How You Can Help

Make an Impact

We are looking to our like-minded supporters who share our goals of supporting and protecting farm and forest land in our beautiful region. Like you, we recognize our natural resources are central to our quality of life. We need fresh water to drink, clean air to breathe, healthy food to eat and economic prosperity to sustain our lives and communities. Now, more than ever, our local food system and food security are vital. Broken supply chains have taught the world just how precious our farms and local resources are.

The Watershed Agricultural Council works with farm and forest landowners in the New York City Watershed region to protect water quality on behalf of nine million New York residents. Your donation helps make this possible!

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Advocate for Agriculture

Farmland, clean water and a way of life. All three are dependent on a thriving agricultural community that is threatened by rising land prices and development. Safeguard these irreplaceable resources-our rural landscape and its family farms-by protecting regional farmlands and working landscapes.

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Protect Working Landscapes

When we protect a farm, we preserve a way of life. For generations, people in the Catskills have appreciated the rural character of the region’s undeveloped landscape: a beautiful patchwork of farm and forestland stitched together by cool mountain streams. To work and live in an active farming community is to be a part of a vibrant landscape where farmers milk cows, grow hay and tap maple trees. Looking towards the future, Catskill farmers are growing new markets with specialty food crops like organic vegetables, grass-fed beef and poultry and farmstead cheese.

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Conserve the Watershed

Through a unique agricultural conservation easement with the Watershed Agricultural Council landowners can permanently protect their farming and forestry livelihoods, and clean water. By donating to the Easement Stewardship Fund, you are supporting this practice and ensuring that the land is protected in perpetuity.

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Thank you to our 2024 Donors

[ezcol_1third]John Verhoeven
Fred Huneke
Karl Gockel
Marilyn Wyman
Bud Gladstone
Paul Galley
Anthony Root
Barbara Herbst
Tom Hutson

[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_1third]Troy Bookhout
Glen Wygant
Farm Catskills
Amy Faulkner
Carol Bishop
Livestock Foundation
Pete Steenland
Patricia Bowker
Cindy Aldrich

[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_1third_end]Ryan Naatz
Bill Martin
Heather Magnan
Connor Young
Kari Sheridan
Serena Orleski
Amy Harby
Wendy Hanselman
Jason Helmbold