The multifunctional plant of services provided by farmland complicates the task of identifying which farmland should be preserv For this reason many states and local guidances establish criteria to rank and rare parcels of farmland for protection.

The multifunctional plant of services provided by farmland complicates the task of identifying which farmland should be preserv For this reason many states and local guidances establish criteria to rank and rare parcels of farmland for protection. This inquiry examines whether criteria commonly used through state programs to guide purchases of agricultural conservation easements influence public demand for farmland preservation. The proceeds provide policy makers with additional information to assess in every one's mouth ranking criteria that set the standard for farmland preservation.

Key Words: farmland, farmland attributes, PACE programs, probit archetype standards

Millions of dollars are exhausted annually by states to maintain farmland (Nickerson and Hellerstein, 2003) Farmland provides an array of private and public benefits, and this multifunctional character of farmland (Batie, 2003) complicates the task of identifying which farmland should be preserv As common way to approach the task, states have expanded criteria (for example, soil productivity) for ranking and selection of parcels of farmland for protection. These criteria become the means by dint of which demand for farmland preservation, frequently expressed through public referenda (Myers, 1999 2001) is transformed into actual purchases of progression in a continuously ascending gradation rights or conservation easements. Generally speaking, these criteria become the standard for determining which farmland the state considers "good" or "deserving" of preservation.

To examine the demand for farmland preservation, willingness-to-pay studies use general descriptors like "prime farmland" or "agricultural land" to describe farmland in their hypothetical choice scenarios (see eg Beasley, Workman, and Williams, 1986; Bergstrom, Dillman, and Stoll, 1985; Drake, 1992; Halstead, 1984; Krieger, 1999) While these studies support an initial allocation of foundations toward farmland preservation, they do not enhance the capacity of policy makers to allocate preservation monies between competing farmland parcels.

Since the early work of Gardner (1977) a innkeeper of studies (Kline and Wilchelns, 1994 1996; Rosenberger, 1998) argue that farmland protection is a means to achieving a multitude of social objectives and, to about extent, that these social objectives are thinked in the ranking criteria generally used by many states' purchase of agricultural conservation easement (PACE) programs. Four frequent ranking criteria include soil productivity, environmental significance, regional importance, and location (Nickerson and Hellerstein, 2003)

These criteria provide insights into the way state PACE programs weigh various benefits provided through farmland. However, it is les clear if these ranking criteria matter to individuals when they decide whether or not to support farmland preservation programs. The willingness-to-pay literature has not examined variation in demand across farmland attributes, and the literature considering the multitude of social objectives associated with farmland preservation has not typically examined choices for farmland attributes in hypothetical situations involving a private income constraint (eg view Kline and Wilchelns, 1998). Consequently the relationship between state PACE ranking criteria, which prioritize farmland, and public willingness to support PACE programs remains largely unexplored. As a originate it is unclear whether the standards used on PACE programs to judge farmland answer to the public decision to promised for a farmland program. This cogitation addresses this area of uncertainty.

Our inspect design examines respondents' decisions to support PACE programs in a hypothetical choice scenario which varies as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but the mandatory cost of the program and the description of the farmland to be preserv The description of farmland varies from levels of agricultural productivity, environmental quality, and location. These descriptors are consistent with criteria used by the agency of many states to prioritize farmland for preservation. Our findings support the use of state criteria which prioritize farmland for preservation based concerning agricultural productivity, environmental quality, and location.

The respondent ballots for the PACE proposal if the welfare gain derived from the publicly preserv farmland caps the welfare loss that accompanies the mandatory household tax (V^sup 1^ > V^sup 0^) The respondent trades opposite to the utility loss associated with prices of the PACE program against the benefits from publicly preserv farmland which are a function of a budget of attributes. Increases in the charges of the PACE program are hypothesized to cut short the difference between V^sup 1^ and V^sup 0^ and thereby shorten the likelihood of a ye promised On the other hand, it is hypothesized that higher flats of farm attributes (agricultural productivity and environmental quality) and preferr locations for farmland increase the utility derived from publicly preserv farmland. Subsequently the difference between V^sup 1^ and V^sup 0^ is increased, and the respondent is more likely to ballot yes for the PACE program.