We investigate what farmland preservation programs reveal about the importance of protecting different rural amenities.

We investigate what farmland preservation programs reveal about the importance of protecting different rural amenities. An extensive ease analysis of the enabling legislation of various farmland protection programs hints wide variation exists in the protection of amenities. An analysis of 27 individual Purchase of increase Rights (PDR) programs' selection criteria give an inkling ofs these programs favor preserving amenities that are jointly provided by means of cropland and livestock operations. These PDR selection criteria also reveal unique choices regarding the spatial patterns of preserv agricultural lands. Variation in relative weights given to protecting greatest in number parcel characteristics in PDR programs is not easily explained by dint of factors that characterize areas experiencing farmland losses

Key Words: farmland preservation, rural amenities

Despite the relatively small fraction of the American landscape dedicated to urban uses, there is growing matter about the disappearance of farmland in a parts of the country. This regard is reflected in the adoption of an expanding array of farmland protection programs from nonprofit organizations and by shire state, and federal governments. Individual states now bestow millions of dollars annually to shield farmland, through such mechanisms as use value assessments and Purchase of growth Rights (PDR) programs. The 2002 Farm Bill provides evidence of growing be of importance tos at the federal level. Funding for the federal farmland protection program increased more than ten-fold from about $53 million total for the six years 1996-2001 to nearly $600 million total from one side of to the other the six years beginning in 2002

While interest in protecting farmland may arise in part from desires to maintain agricultural activity, the existence of federal programs to limit agricultural production, like as the Conservation Reserve Program, put in mind ofs reasons not directly related to agricultural production may also be important-such as the desire to maintain "rural amenities" associated with agricultural land uses (eg scenic views, wildlife habitat, agrarian cultural heritage, and expand space). Although the effectiveness of farmland protection programs in addressing sprawl prevention bear upons is beginning to receive attention (Heimlich and Anderson, 2001; Nickerson, 2001) small in number studies have provided a comprehensive assessment of what rural amenities are likely to be fortifyed through farmland protection programs.

In this paper, we try to get to increase our understanding of the rural amenities guarded through farmland protection programs, and to what extent the provision of these amenities varies across the rural parts We do this by examining farmland protection program legislation, and the meanss used by one type of program to prioritize parcels for preservation. Underlying this research is the desire to understand what positive benefits, including the provision of rural amenities, are sought from and provided to the public in consequence of farmland protection programs. However, as management programs could very well be influenced by way of interests other than the general public's predilections (e.g., farmer interest groups' preferences) examination of farmland protection programs is unlikely to yield precise measures of the public precedences for different rural amenities.

Most of the existing research in succession farmland protection programs and amenities has focused forward people's willingness to pay to patronize varying amounts of farmland using contingent valuation rules (Bergstrom, Dillman, and Stoll, 1985; Beasley, Workman, and Williams, 1986; Halstead, 1984; Bowker and Didychuk, 1994; Rosenberger and Walsh, 1997) or their willingness to pay to live upon or near protected farmland as revealed via hedonic approaches (Irwin and Bockstael, 2001) While these studies consistently close that people are willing to pay to save farmland (and do so, as observ by the and of increased property prices of adjacent houses), earnestly less is understood about exactly what objectives folks seek when they support farmland protection programs.

One inquiry that did examine public predilections regarding the goals of farmland preservation was mode of actioned by Kline and Wichelns (1996) In a take a view of of Rhode Island residents, they build more support for protecting groundwater, wildlife habitat, and natural places than agricultural objectives as it is as protecting local food supplies or maintaining a farming heritage. In an reach forthed study using the same data, Kline and Wichelns (1998) also set up that on average, Rhode Island residents preferr preserving fruit and vegetable farmland with public access, woodland without public access, and fruit and vegetable farmland without public access-but these choices varied depending on whether respondent had environmentally oriented attitudes, predilections for maintaining rural character and spread space, or farming-oriented attitudes.

Survey comes in one county in North Carolina revealed support for farmland preservation programs arose as a great deal from desires to protect provender supplies and farming heritage as from a desire to house the environment by keeping land in exhibit space (Furuseth, 1987). In Chicago collar counties, the chiefly important reasons focus groups identified for protecting farmland were ensuring coming food supplies, protecting family farms, and controlling disentanglement (Krieger, 1999). In a Delaware overlook the most important reasons for protecting land included maintaining the agricultural way of life, access to locally grown cropss and protecting water quality (Duke and Hyde 2002)