Conservation is increasingly recognized and funded on private lands. Making conservation last despite turnover in people requires maintaining social relationships. For example, conservation easements (CEs), also called conservation covenants, are legal agreements for private land conservation typically expected to last in perpetuity, yet their public benefits depend on successor landowners. We focus on the social relations in stewarding lands held by successor landowners who purchased or inherited a property after the conservation agreement was in place. We conducted 38 semi‐structured interviews with key informants, conservation organization staff and successors who own conserved properties in Wisconsin, USA. These interviews revealed the importance of the relationship between conservation organization staff and landowners and the roles of trust, shared goals, meaning‐making and power. These social relationships can influence the land management choices of landowners and compliance enforcement approaches of conservation organizations. In light of these findings, policymakers and professionals should consider rapid outreach to new owners of conserved properties and greater investments in landowner relationships to build multiple dimensions of trust, connect on shared goals and help landowners find positive meaning in conservation agreements. We recommend documenting these personal dimensions of conservation for future staff, whose effectiveness in the field depends on their ability to make conservation policy salient for particular people and places. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

PurposeFarmers markets act as a nexus between farmers, community members and social values, and can foster significant community and environmental benefits. However, some of these benefits, including agricultural sustainability, are rarely measured or publicized, restricting the full potential of markets and their associated actors to generate public benefits. This study aims to consider how markets, planners and policymakers might address this gap to promote a healthy environment and climate change mitigation.Design/methodology/approachIn this article, the authors discuss their efforts to advance the above opportunity by developing, in collaboration with 20 farms across the USA, a citizen science data collection tool that measures and translates farm “ecosystem services” into accessible, public-facing formats to support informed farmer and consumer decision-making.FindingsThe authors present takeaways from exploratory interviews with three farmer-collaborators, which illustrate how tools like ours can help farmers in myriad ways: setting benchmarks to measure on-farm improvement over time, legitimizing their work through scientific grounding, communicating environmental impacts to public audiences, increasing sales to fund sustainability efforts, gaining competitive edge and others.Practical implicationsMore broadly, the article exemplifies how marketplaces can strengthen symbiotic linkages between individuals, community allies and social goals through data measurement and communication, and reflects on how planners and policymakers might support these connections to advance public purposes.Originality/valueThis research responds uniquely to a critical need identified by practitioners and academics to expand understanding and awareness of the ecosystem services farms provide.