Don Ranck said he hasn't changed his mind about Lancaster County's farm preservation program since it began three decades ago.

"I don't see any redeeming value in it," the Paradise Township farmer and chairman of township supervisors said bluntly.

"Let the marketplace work. Keep government out of it."

Ranck has been the most vocal and consistent voice against paying farmers to preserve their land forever.

Other critics are more measured.

"I'm still in my own personal debate on what's the best way to preserve the land," said Deborah Benner, president of the Lancaster County Farm Bureau.

Benner's extended family owns three farms in Rapho Township. One is preserved, the others are not.

Like the Benner family, Farm Bureau members hold conflicting opinions about the program — from bureau vice president Ranck's total rejection to farmers who wholeheartedly support the plan.

"The board is absolutely unanimous on the need to protect the agricultural industry," Benner explained, "but it is all over the map on the whole preservation program."

The county's Building Industry Association, which in 2004 asked county officials to cap the acreage the county will preserve so there's sufficient land for new housing, has backed away from that controversial stance.

Now BIA president Connie King said, "The BIA and most of its members believe that the agricultural heritage of the county can be preserved if we work together to find a good balance of preserved farms and development."

But Frank Cristoffel III, executive vice president of the Lancaster County Association of Realtors, wondered if the preservation program can be sustained over time.

"Preservation gets more and more expensive," he noted. "With all the requests for dollars in other areas, does this program make sense or could easements be reduced to 25 or 50 years to save money?"

However, Cristoffel acknowledged that "there's a whole new mindset that said we're all in this together and have to make it work."

In the beginning, there was less of a sense that "we're all in this together."

Early preservation supporters, including Aaron Stauffer and Amos Funk, had a lot of persuading to do. Opposition to the program was widespread.

"When I first came here in 1989, there was a real question as to whether the farming community was going to embrace farmland preservation in a big way," recalled Tom Daniels, an early director of the county's Agricultural Preserve Board.

What turned the tide, Daniels believes, was the decision by Noah Kreider & Sons — one of the county's leading farming operations — to preserve four farms in 1991.

"Initially, the type of people who were applying were basically desperate for funds because they weren't doing so well in the farming business," said Daniels. "After the Kreiders stepped up, other serious commercial farmers began giving away development rights."

Especially after county voters approved the first $25 million bond for farm preservation in 1999, Daniels said, the preservation program became acceptable to most county residents and many farmers.

But not to all.

Ranck, an articulate spokesman against the program, has worked overtime to rally the opposition. None of his arguments has prevailed, but that has not discouraged him.

Instead of the current program of paying government funds to preserve land in perpetuity, Ranck would limit preservation terms to five years in exchange for tax credits.

"With permanent easements, the next generation has no power to negotiate for land," he argued. "And permanent isn't really permanent anyway. Any lawyer will say 'perpetual' means 27 to 35 years. Eventually things change."

Ranck said his approach would save more farms because there would be more money to spread around. Farmers who receive preservation money now are "happy as larks," he said, but those who remain on the waiting list for years are irritated.

But supporters of the current plan say preservation for only five years would be throwing away money on impermanent restrictions.

Besides, said Daniels, farmers don't want shorter terms. Those with the early 25-year easements are converting to permanent deed restrictions.

"I never had anyone come back two years, five years later and say 'What did you talk me into?' " Daniels said. "When you're giving up your right to develop your property, that's a pretty serious decision to make. People understood that and went into it with their eyes open."

Ranck asserted that preserved farms draw development immediately around them, thereby undoing the value of preservation.

But the evidence suggests otherwise.

A county GIS analysis conducted for this series shows that the first 20 preserved farms are adjacent to 4,663 acres of agricultural land and woodland, but only 322 acres of residential land and 505 acres of industrial and commercial land.

Ranck also said agricultural deed restrictions reduce farm values.

Deed restrictions do theoretically reduce values. That's why the county and Farmland Trust reimburse farmers for what appraisers figure they may lose by not being able to sell their land to developers.

But the latest countywide farm sales report, produced in 2007 for the Preserve Board by Concord House Real Estate, showed that while prices for most preserved farms were less than for non-preserved farms, the prices varied throughout the county.

Preserved farms brought substantially less than non-preserved farms in the northern, southern and western regions of the county. They brought only slightly less in the southwestern region.

But they brought slightly more in the county's eastern region, where prices per acre were by far the highest.

"On a farm-to-farm basis, a preserved farm could sell for as much as a farm that has not been preserved," maintained Agricultural Preserve Board director Matt Knepper.

He said that's because buyers in Lancaster County want to farm and will pay top dollar for quality farmland whether or not it's preserved.

Despite any evidence contrary to his opinions, Ranck perseveres.

"We are not preserving, We are destroying," he said. "I don't see why our society hasn't risen up over this sooner."

Benner's reservations are not so dramatic.

Given a decreasing amount of money set aside for preservation and the development pressure that is sure to return when the economy improves, she said, the current plan may not turn out to be the best approach.

"If farming was profitable, you wouldn't have to worry about preservation," she also observed.

"Sons and daughters can't afford to buy farms. Where's the generation that wants to do it next?"

jbrubaker@lnpnews.com