BELFAST -- Maine Farmland Trust soon will receive a special $1 million loan from the Maine Community Foundation.

Funds will be used to support the Trust's "buy/protect/sell" program, through which it purchases farms threatened by development.

The program permanently preserves the land, then resells it to a farmer at a "farmland price," rather than a developer's price.

Maine Farmland Trust is a statewide nonprofit land trust whose mission is to protect Maine farmland from development.

Begun last year, the trust already has used the "buy/protect/sell" program to preserve four farms totaling 570 acres, while simultaneously making land affordable to farmers.

Maine Community Foundation's low-interest loan is known as a "program-related investment." Its funds reduce the trust's overall cost of capital, making more projects economically viable.

The funds also will help the trust leverage other sources of capital, which will allow the program to do that much more, officials said.

The trust has set a goal of helping preserve 100,000 acres of Maine farmland in the next five years. That's the level needed to counteract the fact that more than 200,000 acres of Maine's best farmland will be in transition in this same period, according to Executive Director John Piotti.

For information, contact Piotti at Maine Farmland Trust, 97 Main St., Belfast, ME 04915; call 338-6575; or visit www.mainefarmland.org.