Eminent Domain and Agricultural Property in Texas

How projects affect farmland

A corridor across a field takes a strip and changes everything around it. Pivots no longer complete a circle. Turn rows move. Drainage that worked for decades now ponds. None of that appears in a per acre figure.

Agricultural considerations

• Farm access. Field entries, turn rows and the route between fields.
• Irrigation. Pivots, drip systems, wells, canals and the lines that feed them.
• Land use. Whether the remainder can still be cropped in the same rotation.
• Equipment access. Whether machinery can cross the strip, and where.
• Operations. Storage, pens, barns and the ground around them.

Irrigation and drainage

Severing land from its water is one of the most expensive things a corridor can do, and one of the easiest to overlook in an appraisal prepared from an aerial photograph. Document the delivery system as it exists: lines, valves, wells, pivots and the acres each one serves.

Equipment access

Crossings determine whether the remainder farms as one unit or two. Ask how many are provided, how wide they are, whether they support loaded equipment, and who maintains them.

Timing and growing seasons

Construction during planting or harvest costs more than the same work in a dormant month. Timing is negotiable, and it is worth raising before the schedule is set rather than after.