Our History
San Benito Agricultural Land Trust (SBALT) grew out of community concern in the early 1990s, when large development proposals threatened the working farms and ranches of San Benito County. Local farmers, ranchers, and residents came together to create a new tool for protecting agricultural land in perpetuity: a community-based land trust.
Since 1993, SBALT has partnered with landowners to protect thousands of acres of prime farmland and rangeland through conservation easements and by owning and stewarding key properties like Rancho Larios Open Space and the Nyland Property. Today, SBALT holds easements on over 6,000 acres and cares for more than 1,000 acres of ranch and open space lands, while leading community programs like Ranch Days and wildfire resilience planning.
Era-Based Timeline
In the early 1990s, San Benito ranchers, farmers, and community members came together in response to large resort and subdivision proposals, especially the nearly 9,000-acre Paicines Ranch Resort—to explore conservation easements as a tool to keep land in agriculture. Their organizing led to SBALT’s incorporation as a nonprofit in 1993– 94, early public outreach, and the first conversations with landowners about permanently protecting working lands.
In 2004 SBALT became a fee-title landowner when it accepted the 521-acre Rancho Larios Open Space along the Gabilan Range, expanding its role from easement holder to on-the-ground land steward. Over the next decade, the board maintained steady oversight of thousands of conserved acres while managing this new open-space property on the edge of San Juan Bautista.
Beginning in 2018, SBALT underwent a revitalization, updating bylaws and practices, reopening an office in San Juan Bautista, joining the Land Trust Alliance, securing capacity-building grants, and completing the Foster Ranch easement while earning California Green Business certification. The hiring of SBALT’s first Executive Director in 2021 and achievement of national accreditation in 2022, along with the launch of monthly Ranch Days, marked the organization’s emergence as a fully professional land trust with strengthened community programming.
With support from the Trust for Public Land and training from American Farmland Trust, SBALT secured its first conservation easements on the Brandenburg and Cook Ranch properties and later the 3,173-acre Wilkinson Ranch, quickly growing its easement portfolio to nearly 5,000 acres. During this period, an all-volunteer board also crafted SBALT’s mission, business plan, and easement criteria, laying the organizational foundation for long-term stewardship.
SBALT added major easements on Soap Lake Ranch and Silva Ranch in 2014, protecting more than 1,200 additional acres of rangeland, wetlands, and prime farmland and bringing its total monitored acres above 6,700. These projects responded to pressures from transportation and housing proposals, using easements both to safeguard key landscapes and to shape how development occurred elsewhere in the county.
In 2023 SBALT helped launch the San Benito County Wildfire Resilience Program with state funding, gained resources to expand staff capacity on fire and stewardship issues, and added 564 acres to its portfolio, including ownership of the 540-acre Nyland Property and a second easement on Foster Ranch. Through partnerships with the Trust for Public Land, the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, and the Amah Mutsun Land Trust, SBALT now stewards roughly 7,300 acres and is positioning its conserved lands as anchors for regional ecological and community resilience.