Carter Family Sells Peanut Farm to Conservation Group, Land to Go Public
The farm that Jimmy Carter worked for most of his life is being sold, and the land is headed for public use. The Conservation Fund, a nonprofit group that buys land to protect it, purchased the property for $8.5 million. The group plans to transfer it to the state of Georgia later.
The four children of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter decided to sell the farmland. The purchase includes about 2,500 acres of fields and forests, according to Town & Country.
Carter went back to work the land in 1953, after his father died. He kept at it for decades. When he became president in 1977, he put the farm into a blind trust, an arrangement that hands day-to-day control of assets to a trustee so the owner does not manage them while in office. His daughter, Amy Carter, told the Washington Post that he returned to the farm "until he was physically incapable of doing it."
Amy Carter also defended the sale. "It's not just passing it off to anyone," she said. "It feels like something that would fit into [my father's] vision." She called it "the perfect thing for the land to have happen to it."
Jason Carter, a grandson, put the family's view in simpler terms. "For our family, this land was always about more than a farm," he said. "It was home — a place my grandparents treasure."
What happens next has a timeline. The Conservation Fund expects to open the Carter farm to the public as soon as 2027. In 2028, the group plans to transfer it to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the state agency that manages public land and wildlife. The land will then join the nearby Lanahassee Creek Wildlife Management Area, a state-run wildlife area open for hunting, fishing and other outdoor recreation.
Stacy Funderburke, the Conservation Fund's vice president for the central Southeast region, said the land will be protected for good. "This is going to end up permanently protected in the way he would have wanted to see," Funderburke said, as quoted by the Washington Post.
The sale does not change the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park, which is run by the National Park Service, the federal agency that oversees national parks and historic sites. The park stays as it is. The family farm will be a separate piece of land with its own plan.
For visitors who have followed the former president's life, the change may be the most personal part. The fields that once held his daily work will be open to people who never knew him. The family's words suggest that was the point.
