The man page of bsd.port.mk, particular PORTS_PRIVSEP
provides this suggestion
'permit nopass setenv {....} user cmd pkg_add'
I don't know much about what pkg_add can do, but when
building packages with many dependencies, password prompt
greets for every dependency, persist option doesn't work
across the dependencies for the above command,
so it becomes a pain in the ass.
I think persist doesn't work because of the setenv part,
since it is different for every package/sub-package
What do you suggest?