How does farms affect the land

Land use provides many economic and social benefits, but often comes at a substantial cost to the environment. Although most economic costs are figured into land use decisions, most environmental externalities are not. For example, developers may not bear all the environmental and infrastructural costs generated by their projects.

Farmland produces both agricultural commodities and open space. Although farmers are paid for the commodities they produce, they may not be compensated for the open space they provide.

Thus, market prices of farmlands may be below their social values. Private trusts and non profit organizations play an important role in land conservation. The Nature Conservancy has protected more than million acres of ecologically important lands.

However, some have questioned whether private conservation efforts crowd out or complement public efforts for land conservation. Land use regulation can take many different forms. The traditional command and control approach often involves zoning, density regulation, and other direct land use controls. Although these policies can be quite effective as regulatory tools, they could lead to substantial social welfare loss in the form of higher housing prices, smaller houses, and inefficient land use patterns Cheshire and Sheppard ; Walsh Incentive—based policies are increasingly used to influence private land use decisions.

These policies may include development impact fees, purchases of development rights PDRs , preferential property taxation, and direct conservation payments. Environmental Protection Agency The incentive—based approach has many advantages over direct land use control. For example, a development impact fee can be used to achieve both the optimal pace and pattern of land development, a shortcoming of zoning regulations Wu and Irwin, However, zoning may be preferred from a practical viewpoint as well as in cases where the environmental costs of land conversion are highly uncertain.

In situations where the natural and human systems interact in complex ways, thresholds and nonlinear dynamics are likely to exist, and the environmental costs could be very high and sensitive to additional development.

In such cases, zoning may be preferred. The policy challenge, however, is to know when the system is in the neighborhood of such thresholds. While federal spending on land—related conservation programs has increased substantially over the last twenty five years, the federal government has yet to articulate a clear vision of how land use should be managed Daniels, Most land use controls are in the hands of local governments in the United States, and the level of control varies considerably across counties and municipalities.

Some local governments have few land use controls, while others are actively involved in land use planning and regulation. Land use regulation is a contentious issue in many communities, particularly those facing rapid urbanization.

Proponents argue that land use planning protects farmland, forests, water quality, open space, and wildlife habitat and, at the same time, increases property value and human health. Conversely, uncontrolled development will destroy the natural environment and long—term economic growth. Critics of land use regulation call those fears overblown. They argue that urban development is an orderly market process that allocates land from agriculture to urban use, and that governments tend to over regulate because they rarely bear the costs of regulation.

The stakes are high in this debate. Any policy measures that aim at curbing urban development will ultimately affect a key element of the American way of life, that is, the ability to consume a large amount of living space at affordable prices. They should try to identify the sources of market failures that cause "excessive development" and address problems at their roots.

Land use regulation must strike a balance between private property rights and the public interest. Cheshire, P. The welfare economics of land use planning. Journal of Urban Economics, 52 , — Cho, Seong—Hoon, Wu, J.

Measuring interactions among urbanization, land use regulations, and public finance. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 85, — Czech, B. Economic associations among causes of species endangerment in the United States, BioScience 50 , — Daniels, T.

When city and country collide. Washington, DC: Island Press. The overall hunger reduction trends in the developing countries since — are connected with changes in large populous countries China, India [ 10 ]. In the developing countries, this rural social class is, above all, often a victim of marginalization and exclusion from its governing classes political, economic, and financial as well as from the urban milieu where there is a concentration of power and knowledge, and therefore money, including funds for development.

Often the urban and rural worlds are separated. In past, Slovakia was typical agrarian country. Even during the nineteenth century the vast majority of the population worked in agriculture, but with the beginning of the twentieth century the decreasing trend began and continued to the present. In , In , 50, people worked in agriculture [ 12 ] which represented 2. The global land area is Globally, about 0. In , it was 0. The average amount of cropland and pasture land per capita in was 0.

Humans have altered land cover for centuries, but recent rates of change are higher than ever [ 16 ]. Highly variable ecosystem conditions driven by climatic variations amplify the pressure arising from high demands on land resources. Economic factors define a range of variables that have a direct impact on the decision making by land managers. Technology can affect labor market and operational processes on land.

Demographic factors, such as increase and decrease of population, and migration patterns have a large impact on land use. The development of the present ecosystems in the postglacial period Holocene depended on significant changes in climate. Warming in the postglacial period, about 10, years ago, created conditions of back migration of individuals species from their refuges, where they were protected during the glacial periods.

After the neolitic revolution, human society began to influence more noticeably the development of natural ecosystems. Agriculture has expanded into forests, savannas, and steppes in all parts of the world to meet the demand for food and fiber. The central and north Europe were almost completely naturally covered by forests. Only high mountain and alpine rocky localities were without forest cover. Nowadays Europe is a mosaic of landscapes, reflecting the evolutionary pattern of changes that land use has undergone in the past.

The greatest concentration of farmland is found in Eastern Europe, where also Slovakia lies, with more than half of its land area in crop cover [ 18 ].

Europe is one of the most intensively used continents on the globe. Despite the long tradition of human impact investigation on the environment and vegetation in Europe, there are few comparable studies in North America. This difference is often attributed to the shorter duration of intensive human impact in most of North America versus Europe. As a result, prior studies in the United States have generally been restricted to local investigations [ 19 ].

During the past three centuries, in many developing countries and countries with transition economies, growing demand for food due to an increasing population has caused substantial expansion of cropland, accompanied by shrinking primary forests and grassland areas [ 20 ]. Based on many studies, in China between and , cropland area increased and forest coverage decreased.

Similarly in India, between and , cropland area has increased from 92 to But in the past 50 years, over world rapid urbanization has been evident [ 22 ]. Rapid economic growth is accompanied by a shift of land from agriculture to industry, infrastructure, road network, and residential use. Countries in East Asia, North America, and Europe have all lost cultivated land during their periods of economic development [ 18 ]. The dramatic growth and globalization of China's economy and market since economy reforms in have brought about a massive loss of croplands, most of which were converted to urban areas and transportation routes during — [ 24 ].

In , of the total area of Slovakia agricultural land covered The highest share of used agricultural land was represented by arable land The average amount of agricultural land per capita was 0. Cereals are the main growing crops. Thus, transformation was connected with intensification and specialization of production as main trends in European or North American agriculture accompanied by negative impact on the environment. Agricultural intensification is defined as higher levels of inputs and increased output of cultivated or reared products per unit area and time [ 27 ].

Over the past 50 years, agricultural production has grown between 2. Globally, since , there has been a 1. The mix of cropland expansion and agricultural intensification has varied geographically.

Tropical Asia increased its food production mainly by increasing fertilizer use and irrigation. Most of Africa and Latin America increased their food production through both agricultural intensification and extensification.

In western Africa cropland expansion was accompanied by a decrease in fertilizer use and a slight increase in irrigation [ 18 ]. Intensification and specialization have been predominant trends in EU countries including Slovakia for several decades. Between and there was a 6. Strong intensification in Europe in contrast to other countries is obvious if we compare selected indicators, e.

In Slovakia, the maximum intensification level was reached during the socialistic era in 80th. However, since , there are signs of a trend toward a more efficient use of agricultural inputs as a result of not very favorable economic situation of farms but also as a consequence of different environmental measures implementation.

Intensification is connected with increasing release of atmospheric emissions through management of land and livestock, and thus agriculture release to the atmosphere significant amounts of greenhouse gases emissions of CO 2 , CH 4 , and N 2 O [ 33 ] and ammonia emissions. The agricultural sector is currently responsible for the vast majority of ammonia emissions in the European Union.

Notwithstanding these improvements, there is still more to do, with an important role for policymakers. To address these long-standing issues, more effort and co-operation is needed between farmers, policymakers, and the agro-food value chain. In addition, the twin policy challenge of ensuring global food security for a growing population while improving environmental performance will require raising the environmental and resource productivity of agriculture, enhancing land management practices, minimising pollution discharges, curtailing damage to biodiversity, and strengthening policies that avoid the use of production and input subsidies which tend to damage the environment.

To help countries improve the sustainability of agriculture, the OECD has developed recommendations on how to develop cost-effective agri-environmental policies , how to manage water issues for agriculture , how to deal with climate change challenges , and how to preserve biodiversity and manage ecosystem services related to agriculture. We have also developed insights on the potential environmental impact of agriculture policies by identifying possible policy mis-alignments and how to jointly address sustainability and productivity growth goals.

To support this work and help governments assess whether the policies they have in place are most likely to boost productivity and minimise environmental damage, the OECD developed a set of agri-environmental indicators AEIs More specifically, the AEI database can be used to:.

The AEIs are freely available to access and download — you can either query the complete database , or explore a specific theme or country below. Support OneGreenPlanet X. Subscribe to Newsletter. FoodMonster App. Support Us. Buy our Cookbooks. Sign Our Petitions. Check out our must-buy plant-based cookbooks! Learn more. Click here to Support Us.

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