What kinds of farms and ranches can survive in urbanizing areas?
Approximately one-third of the total value of U.S. agricultural output is produced in metropolitan area counties (from a USDA Policy Advisory Committee on Farm and Forest Land Protection and Land Use report, “Maintaining Farm and Forest Lands in Rapidly Growing Areas,” 2001). With much or most of those counties tending to be relatively flat, they have been both conducive to agriculture and attractive to developers seeking space for new housing units and commercial facilities. For example, from 1982 to 1997, more than half (58 percent) of newly developed acres nationwide consisted of land converted out of agricultural use. Farming tends to lose out in this competition for land since nonagricultural usages normally earn higher annual incomes per acre as well as appreciate more in resale value.
Some observers respond to these conversions with a “So what; let market forces determine land use.” Other people want to preserve significant agricultural sectors in urbanizing counties for economic, nutritional and aesthetic reasons, among others. Some argue that a sizable number of agricultural enterprises can contribute to the local economy’s diversity so that, when other sectors face declining demand for their products, agriculture may still do well. Also, farming can be a substantial “value-added” sector because much of the costs of production derive from the land and local labor rather than from inputs imported from outside the community. In addition, consumers may trust local sources of food more because buyers can personally visit the farms or at least interact with producers at farmers’ markets or farm stands. Aesthetically, farm and ranch land may provide cherished viewscapes needed to offset the monotony of housing and commercial tracts.
In the fall of 2004, USDA’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service awarded a National Research Initiative Grant to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Center for Great Plains Studies to study the conditions under which significant agricultural sectors might remain viable in urbanizing counties. For our work we chose 15 metro area counties in 14 states, with each meeting these four criteria: (1) close to half or more of their total land surfaces were already subject to substantial urban influence; (2) their populations were growing considerably; (3) they retained sizable agricultural sectors; and (4) their local governments or private organizations had fielded significant land preservation or other programs to sustain that sector. We wanted to evaluate actual policy efforts rather than just speculate about what should be done.
Three of the selected counties are on the West Coast; five are located in the Corn Belt, including Nebraska’s Lancaster County; four are in the Mid-Atlantic Region; and the remaining three are found in separate geographic regions, but share the characteristic of having unusually attractive scenery: Colorado’s Larimer County, part of which is in the Rocky Mountains; Fayette County, Ky., with its beautiful horse farms; and Palm Beach County in Florida, bordering on the Atlantic Ocean.
Local government can make a difference
In 2005 and 2006 we surveyed by mail from 100 to 174 agricultural landowners in each of the 15 counties. Valuable information came also from phone or in-person interviews with 20 to 40 persons per county who were experts on agriculture there.
This article argues that local government policies can make important differences in the expectations of agricultural landowners about the future of farming or ranching in the urbanizing counties. If many or most of those owners intend rather soon to develop their land out of agriculture, or if a large proportion of the farm operators among them expects to quit farming there prematurely, local agriculture’s economic, nutritional and aesthetic roles may shortly become trivial. There will not be enough agricultural land and farmers/ranchers to sustain meaningful contributions to their community’s welfare.
The surveyed owners were asked about their first- and second-hand experiences with nonfarmer neighbors complaining about farm odors, dust, noise and other perceived nuisances, and about how local government handled those conflicts. In nine of the 15 counties we studied, owners’ experiences with such complaints or their perceptions of how supportive local authorities were of farmers in those conflicts made a difference in their plans for the future. Respondents with negative experiences or views were more likely to expect to develop at least some of their farmland in the county over the next 10 years. Those with positive histories or opinions were less likely. Similarly, in responses to a different question—about whether the farm operators in the samples intended to stay farming in the county for at least another 10 years—the farmers in four counties who reported negative experiences or views were more likely to say “no,” while in a fifth county positive perceptions were associated with staying.
Another set of questions asked for the respondents’ assessments of the effectiveness of four types of local government policies designed to help farmers cope with urbanization pressures: (1) property tax assessment based on the land’s agricultural use rather than on the normally much higher value in the real-estate market; (2) zoning regulations that slow the conversion of agricultural land; (3) the voluntary sale to government of the development rights to farmland so that houses or other nonfarm uses could not be developed there; and (4) “right-to-farm” legislation that provides legal protection against unfair nuisance complaints from neighbors. In five counties the surveyed operators with positive evaluations of at least one of these kinds of policies were more likely to expect to continue farming in the county 10 or more years. And in 12 of the 15 counties, approval of one or another of these programs was associated with the expectation that none of their owned agricultural land in the county would be developed over the following 10 years.
In summary, good local government programming can significantly help agriculture to continue contributing to urbanizing communities—through lower tax bills for the agricultural sector, restrictions on zoning changes from agriculture to developed uses, compensating farmland owners willing to sell their land’s development rights, and by preventing or resolving the conflicts with nonfarmer neighbors that drive farmers off the land.
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