New York, NY - 3/27/2002 - The Open Space Institute is a non-profit conservation organization that acquires significant recreational, environmental, agricultural and historic properties throughout New York State. Since its inception nearly 25 years ago, OSI's work has added to or created more than 30 parks and preserves and permanently protected more than 70,000 acres stretching from the Palisades to the Adirondacks.
As part of our mission, OSI is dedicated to protecting working farmland and providing farmers with affordable and long-term options in their increasingly challenging search for land on which to farm.
To date, the Open Space Institute has invested over $5.7 million in working farmland in the Hudson River Valley, resulting in the permanent protection of some 2,500 acres. Some of OSI's farmland achievements include:
- Acquisition of approximately 300 acres of farm fields at the base of Schunnemunk Mountain State Park in Orange County;
- Acquisition of a 126-acre working farm adjacent to the Martin Van Buren National Historic Site in Kinderhook, a significant piece of the former President's retirement estate;
- Purchase of development rights on 135 acres near the Van Buren site that have become the new home of Roxbury Farm, an organic farm that is one of the nation's most successful Community Supported Agriculture projects. The owner of the land, Equity Trust, has in turn granted a lifetime inheritable lease to the farmer;
- Purchase of development rights on 250 acres along the Hudson River in Rensselaer County. This property is one of the longest-active maize farms in all of the U.S.;
- Acquisition of easements, with the New York State Department of Ag & Markets, on 250 acres of farmland directly within the viewshed of the Saratoga National Veterans Cemetery in Saratoga County; and,
- Protection, through an agricultural easement, of a 900-acre dairy farm, within the viewshed of the Saratoga Battlefield National Historic Site, on the east side of the Hudson River in Washington County.