Farmland Conservation Research Articles

Convergent Validity of Attribute-Based, Choice Questions in Stated-Preference Studies

The application of attribute-based choice questions is well established in the marketing literature, but there are unique aspects of the design that warrant investigation to assess their validity for economic welfare estimation. Three design issues are investigated in this paper: (1) the placement of the monetary stimulus (policy cost to respondents) in the sequence of attributes, (2) the number of policy alternatives respondents are asked to consider in choice questions (two versus three), and (3) the inclusion, versus exclusion, of a status-quo alternative in choice questions. The data used to implement these investigations are from a survey designed to estimate the value Maine residents place on a farmland conservation easement program. Tests of convergent validity indicate that the placement of the monetary stimulus, first versus last in the list of attributes, did not affect estimates of preference parameters, significant differences between questions with three versus two alternatives did occur, and the inclusion/exclusion of a status-quo alternative did not affect preference parameters.

A new method is used to evaluate the strategic value of Fresno County farmland

Fresno County is a rich agricultural area that faces rapid urbanization and farmland conversion. The county is participating in a strategic, multi-county planning initiative aimed at making sustainable and regionally cohesive land-use decisions. To inform this effort, we conducted a farmland conservation assessment and identified strategic farmlands for prioritization in future conservation efforts. We identified environmental and human predictor variables that affect the viability of existing farmland, used a geographic information system (GIS) to integrate them, and created a countywide strategic farmland conservation map. We compared our analysis to status quo methods of prioritization and found that with our model the spatial output of highly valued farmland was shifted, narrowed and located adjacent to some of the county's most urbanized areas. These findings are influencing growth policies and farmland conservation planning in Fresno County.

Forest and Farmland Conservation Effects of Oregon’s (USA) Land-Use Planning Program

Oregon's land-use planning program is often cited as an exemplary approach to forest and farmland conservation, but analyses of its effectiveness are limited. This article examines Oregon's land-use planning program using detailed spatial data describing building densities in western Oregon. An empirical model describes changes in building densities on forest and agricultural lands from 1974 to 1994, as a function of a gravity index of land's commuting distance to cities of various sizes, topographic characteristics, and zoning adopted under Oregon's land-use planning program. The effectiveness of Oregon's land-use planning program is evaluated based on the statistical significance of zoning variables and by computing estimated areas of forest and agricultural lands falling into undeveloped, low-density developed, and developed building density categories, with and without land-use zoning in effect. Results suggest that Oregon's land-use planning program has provided a measurable degree of protection to forest and agricultural lands since its implementation.

中山間地域における圃場単位の期待所得土地分級―耕作放棄による外部不経済の影響を考慮して―

A detailed land use plan is necessary to conserve farmland in disadvantaged areas. Although many studies have been done on land classification for farmland preservation, little has been done on the economic measure based method as applied to detailed land use planning. This paper presents an economic land classification method for farmland preservation.We chose 83 plots of farmland in the mountainous area of Ohda City, Shimane Prefecture as a case study. Serious farm abandonment and subsequent problems including no insect management and wild boar damage to rice crops have occurred because of the aging and depopulation of farm households and stagnant price of rice products.First, land productivity of each plot was estimated by a logistic regression model with surveyed farm data including farmland yield, area, damage by wild boars, rice lodging and solar radiation. The survey was conducted from August to September in 2002. Second, an estimation function for labor productivity was determined by substituting harvest time, farmland area, length of the short side of a farm field and probability of rice lodging in the model. The estimation successfully fit the harvesting time stated by each farmer. Subsequently, a mathematical programming model was constructed to estimate the expected income under the given conditions. Negative externality by neighboring abandoned farmlands, irrigation facilitymanagement and movement frequency between fields were considered in the model.As a result, optimal land use plans were developed under the given labor input. In the simulated case where scattered abandonment occurred, the effect of negative externality was larger than that for the optimized case. We also simulated the effects of particular farmland conservation on environmental and other concerns.The advantage of this method is that we can determine which land plots should be conserved by economic measures in definite consideration of political effects and special characteristics such as negative externality or movement frequency. For improvement of the model, data reliability of the externality effect needs to be extended. Year round labor input and multiple subjects should also be considered in the model.

Problems of Farmland Conservation during Snow-melting and Ground-thawing Period in Cold Regions

Problems of Farmland Conservation during Snow-melting and Ground-thawing Period in Cold Regions

Landscape ecological planning process for wetland, waterfowl, and farmland conservation

A landscape ecological planning process (LEP process) is described that addresses the issues of rice production and wetland habitat conservation on privately owned rice farms in Texas. The LEP process was used to evaluate proposed land-use management plans based on alternative policies for the next US Farm Bill, which would be in effect from 2003 to 2009. A system simulation model, geographic information systems (GIS) model based on expert knowledge, as well as expert opinion, were used to evaluate uncertainty about the effects of these plans and policies on different types of farms and the quality of winter habitat of lesser snow geese. The models simulated shifts in land-use, rice and cattle production, farm profitability, and use of habitat by geese. Simulation results suggested that the level of federal subsidies for all policies influenced the continuation of rice production from 2003 to 2009. In addition, the size of the farm influenced whether rice production continued until 2009. The smaller farms were more sensitive to decreases in federal subsidies than larger farms because smaller farms received less income from goose hunting leases. Winter habitat for lesser snow geese was reduced in terms of patch size and nearest neighbor distance when rice production was discontinued by 2009 for all policies. Agricultural policy experts, who were familiar with the study sites, selected the modified version of the conservation policy as the example that would most benefit farmers and geese. The experts emphasized that their policy would offer farmers more flexibility to manage their farms, to diversify their incomes, and to be good land stewards.

Land Classification for Collective Farmland Conservation

Land Classification for Collective Farmland Conservation

Diminishing farmland and urban development in China: 1993–1996

Farmland conservation is a new perspective in China's development policy making. In this paper, we seek to explore the distribution patterns of farmland loss between regions and among city-size groups, and to examine the factors and institutional background that influence on farmland conservation. A random sample of 179 out of 666 cities in 1996 was selected. Data were collected from various sources for the period 1993–96. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and nonparametric tests were used to analyze the data. Three-dimensional maps were plotted to present the distribution patterns of farmland loss, urban population growth and real estate development. The empirical results reveal that regional and hierarchical variations did exist in farmland loss, so did in urban population growth and real estate development. Farmland loss was more severe a problem in cities along the coast, especially cities with a nonagricultural population over two million. Urban population growth and real estate development were two main factors causing farmland loss in cities. Poor legal ground for land administration, weak law enforcement, and the drive towards fast revenue making were the underlying problems that prevented effective farmland conservation. In China's current transition from a planned to a market economy, farmland conservation can succeed only if government officials were no longer to trade off sustainability of development with short-term, fast revenue making.

農業労働力の継承性からみた中山間集落の農地保全に関する研究

This study will investigate the direction of farmland conservation in a settlement of hilly and mountainous farming area, from the viewpoint of the continuity of farmer's agricultural view and agricultural labor force. The research field was M-settlement, which is a typical settlement of hilly and mountainous farming area, in Yanahara-cho, Kume-gun, Okayama-ken.The first part dealt with land use and possessing structure in the research field. The main results obtained are as follows;1) The land possessing structure by traditional community unit which is called as“Nou-gumi”, still remaines and it gives marked effects on the present land use.2) Advantage for cultivation was highly related to the land possessing structure. The second part studies on continuity of agricultural labor force in large-scale farms. The results obtained are as follows;1) The correlation between land scale and agricultural labor force in each farm was not always clear and unbalanced conditions were sometimes found even in large-scale farms.2) The abandoned cultivation often occurred due to shortage of labor force in the farmers which had the advantage of land.The third part developed practical plans for land use and conservation through attitude survey for individuals in households, according to the results obtained in the first and the second parts;1. In order to plan land use and conservation in the future, the traditional community unit which decides the habitants' attitude for agricultural production and living space in the settlement, had to be suggestively considered as the base unit of farmland management and use.2. Not only land quality but also many conditions such as continuity of agricultural labor force, agreement of thinking way from youth to aged generation in a household, seemed to be necessary due to continue the cultivation.

Farm Land Conservation and Storage Capacity of Paddy Field for Hilled Rural Area

Farm Land Conservation and Storage Capacity of Paddy Field for Hilled Rural Area

Scoring and ranking farmland conservation activities to evaluate environmental performance and encourage sustainable farming

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Kathleen Lewis, John Skinner, James Finch, Tina Kaho, Marguerite Newbold, and Keith Bardon, ‘Scoring and ranking farmland conservation activities to evaluate environmental performance and encourage sustainable farming’, Sustainable Development, Vol. 5 (2): 71-77, version of record online 4 December 1998. The final, published version is available online at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1719(199708)5:2%3C71::AID-SD61%3E3.0.CO;2-F/pdf © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Farmland Conservation and System of Disaster Prevention Project

Farmland Conservation and System of Disaster Prevention Project

Room to grow? Farmland conservation in California

In the last decade one quarter of US population growth has occurred in California, generating problems associated with service provision, air and water quality and the depletion of agricultural land resources. Evidence for the conversion of agricultural land to urban use is presented together with the implications for the nation’s leading farm state. The California Land Conservation Act (1965) has been in place for 25 years as the state’s major programme of protection for 15 million acres of agricultural land. The Act can be regarded to have reached maturity and this is an appropriate time to assess its effectiveness. With forces of the land market increasing in response to population growth the Act has been reasonably successful in protecting the economic viability of Californian agriculture, but its future success will lie in supplementing its provision of preferential tax assessment with other land use planning measures. Only through such a comprehensive framework will agricultural land conservation withstand the cumulative drive of the Californian ‘growth machine’.

Character of Farm Land Reclamation method and Facilities for Farm Land Conservation

Character of Farm Land Reclamation method and Facilities for Farm Land Conservation

The evolution and implications of the U.S. food security act of 1985

The Food Security Act of 1985 sets the United States (U.S.) policy course for the five years, 1986–1990, in the areas of farm product prices and farmer incomes, agricultural production, food aid, and trade in agricultural products. It is clearly an evolution of past policy, deeply rooted in the institutional processes of participatory policymaking. The Act will have important implications for not only domestic producers, consumers, agribusinesses, and taxpayers, but also product agricultural exporters and importers around the world. Just as it was substantially affected by the current loss of export markets and the economic crisis in the U.S. agricultural sector, its implementation and impacts will be affected in the future by the unpredictable weather, macroeconomic conditions around the world, and international trading policies. This article examines the development of the policy embodied in the Act and analyzes its primary economic implications. Although most provisions of the U.S. agricultural price and income policy that had evolved over the past half century were continued, important changes were made. The resulting policy closely mirrored the preferences revealed from research concerning farmers and leaders of national agricultural and food interest groups. Primary changes from the previous 1981 Act were: lengthening the duration to five years; substantial lowering of the minimum price support levels; permitting a gradual decline in the minimum target prices; providing for a whole dairy herd buyout program; establishing export enhancement initiatives through credit, promotion, and export payment-in-kind (PIK); and initiating major efforts to increase farmland conservation and withdrawal of fragile lands from production. Likely implications of the new Act include: (1) lower product prices for agricultural producers around the world, and also farmer incomes if there is no income protection from national policies; (2) a similar but a less proportionate impact on consumers; (3) a substantial burden on the U.S. Treasury, and possibly those of the other nations as well, depending upon the type of policies followed; and (4) likely intensification in the immediate future of the economic conflicts and negotiations between major agricultural trading nations of the world. Research played a vital role in the development of the U.S. 1985 Act. Given the turbulent, uncertain, and important nature of the agricultural and food sector in the world, research is challenged to provide more and better knowledge for future policymaking.

Farmland Conservation at Masuda Land Reclamation National Project

Farmland Conservation at Masuda Land Reclamation National Project

Farmland conservation and farming landscapes in urban-centred regions: the case of the Ile-de-France region

Public planning intervention in agricultural areas near cities occurs in a wide variety of types of farming landscape. Furthermore, intervention has responded to different goals and is implemented in different ways depending upon specific economic, demographic and cultural contexts. The kaleidoscope of possible situations begs a conceptual framework to facilitate description and comparison. Such a framework is proposed in this article. The framework is based first, on a classification of farming landscapes linked to contemporary formative processes (viz. landscapes of agricultural degeneration, adaptation and development), and second, on a simple classification of goals for agricultural areas (viz. agricultural production concerns dominant, landscape functions dominant and no long-term agricultural activity envisaged). More specific objectives and interventions, as well as the processes of initiation and implementation of intervention, are also built into the framework. By way of example, the evolution of planning in relation to agricultural—rural areas in a major world metropolitan region (Ile-de-France, France) is discussed. Three periods are differentiated, characterised by differences in demographic and economic conditions and the weight attached to agricultural and rural concerns. In the first phase, to the mid-1960's, concerns were almost wholly oriented towards coping with rapid urban growth. The actual and potential impacts on agriculture of the substantial public works and New Town programmes of the mid-1960's — with its increasingly centralised regional institutional structure — led to reaction during the second phase, the late 1960's. The concern, however, was not for the agricultural land resource, but rather for the agricultural communities involved. Furthermore, the evolving conceptualisation of the functions of agricultural— rural areas tended to stress landscape and amenity-related functions rather than those related to agricultural production. In the third phase, during the economic slow-down from the early 1970's to the present, this conceptualisation took on a more tangible expression and became incorporated into the 1976 regional master plan as a series of broad agricultural—rural zones separating the main urban growth axes. In this, and the subsequent green belt and regional natural park projects, landscape-related goals are paramount, particularly where landscapes of agricultural degeneration are involved. Overall then, agricultural production has rarely been seen as the primary function for agricultural areas at the regional level in Ile-de-France; agriculture has more often been seen as providing the effective management of agricultural areas whose primary function has some type of landscape orientation. In terms of intervention, implementation has lagged behind the formal acceptance of the stated goals for agricultural—rural areas in planning documents. However, moves in the 1980's involving developing strategies based on working with individual municipalities and, ultimately it is hoped, with individual landowners and farmers hold out more hope for the coming decade.

Farmland Conservation in Japan

Farmland Conservation in Japan

The Effects of Rainfall and Soil Properties on Farmland Conservation

The Effects of Rainfall and Soil Properties on Farmland Conservation

Normative Study of Reorganization of Land Use in Depopulated Regions

Today, there are two urgent problems in depopulated rural regions in Japan: deciding courses of development for declining areas and their details, and preventing farmland deterioration and establish-ing proper land use structure.The author already indicated an innovatory approach to thefirst pro-blem, and the present study deals with the second issue.In land use planning, “major land use” and “minor land use” should be linked together. The former concept is evolved around the idea of “core-area”. Rural exodus may bring about a positive outcome by striking a balance between the number of farms and decreasing local manpower resources. This is to say that the remaining farmers could accumulate farmland and form a “core-area”. Idle farmland in surrounding villages could then be utilized by the farmers in the core-area. The idea of“minor land use” is introduced to indicate a form of diversified farming to be developed in the core-area. With this style of farming, paddy fields, upland, pasture land and pasture forest are to be utilized as one operational unit.The aim of this paper is to discuss the farmland conservation and improvement of living conditions in the core-area and its surrounding region. It is based on a survey conducted at Tsunan-cho, Niigata prefecture. The investigation included the history of rural exodus, shift of land use, present farm operation, and change in social stratification brought about through the high economic growth. Despite experiencing severe depopulation, some villages present a higher grade in the scale of income expectancy. The reason for this is that the remaining farmers expanded their farming sizes through accumulating idle land (including land in other villages, mainly obtained on lease) . To add to this, they have achieved diversified farming, such as enlarged sericulture and livestock farming by converting corpses, in a way suited to their mountain locations. Hence, this region is developing by transforming the demerits of depopulation into the forces of enlargement and diversification of farming.This study is confined to a morphological analysis and a functional analysis is further needed. In order to do this, performance characteristics classification using land condition and social factor criterion should be done.