to single digits, a mismatch on the order of eight to one in some years. North Carolina now ranks as the second most at-risk state in the country for farmland loss through 2040, according to the American Farmland Trust, and it has lost more than 600,000 acres since 2015.

So when Yarborough told commissioners, "I don't see how we're going to compete if we don't do something," he was describing arithmetic, not pessimism. Private and public preservation dollars simply cannot out-bid a residential developer for a Haywood valley. That is why the rollback tax idea matters. It is one of the few levers the county controls entirely on its own, without waiting on a legislative appropriation that may never come.

What's Actually at Stake

It is easy to treat this as a niche concern for farmers and a few commissioners. The numbers say otherwise.

Haywood County still holds over 64,000 acres of farmland, and its agricultural production tops $17 million a year from livestock, dairy, and crops. Statewide, agriculture is a $100 billion industry, the largest economic engine North Carolina has. The land in question is not a hobby. It is a working part of the regional economy and the food system, and once it converts to housing, it does not convert back.

There is also the matter of what Haywood looks like. The pastures along Jonathan Creek, the dairy bottoms in Bethel, the cattle ground in Crabtree, these are not just productive acres. They are the view. They are the reason people slow down on the back roads and the reason second-home buyers fall for this county in the first place. A Haywood with no open farmland is a different place to live, and most people here know it.

Mandy Stasi, part of the Crabtree farming community, and advocates like Martha Mills, who chairs the county's Farmland Preservation Board, have spent years making that case. So has the Farm Bureau, which gathers farmers and legislators each spring at its breakfast at Lake Junaluska. The message rarely changes. The land is finite, the pressure is constant, and talk alone has never bought back a single acre.

The Road From Here

For now the rollback proposal sits where most county ideas sit at first, under study. Bryant Morehead is reviewing how other counties structure similar funds. Commissioners Kevin Ensley, Brandon Rogers, Jennifer Best, Terry Ramey, and Tommy Long will eventually have to decide whether to commit that recurring revenue or leave it in the general budget.

The farmers are not waiting quietly. Don Smart will keep saying exactly what he thinks. Terry Rogers and Brandon James will keep showing up at meetings. Ryan Manning and the staff at the Soil and Water office on Raccoon Road in Waynesville will keep working the easement applications, eight at a time, against a funding tide that runs the wrong way.

What makes this moment different is that the conversation has finally shifted from whether to preserve farmland to how to pay for it. That is progress, even if it is slow. Haywood County is deciding the land that defines it one parcel, one budget line, and one commissioners meeting at a time. If you have ever driven through Bethel at dusk and wondered how long those open fields will last, the answer is being decided right now.

If you are weighing a move to these mountains and the working farms and open valleys are part of what draws you, I am always happy to talk about where Haywood is headed and what it means for the places people choose to call home.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the rollback tax proposal in Haywood County?

Farmland in Haywood County receives a property tax break through present-use value programs. When that land is sold and converted to development, the owner must repay the prior three years of tax savings to the county. That repayment is called a rollback tax. Between 2020 and 2025, Haywood collected about $568,000 in rollback taxes from roughly 6,600 acres of lost farm and forest land. Right now that money goes into the general budget. Farmers Terry Rogers and Brandon James have asked commissioners to instead dedicate those funds to a standing farmland preservation account.

How much farmland has Haywood County lost?

Forty years ago Haywood County held nearly 80,000 acres of farmland. Today the figure sits under 50,000 acres, a loss of more than 30,000 acres in four decades. By some estimates the county has lost roughly 80% of its prime farmland, the flat, fertile bottomland that is also the most attractive to residential and commercial developers. Between 2020 and 2025 alone, Haywood lost more than 6,600 acres of combined farm and forest land. The pace of conversion is the central reason farmers and county leaders are pushing for a more reliable source of preservation funding.

What is a conservation easement and how does it protect farmland?

A conservation easement is a legal agreement that permanently limits development on a piece of land while keeping it in private ownership. In Haywood County, the Soil and Water Conservation District and private land trusts like the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy purchase these easements from willing landowners. The agreement prevents future subdivision or construction, preserving the property as working farmland for generations. More than 2,700 acres across 33 parcels are protected this way in Haywood. The Soil and Water District is currently working to finalize eight more agreements that would protect another 436 acres through about $1.5 million in funding.

Why can't North Carolina keep up with farmland preservation demand?

The state funds easements through the Agricultural Development and Farmland Preservation Trust Fund, but demand has far outrun supply. Last year counties across North Carolina requested roughly $46 million from the fund, and the state provided only about $5 million. North Carolina now ranks as the second most at-risk state in the nation for farmland loss through 2040, and it has lost more than 600,000 acres since 2015. With that imbalance, even counties with strong programs like Haywood face long waiting lists and rejected applications, which is what has pushed local farmers to look for county-level funding instead.