Abstract
Over the last century, the U.S. economy has favored large-scale agribusiness over small-scale farming. In some regions, this trend has led to the abandonment of cultivated land, and there is little scholarly literature that discusses how farmers are affected. The goal of this study was to examine Allegany County (NY) farmers’ perceptions of abandoned land and associated correlates. The data were collected through surveys mailed to farmers in Allegany County in 2012. We found that the majority of farmers felt personally affected by abandoned land and expressed the greatest amount of dissatisfaction with the state of the U.S. economy and local, state, and national regulations, especially if they considered themselves Republican. These findings address the sociopolitical significance of abandoned land and contribute to an understanding of how abandoned land affects residents of rural communities who are typically left out of discussions on policies affecting their livelihoods.
Highlights
In the recent decades, the Southern Tier region of western New York State has experienced land use transitions atypical of the rest of the state, where suburban development was the dominating trend.Between 1973 and 2000, the two most common types of land use transition in the region were directly the result of agricultural land abandonment and subsequent ecological succession [1]
The research presented here aimed at examining abandoned farmland from the perspective of a key driver of land use change, the farmer
The loss of agricultural land has been primarily observed in the peri-urban environment, where population density lead to land values favoring conversion to developed uses [2]
Summary
Between 1973 and 2000, the two most common types of land use transition in the region were directly the result of agricultural land abandonment and subsequent ecological succession [1]. The loss of agricultural land has been primarily observed in the peri-urban environment, where population density lead to land values favoring conversion to developed uses [2]. This pattern is of a global nature with urban land areas growing at an even faster rate than that of the urban population density [3]. Non-economic factors have been shown to come into play in land conversion decisions, including place attachment [7] and social capital [8]
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