This paper describes four innovative farmland preservation techniques and gauges support through interviews of key stakeholders: program administrators, lawmakers, and landowners. Four techniques were selected for assessment from approximately 30 novel techniques: rights of first refusal; term conservation easements; land preservation tontines; and agricultural conservation pension. Rights of first refusal was the most favored, although respondents thought effective implementation would need targeting of land and a dedicated funding source.

Land use policy unquestionably requires information about land ownership. During the Congressional debate on the Land Use Policy and Planning Assistance Act of 1972, Senator Henry Jackson of Washington recognized the need for land ownership information when he said: "Rational land use planning would be impossible without knowledge of patterns of land ownership within a given area." (1) Yet this information is not generally available for the planning process.

The following report outlines the results of focus group discussions that were conducted to help researchers learn what it is about wetlands, wetland services, and wetland characteristics that matter to people. The participants were asked questions in the areas of natural resources, their prior knowledge of wetlands, wetland types, public policies relating to wetlands, and wetland functions. The focus group discussions reported here were the first set of qualitative discussions in the research project.

Alabama is experiencing significant pressure to convert agricultural land to urban uses. The dominant pattern of urbanization has been the conversion of agricultural land to residential and commercial uses. This paper examined regional, state, and local land use trends and developed a tool for identifying the determinants and impacts of past and proposed land use change in north Alabama using selected cities and towns in Madison County.

The article is devoted to actual problems of development of the land market. The article describes the theoretical basis, theessence, content and peculiarities of formation of market relations on the ground. Given the definitions of the land market a variety ofscientists economists-classics, research scientists, lawyers farmers, theorists and practitioners of domestic, agrarian reform.The authors examined theoretical features of development of land relations in the formation of the land market.

Agricultural land is being converted into rural residences at an unprecedented rate in the Inter-mountain West. Survey data have been collected for Sublette County, Wyoming concerning preferences for private land use and land use control. Selected land use controls include zoning, purchase of development rights and cluster development. Local in-migration appears to be driven by the pursuit of open space and environment amenities. Logit models are estimated for public and private choice co-variates.

A discrete choice model and site-specific data are used to analyze land use choices between crop production and pasture in the Corn Belt. The results show that conversion probabilities depend on relative returns, land quality, and government policy. In general it is found that landowners are less inclined to remove land from crop production than to convert land to crop production.

To comply with the requirements of the EU Directive 2009/28/EC for using renewable energy sources (RES) in Latvia, the agricultural industry has to become a significant supplier of resources to energy producers and consumers. An increase in the area sown with maize is forecasted by exploiting the unused agricultural land to expand biogas production. The agricultural area has decreased by 2% in Latvia over the recent decade, and 16% of its total agricultural area are not exploited anymore.

This study tests cropland contract hypotheses utilizing a landlord data set. Ordered probit and classical regression models are estimated and presented identifying factors that affect the contract type selection and terms. Results suggest credit constraints are a viable land-leasing hypothesis. Risk aversion, managerial ability, and social capital are also supported.

Tax provisions for land care are often justified as corrections for externalities. It is argued in this paper that land care provisions can be justified independently of an externality correction objective, since land care provisions can be viewed as a partial correction of the failure of the depreciation provisions in the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 to recognise that items other than plant and articles devalue through use. This argument only applies to depreciation over the effective life of the asset and not to the provision of accelerated depreciation.