Former President Jimmy Carter’s historic family peanut farm has been sold to an environmental nonprofit — and the land will eventually be transferred to the State of Georgia.
On Monday, November 9, the Conservation Fund announced that it has acquired the land that the Carter family farmed for generations in Plains, Ga.
The $8.5 million purchase includes nearly 2,500 acres of fields and forests that are home to longleaf pines, gopher tortoises, deer, turkey, quail and a variety of other plant and animal species.
“This is going to end up permanently protected in the way he would have wanted to see,” Stacy Funderburke, the Conservation Fund’s vice president for the central Southeast region, told The Washington Post of the sale. “But it’s also going to be open to others to have that same connection to the land.”
According to the nonprofit, conversationists eventually plan to combine the land with the nearby state-managed Lanahassee Creek Wildlife Management Area. That would expand the area’s total size to 7,000 acres and would allow hunters, anglers and the broader public to access it as early as 2027.
In his later years, Carter requested the farm be restored to its native State and replanted with longleaf pine trees, according to the Conservation Fund.
“For our family, this land was always about more than a farm. It was home — a place my grandparent’s treasure,” the president’s grandson, Jason Carter, told USA Today in a statement. “We’re grateful to The Conservation Fund and to everyone working to make sure it’s protected for generations to come.”
Blake Sullivan, the former manager of the former president’s farm and timberland, told the Post that the sale was “a fitting tribute,” in part due to the conversation work that Carter did during his presidency, which included establishing 39 units of the National Park System and installing solar panels on the White House.
Additionally, in 1980, the late president signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which protected more than 104 million acres and still remains the largest expansion of protected public lands in U.S. history.
Carter spend much of his life on the farm. His father, Earl Carter, grew peanuts, corn and sugarcane on the property, and the former president spent time working the fields and explored the surrounding woods in his free time.
Even during his years as president and in his old age, Carter often returned to the farm for hunting, strolling with his wife Rosalynn and fishing.
Carter spend much of his life on the farm. His father, Earl Carter, grew peanuts, corn and sugarcane on the property, and the former president spent time working the fields and explored the surrounding woods in his free time.
Even during his years as president and in his old age, Carter often returned to the farm for hunting, strolling with his wife Rosalynn and fishing.
According to Amy, her father returned to visit the farm “until he was physically incapable of doing it,” and just before his death at age 100 in 2024, he would find someone to drive him through the property.
“This is the perfect thing for the land to have happen to it,” Amy said of the sale. “It’s not just passing it off to anyone. It feels like something that would fit into [my father’s] vision.”