Source: NCDA&CS, 5/13/21


Sabrina Shaffer brings a personal perspective to her work in the NCDA&CS Farmland Preservation division.

Shaffer, who joined the division as a Farmland Preservation Specialist in December 2020, is responsible for helping review the many documents needed for farms to enter under conservation easements. Those easements are critical to the division’s mission, as they limit or outright prohibit new development and help landowners maintain their land as working farms in production of food, fiber or forestry.

“I review documents needed for the legal closing of the easements, like surveys, maps, appraisals and all sorts of other information about the farmland,” she said. “We review those to make sure we know exactly what is being protected so that future monitoring can occur. We make sure all the facts about that farm are correct so exactly what is supposed to be protected in perpetuity can be legally recorded. These documents are the framework that will allow others to evaluate if the land is being protected as intended at the time of the easement closing.”

A North Carolina native, Shaffer grew up taking trips to her family’s farm in Stokes and Rockingham counties. She took over management of the farm when she got older, and also began working in private land management.

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