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Protecting farmlands
Book reviews
Saving the farm PROTECTING
FARMLANDS
edited by Frederick John E. Theilacker
R. Steiner
and
The A VI Publishing Co, Westport, CT, USA, 1984, 312 pp. There has been an explosion of literature over the past decade on the loss of farmland to housing tracts and other land uses. Faced with a slow but steady structural change in the agricultural enterprise, many observers have emotionally called for ‘saving the farm’ at all costs, while others (usually urban land economists) have promoted a hands-off policy, claiming that the land market always knows what’s best. What many members of the latter group conveniently forget is that the unfettered marketplace cannot guide society on welfare questions, such as on how much food should be produced (and where) in an interdependent world. In the midst of this debate, state and rural planners have been quietly accumulating considerable experience in implementing farmland preservation techniques, rightly pointing out that there may be many good reasons for saving well managed, productive, or otherwise important farmlands. This edited volume by Steiner and Theilacker wisely avoids the protect v don’t protect debate, and reviews in 23 chapters (and an annotated bibliography) US and world experience with farmland protection techniques. The stated audience includes farmers, farm labourers, government officials, agribusiness managers and weekend The authors include gardeners. academicians, politicians, other government officials, consultants and non-profit researchers and advocates. Most of the material included in the book has been previously published elsewhere, much of it in a now out of print autumn 1979 conference proceedings. While each of the applicable chapters has been slightly revised and updated, there is little new information here. This being the case, the book’s main value presumably would
LAND USE POLICY October
1985
be in bringing together many of the major studies on farmland protection into one place, producing a comprehensive reader on the subject for (hopefully) wide dissemination. Success in accomplishing the former is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for achieving the latter, and I will attempt to evaluate the volume in this light.
Major issues Part I provides an overview of several major farmland protection issues. The opening chapter poses some of the controversial questions, such as ‘is there a farmland crisis today?‘, and ‘what should be the role of the federal government in farmland protection?’ The answers to such questions vary throughout the text. The next two chapters are somewhat tangential, but nonetheless important. The first offers principles for positive public awareness of land use issues, while the other is a lengthy discourse on legal and constitutional issues for judging farmland protection programmes. This is followed by a stimulating essay on the ethical dimensions of farmland preservation, which argues from an ecological viewpoint that we already have a farmland crisis. The closing chapter promotes the idea of a metropolitan food plan, outlines how it could be developed, and stresses the advantage of small, family farms on the urban fringe. Part II highlights the major local government approaches to farmland protection in the USA. Common themes mentioned are the need for flexibility in the programmes, and that the reverse of agricultural preservation is urban development. Many individual approaches have been successful in the described communities, ranging from agricultural planning and zoning to the purchase of development rights (PDRs), but are best used in combination. For instance, an interesting chapter on corn suitability ratings in Iowa discusses how soil classification types can be used in zoning to protect good croplands.
Part III addresses ‘middle ground’ and state-level approaches to farmland protection. The former refers to ‘farmland conservancies’, where the state or a non-profit corporation reserves agricultural land or engages in pre-emptive transactions to keep the land in farming. While scarcely tried in the USA, farmland conservancies have been more effective in Canada and France. Two other chapters describe the well-known state farmland protection programmes of Wisconsin and Oregon. The key to success in these states has been the linkage of various tax breaks for farmers with local agricultural zoning or planning. This contrasts with the property tax relief programmes for farmers in most other US states, as reviewed in another chapter, which have been largely ineffective in overcoming urban development pressures. A final chapter discusses programmes in the northeastern states of the USA, where farmland loss has been excessive and long-standing. The more effective programmes, such as agricultural districting and PDRs, have yet to be applied on a major scale.
Historical neglect Part IV discusses federal government farmland protection efforts in the USA. The opening chapter characterizes historical policy by benign neglect, but a recent sense of urgency has led to a new statute which seeks to prevent unnecessary agricultural land conversion due to federal actions (eg, licences, permits, etc). A related chapter provides a history of land use policy in the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). While farmland protection has been a live concern at USDA for decades, it often conflicts with the traditional American bias toward private land use decision making. Other chapters discuss the well known National Agricultural Lands Study of 1979-1981, and USDA farmland mapping and site assessment programmes. Part V shifts the focus to farmland protection policies of other nations. A chapter on Canadian programmes underscores their regional nature, and how they are determined by the eco-
357
Book reviews
nomic base of each province and the political orientation of the party in power. Another chapter on key programmes in Europe, Israel and Taiwan emphasizes their great variance, which certainly reflects each nation’s geography and philosophy towards land use. The book’s closing chapter covers farmland protection in Holland, where farmland is preserved through physical planning, land consolidation and land reclamation from the lakes and seas (polders). The major lesson here is that it is much easier and cheaper to keep good agricultural land intact than to reallot small plots to farming later. In sum, there is already an enormous literature on farmland protection policies and programmes, yet this particular volume is well organized,
well produced and instructive. For readers largely unfamiliar with farmland protection techniques, this book should be highly recommended. For those readers who are already quite well informed on the issues, the book might serve as a helpful reference. Therefore, the volume succeeds in providing a useful, comprehensive reader of major studies on farmland protection, although it doesn’t go much further. One other minor criticism: a concluding chapter summarizing the important lessons of the text, and charting future directions would have strengthened the volume. Barry D. Solomon Office of Electric Power Regulation Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Washington, DC, USA
Capitalism in rural Britain LOCALITY AND RURALITY: ECONOMY AND SOCIETY IN RURAL REGIONS edited Lowe
by Tony
Bradley
and
Philip
Geo Books, Norwich, UK, 1984 This book covers a wide range of material and much new ground in its attempts to reinvigorate rural sociology and place the ‘rural’ and the ‘local’ within a wider framework of development and within a capitalist restructuring framework. The central purpose of the book is ambitious and is largely are Two approaches achieved. claimed: (1)
(2)
a concern to understand and interpret the diversity of institutions and social relations evident in rural localities; and a theoretical grasp of how past and current restructurings of advanced capitalist societies have conditioned change in rural Britain.
The book makes progress in a manner very similar to recent developments in urban sociology and links the social and the spatial through discussions of local stratification, local social forma-
358
tion and ‘capitalist recombinations’. The intention is achieved of showing how capitalist accumulation and restructuring shapes spatial structures, alters production relationships and defines important characteristics of locality. The contributions to this edited volume are variable in quality and relevance to the central theme. Some focus specifically on the central themes highlighted in the introductory chapter and show through theoretical and empirical material how the ‘new’ approach to rurality and ‘locality’ will actually improve understanding. Others, sadly, do not and are very much ‘new wine in old bottles’, heavily laced with phrases such as ‘restructuring’ or ‘historically constituted rural locality’ (p 40). Chapter Two is in this latter category with a very thin account of recent developments in rural Wales peppered with convoluted expressions masquerading as explanations. The chapter by Urry which follows is typical of his writings elsewhere: clearly written and crisply argued but not well connected with an identifiable reality. Urry claims that ‘rural localities’ are problematic but does not explain the circumstances which may lead to rural areas, however defined, taking on
particular forms of capital and social relations which distinguish them from other areas. The relationships between rural and urban areas may change over time but social structures and capital restructuring and power bases are strong forces in delimiting particular regimes of social and spatial structures and divisions of labour. In a sense it doesn’t matter what is rural or urban but we do need to know how the activities of capital contribute to the definition of different types of locality. Urry’s critique of rural sociology is a model of clarity but one is left with an uneasy feeling at the end of this chapter. What would a concrete analysis of a rural locality look like if we adopted Urry’s approach? Two chapters on local labour markets give us a little more feel for this approach. Bradley’s study of five different localities is revealing about the importance of detail in defining locality, and he sets this analysis within a convincing framework of labour markets. This is well supported by Gilligans’ study of Padstow in Cornwall. These two papers link to Urry’s framework though at times uneasily; this is a measure of the difficulty of making progress with this field of study.
Rural forces The second section of the book looks at land, capital and agricultural production. It demonstrates the importance of these factors in defining rural localities; there are clear processes and structures which are resistant to change which improve rural areas with a class and labour-market character very different from that in urban areas. The topics examined include family farming, the growth of large agricultural businesses, the farming lobby and the state, and the circumstances surrounding the Northfield enquiry into institutional investment in agricultural land. This section hangs together very well indeed and gives a clear account of the forces (institutional and social) which hold sway in rural areas. The third section is once again a mixed groups of papers, some of which contribute to the general theme
LAND USE POLICY October
1985
Saving the farm PROTECTING
FARMLANDS
edited by Frederick John E. Theilacker
R. Steiner
and
The A VI Publishing Co, Westport, CT, USA, 1984, 312 pp. There has been an explosion of literature over the past decade on the loss of farmland to housing tracts and other land uses. Faced with a slow but steady structural change in the agricultural enterprise, many observers have emotionally called for ‘saving the farm’ at all costs, while others (usually urban land economists) have promoted a hands-off policy, claiming that the land market always knows what’s best. What many members of the latter group conveniently forget is that the unfettered marketplace cannot guide society on welfare questions, such as on how much food should be produced (and where) in an interdependent world. In the midst of this debate, state and rural planners have been quietly accumulating considerable experience in implementing farmland preservation techniques, rightly pointing out that there may be many good reasons for saving well managed, productive, or otherwise important farmlands. This edited volume by Steiner and Theilacker wisely avoids the protect v don’t protect debate, and reviews in 23 chapters (and an annotated bibliography) US and world experience with farmland protection techniques. The stated audience includes farmers, farm labourers, government officials, agribusiness managers and weekend The authors include gardeners. academicians, politicians, other government officials, consultants and non-profit researchers and advocates. Most of the material included in the book has been previously published elsewhere, much of it in a now out of print autumn 1979 conference proceedings. While each of the applicable chapters has been slightly revised and updated, there is little new information here. This being the case, the book’s main value presumably would
LAND USE POLICY October
1985
be in bringing together many of the major studies on farmland protection into one place, producing a comprehensive reader on the subject for (hopefully) wide dissemination. Success in accomplishing the former is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for achieving the latter, and I will attempt to evaluate the volume in this light.
Major issues Part I provides an overview of several major farmland protection issues. The opening chapter poses some of the controversial questions, such as ‘is there a farmland crisis today?‘, and ‘what should be the role of the federal government in farmland protection?’ The answers to such questions vary throughout the text. The next two chapters are somewhat tangential, but nonetheless important. The first offers principles for positive public awareness of land use issues, while the other is a lengthy discourse on legal and constitutional issues for judging farmland protection programmes. This is followed by a stimulating essay on the ethical dimensions of farmland preservation, which argues from an ecological viewpoint that we already have a farmland crisis. The closing chapter promotes the idea of a metropolitan food plan, outlines how it could be developed, and stresses the advantage of small, family farms on the urban fringe. Part II highlights the major local government approaches to farmland protection in the USA. Common themes mentioned are the need for flexibility in the programmes, and that the reverse of agricultural preservation is urban development. Many individual approaches have been successful in the described communities, ranging from agricultural planning and zoning to the purchase of development rights (PDRs), but are best used in combination. For instance, an interesting chapter on corn suitability ratings in Iowa discusses how soil classification types can be used in zoning to protect good croplands.
Part III addresses ‘middle ground’ and state-level approaches to farmland protection. The former refers to ‘farmland conservancies’, where the state or a non-profit corporation reserves agricultural land or engages in pre-emptive transactions to keep the land in farming. While scarcely tried in the USA, farmland conservancies have been more effective in Canada and France. Two other chapters describe the well-known state farmland protection programmes of Wisconsin and Oregon. The key to success in these states has been the linkage of various tax breaks for farmers with local agricultural zoning or planning. This contrasts with the property tax relief programmes for farmers in most other US states, as reviewed in another chapter, which have been largely ineffective in overcoming urban development pressures. A final chapter discusses programmes in the northeastern states of the USA, where farmland loss has been excessive and long-standing. The more effective programmes, such as agricultural districting and PDRs, have yet to be applied on a major scale.
Historical neglect Part IV discusses federal government farmland protection efforts in the USA. The opening chapter characterizes historical policy by benign neglect, but a recent sense of urgency has led to a new statute which seeks to prevent unnecessary agricultural land conversion due to federal actions (eg, licences, permits, etc). A related chapter provides a history of land use policy in the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). While farmland protection has been a live concern at USDA for decades, it often conflicts with the traditional American bias toward private land use decision making. Other chapters discuss the well known National Agricultural Lands Study of 1979-1981, and USDA farmland mapping and site assessment programmes. Part V shifts the focus to farmland protection policies of other nations. A chapter on Canadian programmes underscores their regional nature, and how they are determined by the eco-
357
Book reviews
nomic base of each province and the political orientation of the party in power. Another chapter on key programmes in Europe, Israel and Taiwan emphasizes their great variance, which certainly reflects each nation’s geography and philosophy towards land use. The book’s closing chapter covers farmland protection in Holland, where farmland is preserved through physical planning, land consolidation and land reclamation from the lakes and seas (polders). The major lesson here is that it is much easier and cheaper to keep good agricultural land intact than to reallot small plots to farming later. In sum, there is already an enormous literature on farmland protection policies and programmes, yet this particular volume is well organized,
well produced and instructive. For readers largely unfamiliar with farmland protection techniques, this book should be highly recommended. For those readers who are already quite well informed on the issues, the book might serve as a helpful reference. Therefore, the volume succeeds in providing a useful, comprehensive reader of major studies on farmland protection, although it doesn’t go much further. One other minor criticism: a concluding chapter summarizing the important lessons of the text, and charting future directions would have strengthened the volume. Barry D. Solomon Office of Electric Power Regulation Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Washington, DC, USA
Capitalism in rural Britain LOCALITY AND RURALITY: ECONOMY AND SOCIETY IN RURAL REGIONS edited Lowe
by Tony
Bradley
and
Philip
Geo Books, Norwich, UK, 1984 This book covers a wide range of material and much new ground in its attempts to reinvigorate rural sociology and place the ‘rural’ and the ‘local’ within a wider framework of development and within a capitalist restructuring framework. The central purpose of the book is ambitious and is largely are Two approaches achieved. claimed: (1)
(2)
a concern to understand and interpret the diversity of institutions and social relations evident in rural localities; and a theoretical grasp of how past and current restructurings of advanced capitalist societies have conditioned change in rural Britain.
The book makes progress in a manner very similar to recent developments in urban sociology and links the social and the spatial through discussions of local stratification, local social forma-
358
tion and ‘capitalist recombinations’. The intention is achieved of showing how capitalist accumulation and restructuring shapes spatial structures, alters production relationships and defines important characteristics of locality. The contributions to this edited volume are variable in quality and relevance to the central theme. Some focus specifically on the central themes highlighted in the introductory chapter and show through theoretical and empirical material how the ‘new’ approach to rurality and ‘locality’ will actually improve understanding. Others, sadly, do not and are very much ‘new wine in old bottles’, heavily laced with phrases such as ‘restructuring’ or ‘historically constituted rural locality’ (p 40). Chapter Two is in this latter category with a very thin account of recent developments in rural Wales peppered with convoluted expressions masquerading as explanations. The chapter by Urry which follows is typical of his writings elsewhere: clearly written and crisply argued but not well connected with an identifiable reality. Urry claims that ‘rural localities’ are problematic but does not explain the circumstances which may lead to rural areas, however defined, taking on
particular forms of capital and social relations which distinguish them from other areas. The relationships between rural and urban areas may change over time but social structures and capital restructuring and power bases are strong forces in delimiting particular regimes of social and spatial structures and divisions of labour. In a sense it doesn’t matter what is rural or urban but we do need to know how the activities of capital contribute to the definition of different types of locality. Urry’s critique of rural sociology is a model of clarity but one is left with an uneasy feeling at the end of this chapter. What would a concrete analysis of a rural locality look like if we adopted Urry’s approach? Two chapters on local labour markets give us a little more feel for this approach. Bradley’s study of five different localities is revealing about the importance of detail in defining locality, and he sets this analysis within a convincing framework of labour markets. This is well supported by Gilligans’ study of Padstow in Cornwall. These two papers link to Urry’s framework though at times uneasily; this is a measure of the difficulty of making progress with this field of study.
Rural forces The second section of the book looks at land, capital and agricultural production. It demonstrates the importance of these factors in defining rural localities; there are clear processes and structures which are resistant to change which improve rural areas with a class and labour-market character very different from that in urban areas. The topics examined include family farming, the growth of large agricultural businesses, the farming lobby and the state, and the circumstances surrounding the Northfield enquiry into institutional investment in agricultural land. This section hangs together very well indeed and gives a clear account of the forces (institutional and social) which hold sway in rural areas. The third section is once again a mixed groups of papers, some of which contribute to the general theme
LAND USE POLICY October
1985