Manalapan officials concede that farmland here has dwindled through the years, but they say they are taking steps to preserve what's left.

A 23-acre farm on Sweetmans Lane recently underwent a government-backed preservation process, making it among nine farms in town that cannot become the subject of nonagricultural development.

The Reese Farm was preserved through the state Department of Agriculture's Planning Incentive Grant program, with the county, state and township agreeing to each pay percentages of the property's value to deed-restrict it as farmland. The township's share of the easement purchase is $362,500. The state is paying $455,000 and the county is paying $182,0000.

But it's not entirely a happy story. Donald Holland, chairman of the Municipal Agricultural Committee since the panel's inception in 2001, said the push to preserve township land "started too late."

"I've been here 35 years on my own farm," Holland said. "I sincerely wish we started back then, because, to be honest, it's almost at the point where too much of the town is built up."

Still, Holland said the preservation effort has been substantial, a sentiment shared by Mayor Michelle Roth.

"Manalapan Township has been very aggressive in preserving land in our township through the Planning Incentive Grants for our farms and the Green Acres program for open space," Roth said. "Including the most recent farm to enter into the program, we have a total of 1,247 acres preserved in both categories since we began in 1999. Land preservation reduces residential building, while supporting the farming community in our township."

One of the other more notable preservation acts occurred in December 2006, when the township, county and state pooled $1.7 million to buy an easement on a wholesale container nursery on Woodward Road. That deal covered 66 acres.

That was the first agricultural easement acquisition in Manalapan to be funded through a Planning Incentive Grant — a relatively new state farmland-preservation funding initiative. The goal of the program is to protect areas of reasonably contiguous farmland and promote the long-term viability of agriculture as an industry, officials said.