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The Vanishing Farmland Crisis

Critical Views of the Movement to Preserve Agricultural Land

Edited by John Baden

x, 428 pages, 6 x 9
Studies in Government and Public Policy
Cloth ISBN 978-0-7006-0253-7, $25.00

Book Cover ImageNewspapers seem to be telling us that every cornfield is threatened by a Dairy Queen. This media barrage about the crisis of our "shrinking" farmland can be traced to the 1979 publication of Where Have All the Farmlands Gone? by the National Agricultural Lands Study. The NALS report, to which eleven federal agencies contributed, argued that land-use planning and control must be employed to protect valuable farmland from"urban sprawl."

This volume, a collection of essays by a distinguished group of economists including Theodore W. Schulz, Julian L. Simon, and Pierre Crosson, takes issue with the belief that croplands need governmental protection. In opposition the collection as a whole supports two theses: 1) shrinking farm acreage is not a serious problem, and 2 )individual choices by landowners in a market setting result in better-organized land use than would governmental land-use planning and regulation.

Published for the Political Economy Research Center, Bozeman, Montana.

"This persuasive critique is a contribution to one of the key issues in the economics of U.S. agriculture."--Bruce L. Gardner, author of The Governing of Agriculture and former senior staff economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisors

JOHN BADEN is executive director of the Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, Milton R. Merrill Professor of Public Policy at Utah State University, and coauthor of Natural Resources: Myths and Management. He operates a sheep ranch in Montana and has also been a timber buyer and contract logger.

CONTRIBUTORS: John Baden, Pierre Crosson, B. Delworth Gardner, Clifton B. Luttrell, Theodore W. Schulz, Julian L. Simon, William Fischel, E. C. Pasour, Jr., Robert H. Nelson