Farmland Preservation Programs Research Articles

A new food label to aid farmland preservation programs: Evidence from a field experiment

An original preserved-farm (PF) label was invented to examine consumers’ interest in farmland preservation and willingness to pay (WTP) a premium for products from such farms. Using field experiments with watermelons, the new label was also compared with a local (LL) label which may capture some of the same sources of consumer utility. In total, 328 consumers participated across field experiment sessions in three states (Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania) in two types of locations (farmer’s markets, public parks). Tests showed significant premiums for both LL and PF labels. Importantly though, the PF label premium surpassed that for the LL label at all locations except Maryland and held its value across states better than the LL label. Latent class analysis was used to further examine the data, dividing consumers into four clusters. Tobit models run on these clusters identified distinct marketing opportunities for users of the PF label. Overall, evidence showed a PF label may be able to aid in increasing preserved farmland while increasing farmer income.

Assessing the Performance of Farmland Preservation in America’s Farmland Preservation Heartland: A Policy Review

Farmland preservation has been an important issue in the United States for over 40 years. Since 1977, 28 states and over 95 local governments have formed farmland preservation programs to acquire development rights from willing farm owners. These programs have preserved over three and a half million acres. Private nonprofit land trusts have preserved nearly three million acres.Maryland and Pennsylvania have preserved nearly one million acres, accounting for almost one-sixth of the nation’s preserved agricultural land. Ten adjoining counties in Pennsylvania and Maryland have preserved 660,000 acres, or one-tenth of the nation’s preserved agricultural land. This paper defines “large scale preservation” and analyzes the funding mechanisms and land use policies that have enabled these ten counties to achieve it. The paper also identifies additional indicators of preservation success that give a more complete picture of the long-term viability of agriculture as an industry.

Preserving Large Farming Landscapes: The Case of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

Preserving large farming landscapes is one of the main goals of farmland preservation programs. Other goals include protecting highly productive soils, maintaining and enhancing the local farming economy, and promoting locally produced fresh food. Farmland preservation programs take time, however, because of the hefty funding require­ments and the detailed process of preserving farmland through the acquisition of conservation easements by purchase or donation. The standard measures of dollars spent and farmland acres preserved do not give an accurate picture of the spatial outcomes of preservation and preservation effectiveness. Three other measures better reflect the spatial effectiveness of farmland preservation: acreage and percentage of preserved farm parcels located in agricultural zones, number and acreage of preserved farm parcels in large contiguous blocks, and number and acreage of preserved farm parcels along growth boundaries. Scattered pre­served farms and preserved farms not located in agricultural zones are likely to face more nonfarm development nearby as well as problems with non­farm neighbors. The farmland preservation effort in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, provides an important case study of the pattern of farmland preservation over time. Other counties and land trusts can employ geographic information systems (GIS) methods in this study to monitor and evalu­ate the progress of their farmland preservation efforts.

The Future of Preserved Farmland: Ownership Succession in Three Mid-Atlantic States

This paper examines the uses and succession of farmland preserved under state-sponsored purchase of agricultural conservation easements (PACE) programs in Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey. Preservation programs in these states have been operating long enough to observe and assess actual transfers of preserved farmland ownership over time. The analysis is based on a survey of 507 owners of preserved agricultural land. Nearly one-third of surveyed preserved-farmland owners had purchased or inherited properties under already existing conservation easements. These individuals (second-generation owners) are contrasted from first-generation owners, people who sold or donated their land's development rights. Descriptive and regression analysis is used to compare these two generations of owners on aspects of their preserved land's management that administrators and other stakeholders of farmland preservation programs have regarded as important. Specifically examined is (1) the percentage of the protected land that is actively farmed, rather than being idle or used solely for residential enjoyment; (2) the proportion of owners of preserved land who were young farmers when they first acquired preserved farmland; and (3) the percentage of owners who have succession plans to transfer land to a farmer expected to use the preserved land for agricultural production. Results provide optimism that deed-restricted farmland is not being diverted from agricultural use through succession in ownership.

Study on the Montgomery County Farmland Preservation Program and its Enlightenment for China

Montgomery County has been home to a strong agricultural industry, and the Farmland Preservation Program has contributed a lot. The two parts of the Program-the Transfer of Development Rights Program and the Purchase of Development Rights Program have preserved a great amount of farmland for the county and keep the development and prosperity of the agriculture. Nowadays, the recession of agriculture and the decrease of farmland are serious in China, so it is urgent to find solutions to those problems. The experiences from the Montgomery County has a certain sense of enlightenment for China to deal with the situation, such as 1) convert the development views and response to urban sprawl, 2) using economic means to solve the problems of farmland preservation, 3) establishing the development rights to guarantee the benefits and interests of farmers, 4) developing more scientific and reasonable land evaluation methods for the compensation.

Assessing holistic economic value for multifunctional agriculture in the US

This study used contingent valuation method to shed light on public preferences on the multifunctional roles of the US agriculture and to present a holistic estimate of the economic value of the nonmarket goods and services of US agriculture. Contingent valuation survey instrument was administered to a sample composed from the Ipsos web-based panel. Fishbein’s model of reasoned behavior and mediation hypothesis were combined to model the relationship between WTP (behavioral intentions) and sets of explanatory variables including attitudes, perceived attributes (about family farms, farmland preservation programs, government involvement in agricultural markets, and ecological state of our world), and socio-demographic profiles. Results show that, while exerting a highly significant impact on WTP, attitudes mediate the effects of the attribute variables on WTP: i.e., the attributes influence WTP directly as well as indirectly through attitudes. The estimated mean WTP was $515 per taxpayer annually. Aggregating individual WTPs across the US taxpayers above 20 years old produces $105 billion, representing a crude estimate of the economic value that the US consumers place on the multifunctional roles of US agriculture.

The power of information for targeting cost-effective conservation investments in multifunctional farmlands

Decisions about which places to conserve are based upon the geographic heterogeneity of three types of information: public goods or benefits, their vulnerability to threats, and the costs to avert those threats. The choice of public goods depends on the mission of the conservation organization (e.g., biodiversity, open space, cultural values, or farmland). For spatial targeting of conservation at the regional scale, practitioners must estimate the values of these types of information. The quality of the estimations will vary by the primary data used, the assumptions made, and the practitioner’s technical ability to analyze complex data. This paper contributes to the growing literature by presenting a systematic evaluation of effect of the quality of the estimation on the cost-effectiveness of the set of sites selected for conservation based upon those estimates. The specific case study targets farmland for preservation from urban development in California’s Central Valley where a new land trust was recently established to purchase conservation easements. In one analysis, we compared the cost-effectiveness of farmland benefits using our most sophisticated estimation procedures to those that ignored costs and/or potential loss (i.e., assumed they were equal among sites). Excluding information about the potential loss of resources caused only a slight decrease in cost-effectiveness. On the other hand, ignoring cost information was extremely inefficient. The second analysis compared the performance of the sophisticated estimate to increasingly simpler estimates, such as those that are representative of the methods used by many American farmland preservation programs. The simplification of the estimates caused a 5- to 20-fold decline in the benefits that could be retained for a given budget. To make more cost-effective targeting strategies accessible to farmland preservation programs, we recommend that researchers develop new spatial targeting tools to overcome obstacles in data processing.

California's Farmland Preservation Programs, Taxes, and Furthering the Appropriate Safeguarding of Agriculture at the Urban Fringe to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

California has long been a leader in both its attempts to preserve land devoted to agricultural production and in its approach to funding its state and local governments. Recently it has become the leader in creating a statewide policy (AB 32) to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases generated within its border. California's policy choices regarding state and local revenue reliance, farmland preservation, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions are interrelated. There is concern among environmental and agricultural stakeholders that elements of the system of state and local taxation that developed in California after Proposition 13 discourages the retention of land in agriculture, and this subsequently generates greater urban sprawl in the state. Many of these same stakeholders point to the presence of the state's three major farmland conservation programs (and other programs and multiple policies throughout different codes) as encouraging the retention of agricultural land and thus resulting in less urban sprawl in the state. The overall purpose of this paper is to examine these two claims in as unbiased a manner as academically possible and to offer an opinion on their validity. Such an opinion is necessary to offer an informed comment on the desirability of reforming the state's tax system, and/or expanding the state's system of farmland preservation, to reduce the degree of sprawl experienced in California and thus be better poised to achieve the reduction in GHGs mandated by AB 32.

An Empirical Examination of the Timing of Land Conversions in the Presence of Farmland Preservation Programs

AbstractUsing a panel of parcel‐level data we estimate a hazard model and find strong evidence that the mere existence of an option to preserve farmland delays decisions to convert farmland to developed uses by about six years, a reduction in median conversion time of 12 to 43% depending on parcel size. Where such delays allow local governments to improve infrastructure or implement stricter growth control measures, benefits of a preservation option may be even more long term. Also, increases in the variance of returns to development tended to slow conversion for parcels with all but the highest lot capacities.

Valuing future development rights: The costs of conservation easements

While theory strongly suggests that restricting development rights should reduce land prices, empirical evidence of this effect has been hard to obtain. Largely based on this difficulty, legislation governing the tax benefits that easement donors may receive is periodically challenged. We collect data on 131 land transactions in South Central Wisconsin, including 19 cases of development-restricted parcels. When we use the whole sample to estimate the impact of conservation easements, we replicate the results of Nickerson and Lynch [Nickerson, C.J., Lynch, 2001. The effect of farmland preservation programs on farmland prices. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 83(2):341–351], finding a negative but statistically insignificant effect. However we then show that when the sample is appropriately restricted to a more homogenous group of land parcels, our ability to detect an effect increases dramatically. In particular, for vacant agricultural land we find a statistically significant negative impact of conservation easements that ranges up to 50% of land values.

Are Farmland Preservation Program Easement Restrictions Capitalized into Farmland Prices? What Can a Propensity Score Matching Analysis Tell Us?

Are Farmland Preservation Program Easement Restrictions Capitalized into Farmland Prices? What Can a Propensity Score Matching Analysis Tell Us?

An Investigation of the Socio-Economic Aspects of Open Space and Agricultural Land Preservation

ABSTRACT In some regions of the United States, there is a growing concern with the development of farmlands for residential and commercial purposes. Where land becomes a precious commodity, many decisions about whether to preserve or sell are being made. This study investigates whether the decision to preserve is being made using insufficient criteria, in particular with the omission of socio-economic aspects. Using county-level data, regression analysis is used to determine whether significant relationships may exist between the amount of land preserved and socio-economic indicators. The results indicate that the amount of land preserved as a percentage of total county acreage is positively related to high incomes, high housing values, population growth, farmland prices, and the number of farms. In addition, the amount of land preserved as a percentage of total county acreage is negatively related to the county unemployment rate, the age of residents, and the percentage of African American residents. These results suggest that the socio-economic impacts associated with land preservation programs should be further investigated in net preservation benefits calculations. In particular, whether open space and farmland preservation programs should consider if they pose potential adverse impacts on minority and low-income residents.

Combining Spatial and Survey Data to Explain Participation in Agricultural Land reservation Programs

The factors in uencing participation in both purchase of development rights and transfer of development rights farmland preservation programs are analyzed using data from a survey of agricultural landowners and from spatial data on individual farms collected using GIS for four Maryland counties. Generally, the likelihood of participation increases with farm size, growing crops, if a child plans to continue farming, eligibility and the share of income from farming. Landowners closer to the nearest city were less likely to join. Survey information about landowner characteristics and local selection committees may aid in targeting efforts. preferences are correlated.

Protecting Rural Amenities Through Farmland Preservation Programs

We investigate what farmland preservation programs reveal about the importance of protecting different rural amenities. An extensive content analysis of the enabling legislation of various farmland protection programs suggests wide variation exists in the protection of amenities. An analysis of 27 individual Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) programs’ selection criteria suggests these programs favor preserving amenities that are jointly provided by cropland and livestock operations. These PDR selection criteria also reveal unique preferences regarding the spatial patterns of preserved agricultural lands. Variation in relative weights given to protecting most parcel characteristics in PDR programs is not easily explained by factors that characterize areas experiencing farmland losses.

A Relative Efficiency Analysis of Farmland Preservation Programs

While agricultural land preservation programs seek to maximize the number of acres, to preserve productive farms, to preserve contiguous farms, and to preserve threatened farms, they are often evaluated solely on the number of acres preserved. Preserved parcels in four Maryland counties were evaluated to determine how well programs traded off the four goals using a Farrell efficiency analysis approach. Comparisons are made between the types of programs. Of the four objectives, parcel size and productivity measures were the most likely to affect the efi - ciency measures. In addition, purchase of development right programs were most successful in trading off objectives.

The Effect of Farmland Preservation Programs on Farmland Prices

AbstractGovernment agencies in urbanizing areas are increasingly utilizing purchase and transfer of development rights programs to preserve farmland and protect local farm economies. This article tests the effect of development restrictions imposed by permanent easement sales on farmland sales prices, using Maryland data. We correct for selectivity bias due to the voluntary nature of these programs in estimating hedonic sales equations. Although preserved parcels' actual land values are lower, the effect of the restrictions is not statistically significant. These findings may encourage additional participation in preservation programs or justify reductions in the easement prices paid by agencies.

Public Preferences regarding the Goals of Farmland Preservation Programs: Comment

In a recent article in this journal, Kline and Wichelns (1996) (hereafter KW) argued that public (government) farmland preservation programs would be more efficient if broadened to include not only agricultural productive and lifestyle criteria, but also open space criteria as preservation objectives. While the public may prefer the open space benefits more than the agrarian benefits, much of the enabling legislation of public preservation programs relegate open space objectives as secondary to the agrarian ones. Therefore, by broadening the legislative scope of these public programs to include the multiple objectives of agricultural productive, lifestyle, aesthetics, environment, and open space, targeted land for preservation would be more efficient (and effective) in meeting the public's multiple objectives. Often, the nonagrarian objectives are highlighted by program proponents to gain public support. As evidence on the ranking of land preservation preferences, KW collected qualitative data from Rhode Island residents on reasons

Public Preferences regarding the Goals of Farmland Preservation Programs: Reply

Public Preferences regarding the Goals of Farmland Preservation Programs: Reply

Public Preferences Regarding the Goals of Farmland Preservation Programs

Farmland preservation programs exist in all states. Most programs pursue agricultural objectives, such as preserving productive soils and viable farms. However, in some states the public may believe that programs should pursue broader goals often associated with preserving open space. Focus groups and a survey of Rhode Island residents provide information and data for factor analysis of preferences regarding farmland preservation goals. A system of structural equations (LISREL model) is used to examine differences in preferences among residents across socioeconomic categories. Results suggest that broadening the scope of farmland preservation programs to address environmental goals may increase public benefits.

Farmland preservation, development rights and the theory of the growth machine: the views of planners ∗

We examine the effectiveness of farmland preservation measures in challenging efforts to convert agricultural land to nonfarm uses in rural/urban fringe areas. Our focus is on programs based on the exchange of development rights in the northeastern United States. We employ theoretical constructs from Logan and Molotch's theory of the urban growth machine. They argue that the commodification of land associated with urbanization is the most important source of wealth and power for land-based elites. Yet, the activities of these elites are sometimes challenged with growth control measures like farmland preservation. To evaluate the effectiveness of these programs to defend farm land-use over purely commercial land exchange for speculative gain, we draw on data from focus group discussions and a survey of planners in metropolitan areas of the region. Our analysis also considers the limitations of such programs in the context of the absence of regional land-use planning. We find that farmland preservation programs based on the exchange of development rights do challenge some aspects of urban growth, but are also the result of those same development dynamics. Thus, they reflect certain class biases associated with the development of rural/urban fringe areas. However, we conclude that these programs could become more effective farmland protection tools with the implementation of comprehensive land-use planning.