In my rural county, farmlands can be protected to prevent it from being used for anything other than farming. As you can see from the counties Farmland Legacy Program, over 15,000 acres are protected. I’m having difficulty determining which protect_class to use when adding the fields. protect_class 6 and 15 are the closest. I’m looking for suggestions.
I think protect_class should not be used at all. It adds no value, the numbers are made-up OSMisms with no intrinsic meaning or consistent application to them.
I would suggest the protected_area key for this purpose, with a human-understandable value.
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I agree with @ZeLonewolf on protect_class. Since the program in your county uses conservation easements, there are quite a few examples already in OSM for it. See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States/Public_lands#State_Public_Lands
The set of keys I think are appropriate would be something like:
landuse=farmland
boundary=protected_area
edit: hiding my incorrect tagging advice on the next line behind spoiler - see discussion below
ownership=county (though that’s the easement ownership, not the land ownership, but represents who owns the protection)
I think you’d need a new protected area value though. We have these in California too though - agricultural use easements. Could be protected_area=agriculture and then add it to the wiki page Brian linked as a use for conservation easements on agricultural lands?
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That seems very wrong. In my state the easement is a restriction on the land. The land is owned by the landowner. No one ‘owns’ the protection.
Which state? My understanding of conservation easements is that they are owned by some entity, usually a conservation organization or government agency. This is what ensures the protection.
It is common in my area, that (land subject to) conservation easements are owned by private owners, but the easement is a legal restriction on what the owner is allowed to do with it.
In any case, the ownership tag question seems like a red herring beyond the scope of the question here. Let ownership be tagged in accordance to who owns it.
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The pattern I’m familiar with is that a private owner still owns the land but they have sold or donated an easement to another entity. The easement is not the land, it is a bundle of certain rights related to the land. So the land owner no longer has the right to build a housing development on the agricultural fields, for example. That right is now held by the easement owner, but the easement owner’s mission is to never do that, thus protecting the land from development.
But yes, this nuance is too complex to tag in OSM where the owner and ownership should reprent the primary land owner, not partial rights ownership via easement. That would get very confusing.
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CO. Perhaps we’re tripping over semantics, but some conservation org manages it and makes sure the easement restrictions are followed. The easement can’t be sold. The land can be sold and the easement restrictions stay with the land
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The term “owner” is not generally used in regards to easements. The entity that benefits from the easement is generally referred to as the “holder” of the easement or more formally the “dominant estate” or “dominant tenement.”
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Thanks for the recommendation for protected_area tag, that makes sense. I was surprised that there were no farmland usages in taginfo.
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Aah yes that makes sense. The rights holder can be thought of as “owning” certain legal rights over the land, but it is much clearer to not use the term “owner” to avoid confusion.
Apologies all - I was trying to convey that I wasn’t sure who to tag for ownership, but didn’t clearly convey that. I agree it’s a bit of a red herring. We can discuss if the easement has an owner (whether that’s the state/county/or a conservation nonprofit that holds the easement), but it sounds like people agree that it doesn’t apply to the ownership tag.
I’ll share why I was thinking of putting ownership=county. It seemed the owner would remain the farm owner who officially owns the land, but that in the examples on the page I linked that ownership could refer to the ownership status of the protected area. In that case, I thought that since the county guarantees the protection through the deed restrictions held in the conservation easement, that could apply to the tagging.
Regardless, I agree, it could simply be left off, and if people think ownership=county is wrong, I wouldn’t fight that - I was/am very uncertain what would be correct there, so if others are more sure, I defer.
What about adding the tag of something like protection:type=easement? I’ve already added a number of protected areas where a conversation group owns the land. And as far as I can see, they don’t own any farmland. Mainly forest reserves, plus one heron conservation area where heron’s go to nest. Fun to see in the spring.
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I don’t know if recording who holds the easement is necessary, but I’d suggest a new tag if so. Something like easement_holder, protection_holder, or something else to distinguish from the owner or type of ownership of the land itself.
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Those suggestions both make sense to me
protection_title is documented in the wiki, which sounds like a good alternative to what I just suggested.
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The county doesn’t guarantee the protection unless it happens to be the holder of the easement. The easement is merely recorded with the county. The county holds the official version of the easement, and it is available to all interested parties, such as someone who is considering purchasing the land. Disputes over easements are typically handled as civil matters by the courts.
protection_title may be applicable here if each protected farmland area has a distinct name. The tag is meant to be a human readable value specifying what the type of protected area is called, and the value is usually part of the protected area’s name. For example, Yosemite National Park has protection_title=National Park and Thunder Basin National Grassland has protection_title=National Grassland. If these protected farmlands aren’t named, then protection_title may not be applicable.
Agreed. I suggested it in this case because it appears (from my quick, possibly incorrect, reading of Skagit County’s program) that the county may be the easement holder in the case in question in this thread.
One minor note, a given landuse=farmland area may not be fully coincident with the conservation easement boundaries as those conservation easements may include surrounding tree lines, woodlands, wetlands, meadows, and other land cover not used for tillage. A tagging scheme that doesn’t demand landuse=farmland as a disambiguator would be helpful.
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