A family's legacy helps preserve 243 acres of farmland

The Langston family and conservation officials pause for a photo.

Born in the 1920s, Ken Langston’s parents grew up on family farms in Johnston and Wayne counties. Later, the couple became the John Deere farm equipment dealers in Smithfield.

Those experiences gave his parents “a front row seat” to the changes taking place in farming, Langston said. “As time progressed, my mother became very concerned about the demise of family farms and the loss of agricultural lands for development,” he said.

Over the years, Langston’s mother, Marjorie, had become the owner of three farms, two in Johnston County and one in Wayne County. Together, they totaled 243 acres. In December 2021, she began the process of placing all three farms in conservation easements, meaning they would remain in farming forever.

In a conservation easement, a landowner, in exchange for payment, limits future development of the property while keeping it available for farming. Those development restrictions remain with the land if the owner sells it or passes it on to heirs. 

“My mother passed away in April 2022 with this work just getting started,” Langston noted.

As trustee of the Marjorie D. Langston Trust, Ken Langston took on the task of fulfilling his mother’s wishes, and on July 15 he saw the last of her farms placed into a conservation easement.

A brief program at the Johnston County Agricultural Center celebrated the conservation easement on the Langston farmland on Swift Creek Road in Johnston County. That easement marked the 100th completed with funding from a partnership between the N.C. Department of Agriculture and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Langston said the easements were a good thing. “During this process, I have talked with accountants, attorneys, surveyors, reviewers and numerous interested parties,” he noted. “No one has given me any indication that farmland preservation is a wasted effort or not an admirable, worthy governmental initiative.”

The funding partnership between the NCDA and USDA secured its first conservation easement in 2009 in Durham County, noted Evan Davis, director of farmland preservation for the NCDA. 

“Over the course of the next 17 years, 99 more partnership conservation easements have been recorded, totaling nearly 17,000 acres of preserved farmland in 32 counties across North Carolina,” he said.

More farmland preservation is on the way, Davis said. “We have accomplished a lot over the years, but we are entering a new era of opportunity,” he said. “Just recently, the state made a historic investment in farmland preservation funding, providing the most funding ever in a single year to the Agricultural Development and Farmland Preservation Trust Fund.”

Ken White is the assistant chief for the South Region of the Natural Resources Conservation Service. He equated farmland preservation to stewardship and called it a virtue.

“It’s really close to where all of your other core values reside,” White said. “Integrity, honesty, patriotism — they begin in your heart.”

White praised Marjorie Langston for her decision to keep the family land in farming. “I think that mother had stewardship in her heart and realized the value of the land,” he said.

In addition to the NCDA and the NRCS, the Soil and Water Conservation Districts in Johnston and Wayne counties played roles in the Langston conservation easements. “There is a proverb out of Africa that says, ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together,’ ” White said, praising the partnership that secured the easements. 

Patrick Harris is chairman of the Johnston County Board of Commissioners, which has supported conservation easements financially. “One of our priorities is farmland preservation,” he said. “Agriculture is very important in Johnston County, very important in North Carolina, and any opportunity we have to try to boost that, then we’re always interested.”

Page last updated on:  August 13, 2026