Heidi Secordowns a farm outside Stroudsburg, so when the Monroe County resident, who is also a deputy secretary at the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, travels south to the Lehigh Valley, she laments the loss of vast parcels used for cultivating or rearing livestock.

“Once you lose farmland, it’s gone forever,” Secord said Monday. “We see that everyday when we drive on Route 33, and see all those warehouses.”

Secord and about 20 other county and state officials visited Unangst Tree Farms in East Allen Township not to lament a loss. She joined owner Roger Unangst and officials in a ribbon-cutting to mark the preservation of the county’s 20,000 acre of farmland, part of 51 acres Unangst recently bought. That land can never be developed for anything other than agricultural production.

That much land represents less than 10% of the county’s 239,000 acres. But it would be enough to build some 1,700 warehouses, minus impervious surfaces and more, according to Chris Amato, Lehigh Valley Planning Commission chairperson

Northampton County has preserved about 270 farms in the more than 30 years it has run a preservation program, county Executive Lamont G. McClure said.

The county negotiated a development rights deal worth more than $580,000 in public funding for the most recent 51 acres, or more than $11,000 per acre, officials said.

But McClure said the milestone is more than acres and dollars. It’s about people and longtime farmers such as Unangst, whose family is in its sixth generation raising crops and trees on land off Route 512, not far from a steel fabricator and warehouse visible on the horizon from where McClure, Unangst and Secord spoke.

“We are sending a clear message,” McClure said. “Northampton County values its farmers, the land and the future, and we will continue to work tirelessly to protect resources that will make our community strong, prosperous and unique.”

Unangst, a longtime East Allen Township supervisor and member of the county farm board that approved the land sale — he said he recused himself from participating –— said his is considered a “home farm,” partly since it’s been in his family going back to the 1860s. He and his wife, Trudy, live in an 18th-century house across the road.

“Farmland preservation allows us to make the ground affordable for us to purchase,” said Unangst, who drove a tractor hitched to a large trailer that he also uses to take schoolchildren on tours to visit the pumpkin fields and see the Christmas trees.

Lehigh County, which operates a similar program, has preserved 413 farms covering more than 28,000 acres, according to its website. Lehigh County’s proposed 2026 budget, introduced last month, looks to fully fund its farmland preservation program, at $1.7 million.

McClure, the two-term executive who is not running for reelection in November, has made open-space preservation a priority of his administration. Republican and Democratic officials joined the event Monday, and Secord, who is the state Agriculture Department’s deputy secretary for farm, food and market access, said the state’s involvement will continue.

“We understand agriculture is more than an economic driver,” she said. “It’s a way of life, a public good, and really a legacy worth protecting.”

Contact Morning Call reporter Anthony Salamone at asalamone@mcall.com.

https://www.mcall.com/2025/09/29/northampton-county-farmland/