Ohio farmland preservation efforts trivial, off target, and may encourage urban sprawl
Urban sprawl has captured headlines in newspapers across Ohio. Spurred on by recommendations from Gov. Voinovich’s Farmland Preservation Task Force, state legislators now want to conserve more open space by increasing spending and creating new programs.[1] These efforts, however, are often misdirected and may even contribute to Ohio’s growth management problems.A case in point is House Joint Resolution 15 (HJR 15). HJR 15 places a $200 million bond proposal on the November 2000 ballot.[2] The ballot measure would amend the Ohio Constitution to allow the state government to borrow money to preserve farmland and open space. The state’s total bonding authority for these efforts is capped at $200 million, and it couldn’t issue more than $50 million worth of
bonds each year.
While $200 million seems like a lot of money, it’s a drop in the bucket for land conservation. The proposed bond could buy about 15,000 acres of vacant land statewide per year, or 150,000 acres over a ten year period.[3] Yet, Ohio has about 14.1 million acres of farmland.[4] Thus, after ten years, the state could "preserve" about 1% of Ohio’s farmland. If the program successfully leveraged local dollars, about 2% of the state’s farmland would be preserved.
These funds, however, are not restricted to farmland purchases. Ohio has another 8 million acres in forests that might also be eligible. Thus, the state could "preserve" about one half of one percent of the state’s open space over ten years (about 1% if local dollars were leveraged).[5] This is a trivial amount of land if the goal is to protect land from urban development.
This analysis may still overestimate the conservation impact of the program in Ohio. Only acreage considered "threatened" by urban development or environmentally sensitive would be likely candidates for purchase by the state. Most of the land will be in or near urban areas, increasing the price significantly. Farmland prices in Ohio’s metropolitan area’s average $3,098 per acre for buildings and land.[6] In counties with large urban centers, farmland values average $4,647 per acre. Thus, the state could preserve about 107,000 acres over ten years in urban counties. These counties currently have more than 1.2 million acres in farmland.[7]
Ironically, given the small amount of land conserved, the state may actually encourage so-called urban sprawl: residential and commercial development will simply leapfrog to neighboring properties.
Of course, all these efforts presuppose that Ohio’s farmland and open space is, in fact, threatened. An analysis of trends from 1949 to 1992 by Ohio State University agricultural economist Luther Tweeten found that 96% of cropland loss was attributable to weak demand for cropland, not urbanization.[8] Ross Korves, Deputy Chief Economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, observes that world agricultural yields are expected to increase by about 1.5% per year while world population growth is expected to fall from 1.2% in the 2005 to 1% by 2015.[9] In fact, Ohio’s agricultural industry remains healthy.[10]
The bottom line is that agriculture’s rising productivity allows farmland to be used for other purposes. While some land may be used for housing, shopping centers, and office parks, farmland will also be converted to forest or pasture. Indeed, Ohio’s forests have benefited from higher agricultural productivity: from 1949 to 1992, Ohio’s forests grew faster than development.[11]
Even if farmland is converted to urban uses, real estate markets suggest the social costs of preventing this conversion are potentially very high. Land prices in some suburban areas reach $50,000 or more per acre, indicating that the value of land for other uses, particularly housing, is much higher for most Ohioans than its continued use as farmland.
State and local policymakers should avoid looking to expensive symbolic efforts to conserve farmland and go to the root of Ohio’s growth-management problems. Often, the most important sources of inefficiency in the real estate market are local. Zoning codes typically require densities lower than the market would naturally generate, essentially mandating the conversion of land from rural to urban uses. Cluster housing — an urban design concept used to preserve open space — is virtually impossible to implement in many cases because of antiquated zoning codes, misinformed citizen opposition, and cumbersome approval processes that wipe out profit margins. Many communities also inadvertently subsidize new development by failing to price their infrastructure at its full and true cost.
Citizens and policymakers serious about conserving land should look in their own backyards and reform local ordinances and policies before going to the state legislature for new programs and spending.
Notes
[1] Ohio Farmland Preservation Task Force: Findings and Recommendations, Report to Governor George V. Voinovich, June 1997.
[2] HJR 15 also includes another $200 million earmarked for urban redevelopment efforts, including the remediation of abandoned industrial sites with environmental contamination called brownfields.
[3] Calculations based on farmland value data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, 1997 Census of Agriculture. Alternatively, the state could purchase the development rights to the land, which would reduce the total outlay per acre. Unfortunately, reliable data on the value of development rights is not available. In many cases, the price may be higher than this metropolitan average since the land will likely be in highly desirable areas of a county. In rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, for example, land prices have been driven to $12,000 per acre. See the discussion in Keith Wiebe, Abebayehu Tegene, and Betsy Kuhn, Partial Interests in Land: Policy Tools for Resource Use and Conservation, Agricultural Economic Report No. 744 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, November 1996), p. 13.
[4] Farmland estimate is from the 1997 Census of Agriculture. Other estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) suggest farmland is more prevalent. A January 1999 report from the USDA estimated that Ohio had 14.9 million acres in farms. Land in farms fell about 100,000 acres per year from 1993 to 1996, then stabilized in 1997. If the state continued to lose about 100,000 acres per year in 1998 and 1999, Ohio would now have about 14.7 million acres of land in farms. See Farms and Land in Farms: Final Estimates 1993-1997, Statistical Bulletin No. 955 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, January 1999), p. 7.
[5] Currently, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act (H.R. 701) is winding its way through Congress. The legislation would make almost $3 billion available to states for land conservation efforts. About $54 million is slated to go to Ohio annually if the legislation passes. Even if the legislation passes, the amount of land capable of being preserved is small compared to general land use trends in the U.S. See Greg VanHelmond and Angela Antonelli, "Why CARA is Fiscally Irresponsible and A Threat to Local Land use Decisions," Backgrounder No. 1370 (Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation, May 9, 2000), p. 7.
[6] Ibid. The analysis included the following metropolitan areas: Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Lima, Mansfield, Toledo, and Youngstown. These figures probably underestimate the current development potential of land in suburban areas. First, inflation has probably pushed up the value of land. Second, farmland preservation trusts report average values greater than $4,000. For example, suburban land averages about $4,000 an acre in Philadelphia. See Tom Daniels, "Farm Follows Function" Planning (January 2000), p. 17.
[7] Of course, the amount of land purchased could still be significantly lower. Land prices in some suburban areas reach $50,000 or more per acre.
[8] Luther Tweeten, "Competing for Scarce Land: Food Security and Farm Preservation," paper presented to the American Agricultural Law Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 17, 1997. For a more in-depth discussion of this result for Ohio, see Luther Tweeten, "Cropland Conversion and Urban Development in Ohio," Ohio State University, Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Developmental Economics, unpublished manuscript.
[9] Ross Korves, "Population, Productivity, Prices, and Policy," American Farm Bureau Federation, November 1999, unpublished paper. See also discussions in Jefferson G. Edgens and Samuel R. Staley, "The Myth of Farmland Loss," FORUM for Applied Research and Public Policy 14,no. 3 (Fall 1999), pp. 29-34; Samuel R. Staley, "The ‘Vanishing Farmland Myth’ and the Smart Growth Agenda," Policy Brief No. 12 (Los Angeles: Reason Public Policy Institute, January 2000), http:www.rppi.org
[10] For a discussion of these trends, see Samuel R. Staley, "Urbanization No Threat to Ohio’s Farmland," Perspective on Current Issues (Columbus, Ohio: The Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, May 1999).
[11] Major Land Uses (1945-1992), U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service reported in "Tree Sprawl: Ohio Wilderness Grew Faster than Development, 1949 to 1992," Policy Note (Columbus, Ohio: The Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, November 1999).
Samuel R. Staley, Ph.D. is a senior fellow at the Buckeye Institute and director of Urban and Land Use Policy at Reason Foundation in Los Angeles. An Ohio native and resident, he is co-author of the forthcoming book Mobility First: A New Vision for Transportation in a Globally Competitive Twenty-first Century (Rowman & Littlefield) and co-author of The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, and What We Can Do About It (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
