Farmland protection policy: The critical area approach

Excerpt

A growing awareness of the failure of use-value assessment as a land use policy instrument has resulted in a search for more direct approaches to reducing the conversion of highly productive farmlands to nonfarm uses (11, 15, 19, 24, 27). The design and implementation of effective mandatory regulatory programs, however, is no easy task. The main obstacles to be overcome are the burden on the public purse of compensatory regulation and the constitutional validity and/or political acceptability of noncompensatory regulatory approaches.

Much of the attention thus far in the search for more direct approaches to fwmtand protection has been devoted to the design and refinement of compensatory regulatory programs, particularly those in which the market rather than the public treasury provides landowners with compensation for regulation-induced reductiom in property value (4, 10, 14, 16, 25).

Comparatively little attention has been given to the design and refinement of noncompensatory regulatory programs for farmtand protection. Ignored especially has been the question of how to overcome the issues of constitutional validity and political feasibility.

To increase both the constitutional validity and political viability of noncompensatory regulation in rural land use control, it may be necessary to restrict the scope of …