The Local Value of Agriculture D R A F T
Committee Members:
Mike Dougherty (chair), Charles Abdalla, Stephan Goetz, Jessica Hyman, David Kay,
Ernest Morreira, Walt Whitmer; to join the committee: please contact Pam Hearn at pah7@psu.edu
Web-site: nercrd.psu.edu/LocValAg.html
List-serv: NEELUN-L@lists.psu.edu
Outline/frame/purpose:
“Beyond Bland Discussions of ‘Open Space’:” How Communities Really Value the Land Around Them (or find meaning in/through land use).
Multi-functional, multiple values of agriculture: Economic, Social, Ecological/Environmental
Levels of activities (students, interns, others)
1. Secondary data on the importance of local agriculture
2. Mapping using Google Earth (as a means of connecting people)
3. Full-blown GIS; ESRI, CommViz program (Orton Family Fdn)
### Resources ###
1. Nelson Bill’s paper comparing US/European perspectives; shows New York State puts more funds into land preservation than is obvious if only cash payments are considered. http://www.nercrd.psu.edu/LocValAg/BillsGrossLUPolicy.pdf
2. Explorations of the Critical Zone; long-term need to have food production capacity http://www.ceka.psu.edu/pdf/CZEN_booklet.pdf
3. “Connecting Agriculture, Community Planning, & Economic Development” by Joanna Green, Cornell, http://kaic.psu.edu/cbad/cbad1-2.htm
4. Steve Deller’s Impact of Ag work in Wisconsin: Wisconsin's farms and agricultural businesses generate more than $51.5 billion in economic activity and provide jobs for 420,000 people. New research from University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW-Extension shows how important agriculture is to the state's economy. http://www.uwex.edu/ces/ag/wisag/
5. Walt Whitmer’s ppt. on the value of agriculture, Community Based Agricultural Development.
Walt Whitmer's Video Project DRAFT SCRIPT, Reconnecting Food, Agriculture, and Our Communities.
6. Tim Kelsey’s piece: So, Ag is not no. 1 – so what?
Tim Kelsey’s Roadside Guide to Pennsylvania Agriculture, The Joy of Farm Watching, is available from the Publications Distribution Center, The Pennsylvania State University. For information call (814) 865-6713 or online at: http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/FreePubs/pdfs/ue010.pdf
7. Kathy Brasier’s work on multi-functionality. http://www.nercrd.psu.edu/LocValAg/BrasierBeyondDollars.pdf
8. Charlie Abdalla: Farm Foundation study on the future of animal agriculture. http://www.farmfoundation.org/projects/04-32Reportrelease.htm
9. What's the Farm Worth? New UNC Asheville Project Examines Non-Agricultural Values of Farmland, Rural Landscapes in Four WNC Counties http://www.unca.edu/news/releases/2006/farmland.html
10. Land Use Conflict; When City and Country Clash, Mark A. Edelman, Jon Roe, David B. Patton; National Public Policy Education Committee in Cooperation with the Farm Foundation, 1999 Land Use Conflict: When City and Country Clash (1999) The support of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation in the production, printing and distribution of this publication is gratefully acknowledged.
11. FARMLAND AS A MULTI-SERVICE RESOURCE: POLICY TRENDS AND INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS, by Lawrence W. Libby
http://www-agecon.ag.ohio-state.edu/programs/Swank/pdfs/tp.pdf
12. The Multiple Benefits of Agriculture Project Executive Summary, a Land Stewardship Project publication. To veiw the entire Multiple Benefits of Agriculture report, log onto www.landstewardshipproject.org.
13. Connecting Communities, Farmers and Food, Judith LaBelle, Gleanings, Autumn 2003.
14. Public Support for Land Preservation: Measuring Relative Preferences in Delaware, Joshua M. Duke, Thomas W. Ilvento and Rhonda A. Hyde.
15. Non-Market Impacts of Agriculture on Communities, Presentation to Agricultural and Farmland Protection Inservice for Cornell Cooperative Extension Educators, October 14, 2004, Gil Gillespie, Duncan Hilchey, David Kay and David Smith.
16. Introductory article on valuation of ecosystem services:
Stephen C. Farber, Robert Costanza and Matthew A. Wilson give an overview of the history, background and context for ecosystem valuation, which is the process of expressing a value for ecosystem goods or services such as biodiversity, recreational opportunity or agricultural use.
“Economic and ecological concepts for valuing ecosystem services” http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VDY-45R7NTR-5/2/f17ccd95dacd2c01ad070676807ba9b1
17. More in-depth:
Stephen Farber et al.’s paper on valuation of ecosystem services offers an overview of assessment and valuation methods and includes a case study of the economic and ecological implications of different management options for a sample agricultural watershed.
“Linking Ecology and Economics for Ecosystem Management”
http://www.willamette.edu/centers/publicpolicy/dempsey/docs/Farber%20et%20al.%202006.pdf
18. Cheryl J. Steele’s 1997 article makes the case for examining the economic and social contributions of small farms. "Why U.S. Agriculture and Rural Areas Have a Stake in Small Farms"
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/rdp/rdp0297/rdp0297e.pdf
19. The American Farmland Trust reports farmers have to say about Vermont's Farmland Conservation Program
“From the Field: What Vermonters have to say about Vermont’s Farmland Conservation Program”
http://www.farmlandinfo.org/documents/29389/From_The_Field.pdf
20. This 2001 USDA Economic Research Service paper discusses the impacts of development at the urban fringe on agriculture and rural land. It addresses the direct and indirect costs of development; how the agricultural sector adapts to development; the costs of conserving rural land and the public’s willingness to pay; the lack of planning at the local government level; and the increasing role of state government in managing “smart growth.”
“Development at the Urban Fringe and Beyond: Impacts on Agriculture and Rural Land”
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer803/aer803.pdf
21. This 2002 USDA Economic Research Service report examines the role of public preferences for rural amenities and assesses how farmland protection programs fit into the broader array of rural land conservation programs.
“Farmland Protection: The Role of Public Preferences for Rural Amenities”
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer815/aer815.pdf
Summary of findings in Agricultural Outlook:
“Farmland Protection Programs: What Does the Public Want?”
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/agoutlook/May2002/ao291h.pdf
22. This paper describes how Cornell Cooperative Extension agents working on farmland and agricultural preservation in the suburban fringe of New York City used community networks to build social capital within the agricultural sector and broader community.
“Sustaining the Rural Landscape by Building Community Social Capital”
http://www.cardi.cornell.edu/land_use/environmental_management/000249.php
23. The Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development workshop summary from “What the public values about farm and ranch land” held in 2003.
http://www.nercrd.psu.edu/Publications/rdppapers/rdp23BW.pdf
24. The 2006 Vermont Land Trust Conservation Survey compiled Vermonters’ perceptions of conservation as it relates to working farms, working forest, tourism, recreation, nature/wildlife areas and local communities.
http://crs.uvm.edu/2006%20conservation%20survey.pdf
25. Wisconsin's farms and agricultural businesses generate more than $51.5 billion in economic activity and provide jobs for 420,000 people. New research from University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW-Extension shows how important agriculture is to the state's economy. The Economic Impact Report is available at: http://www.uwex.edu/ces/ag/wisag/
26. AgImpacts: The Role of Production Agriculture in the Local Economy provides an overview of the current situation and recent trends in a variety of important local agricultural economic indicators for each county in Pennsylvania. http://agimpact.aers.psu.edu/
27. Northeast Farms to Food: Understanding Our Region's Food System was published in 2002 by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (NESAWG). Northeast Farms to Food (NEFTF) provides a comprehensive look at the Northeast food and farming system form production through processing and distribution to consumption and diet. The current update with a focus on the federal Farm Bill is available at: http://www.nercrd.psu.edu/LocValAg/2006NEFTFUpdate.pdf
### Abstracts ###
Author: Irwin, Elena G.
Year: 2002
Title: The Effects of Open Space on Residential Property Values
City: Columbus, OH
Institution: Ohio State University
Pages: 16
Date: November
Abstract: The marginal values of different open space attributes are tested using a hedonic pricing model with residential sales data from central Maryland. The identification problems that arise due to endogenous land use spillovers and unobserved spatial correlation are addressed using instrumental variables estimation with a randomly drawn subset of the data that omits nearest neighbors. Results show a premium associated with permanently preserved open space relative to developable agricultural and forested lands and support the hypothesis that open space is most valued for providing an absence of development, rather than for providing a particular bundle of open space amenities.
Author: Ready, Richard C., Mark C. Berger and Glenn C. Blomquist
Year: 1997
Title: Measuring Amenity Benefits from Farmland: Hedonic Pricing vs. Contingent Valuation
City: University Park, PA
Institution: Penn State University
Pages: 21
Date: Fall
Abstract: The amenity value to Kentucky residents from horse farm land was estimated using both the contingent valuation method and the hedonic pricing method. The hedonic pricing method included both the housing and labor markets. A value function estimated from dichotomous choice contingent valuation responses showed that the value of a change in the level of the horse farm amenity was sensitive to the size of the change, with no evidence of value that is independent of the size of the change. The two methods generated estimates of the external benefits from horse farm land that were within 20 percent of each other.
