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Alternative Methods for Keeping Land in Agriculture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2017

Frederic O. Sargent
Frederic O. Sargent*
Affiliation:
Department of Resource Economics, Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Vermont
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Creeping urbanization without land use controls is threatening rural areas with the loss of prime and scenic agricultural land. The operation of a relatively free land market shifts land to the highest bidder—one who believes he can make a profit, or one who judges his psychic income from ownership and/or use sufficient to make him prefer land ownership to alternative investments or consumption. As farmers retire and sell to nonfarmers, prime agricultural land adjacent to cities is transferred to more intensive, profitable, and irreversible urban uses—residences, commerce, recreation, and industry. Farmland is shifted from active farming to retirement homes and second homes, both at retail and in large developments. This land use trend is frequently cited as undesirable by municipal planners since it leads to a loss of prime agricultural land which may be needed for future food production and reduces pastoral scenery. In a recent study in Massachusetts, J. B. Wyckoff found that the process of suburbanization was consuming rural land at a very rapid rate—from two to eight times the historic rate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Northeastern Agricultural Economics Council , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , October 1973 , pp. 198 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association 

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Footnotes

*

This paper focuses on keeping land in agriculture–not on the similar and overlapping problem of keeping land open.

References

1/ “Impact of Suburbanization on Rural Towns,” by J. B. Wyckoff, Journal of the Community Development Society, Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 1973, p. 48.Google Scholar

2/ See inter alia “Shelburne, Vermont, Quality Environment Plan,” 1973, and “Proposal for a Quality Environment,” Essex, Vermont, 1973.Google Scholar

3/ See “Planning and Zoning in Vermont with Soil Surveys,” USDA Soil Conservation Service, Burlington, Vermont, 1973.Google Scholar

4/ See “Cluster Development,” by William H. Whyte, American Conservation Association, 1964.Google Scholar

5/ See “The Application and Cost of the Development Right Concept to Farmland in New Jersey,” by Victor Kasper, Jr., Lee D. Schneider, and Donn A. Derr, Department of Agricultural Economics and Marketing, Pennsylvania State University, Report #19, February 1973.Google Scholar

6/ “Land Use Control that Compensates Landowners,” by Armand Beliveau, Agency of Development and Community Affairs, Montpelier, Vermont, March 10, 1973.Google Scholar

7/ “A Market Study of Properties Covered by Scenic Easements Along the Great River Road in Vernon and Pierce Counties,” Department of Transportation of Wisconsin, October 1967.Google Scholar

8/ See “Hawaii Pioneers With a New Zoning Law,” by Fredericl K. Munns, Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, Volume No. 3, May-June 1962; and “Rural New York State's Agricultural Districts,” by Howard Ε. Conklin, New York's Food and Life Sciences, Vol. 5, No. 4, Oct.-Dec. 1972.Google Scholar

9/ See “Use-Value Assessment Legislation in the United States,” by Raleigh Barlowe, James G. Ahl, and Gordon Bachman, Land Economics, Volume XLIX, Number 2, May 1973.Google Scholar

10/ See “Garden Cities of Tomorrow,” by Ebenezer Howard, M.I.T. Press, 1965.Google Scholar

11/ “Lakeshore Land Use Controls,” by F. O. Sargent and W. H. Bingham, Vermont Agricultural Experiment Station Research Report 57, March 1969, pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

12/ See “The Community Land Trust,” published by Center for Community Economic Development, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1972.Google Scholar

13/ “New England Heritage,” Department of Interior, Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, July 1968.Google Scholar

14/ “Shelburne Quality Environment Plan,” Shelburne Conservation Committee, Shelburne, Vermont, January 1973.Google Scholar

15/ See “Guidelines for Quality Environment Planning,” by Frederic O, Sargent, Agricultural Experiment Station Pamphlet 38, University of Vermont, March 1973.Google Scholar

16/ See “Challenge of the Land,” by Charles Ε. Little, Pergamon Press, 1969; “Land Use Controls in the United States,” by John Delafons, M.I.T. Press, 1969; “The Zoning Game,” by Richard R. Babcock, University of Wisconsin Press, 1966; “The Last Landscape,” by William H. Whyte; and “New Jersey Land Use Planning Techniques and Legislation,” by Lee D. Schneider, Department of Agricultural Economics and Marketing, Series No. 338, July 1972.Google Scholar