Land degradation in sub-Saharan Africa reduces the land's potential productivity through soil erosion, nutrient depletion, soil moisture stress, deforestation and overgrazing. Efforts to reverse land degradation require an understanding of why it takes place and what factors govern farmers' willingness to invest in land conservation. These factors differ importantly between private and public lands.

This staff paper provides (1) a summary of the proposed bill regarding the annual conservation and land preservation tax concept, (2) observations and a preliminary assessment of the impacts, and (3) an outline of potential issues, considerations, and related alternative concepts that policymakers, interest groups and citizens may wish to consider during the course of debate on the proposal.

By incorporating the spatially arrangement of counties relative to each other, this paper uses a land use share model to investigate the possibility that the allocation of land use in one county could be influenced by not only the degree to which the county is zoned, but also the degree to which neighboring counties are zoned due to spillovers of zoning effects among neighboring counties. The estimation uses data on land use for 88 counties in Ohio.

The ownership of agricultural land by foreign nationals is currently an extremely sensitive political issue in many of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries as they move towards European Union accession. During the past decade economic reforms in CEE have resulted in substantial welfare declines within agricultural sectors across the region.

This paper introduces enforcement costs and farmer noncompliance into the economic analysis of the USDA conservation program on highly erodible lands. A model of heterogeneous producers is developed to determine the economic causes of farmer noncompliance with the provisions of the conservation program. In addition, the paper determines the enforcement policy design that can induce conservation compliance and examines the effectiveness of the current enforcement policy in deterring producer noncompliance.

The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) specifically states, “The Congress declares that it is the policy of the United States

Economic impacts often are cited as justification both for and against changes in grazing policy on public lands. A recent study conducted in Owyhee County, Idaho, illustrates a process to gather ranch-level economic information, develop economic models for different ranching systems, and use the models to estimate economic impacts of grazing policy changes. Ranch-level models were developed from producer panels and interviews within the county.

The economic impact of changing land-use policies has traditionally been estimated using the standard economic model of profit maximization. Ranchers are assumed to maximize profit and to adjust production strategies so as to continue maximizing profit with altered policies. Yet, nearly 30 years of research and observation have shown that family, tradition, and the desirable way of life are the most important factors in the ranch purchase decision - not profit.

How social change occurs is an important consideration when analyzing the effects of public land management policies on rural communities. This paper utilizes data from a recent study in Owyhee County, Idaho, to explore the combination of social attributes that contribute to community attitudes of cohesion, integration, and attachment in a set of rural communities. Specifically, we examine the importance of social networks and where a particular public land activity, ranching, fits into those networks.

This research uses field-level data from Burkina Faso to ask what determines farmers' investment in two well-known soil and water conservation techniques: field bunds (barriers to soil and water runoff), and microcatchments (small holes in which seeds and fertilizers are placed). Survey data for 1993 and 1994 are used to estimate Tobit functions, compute elasticities of adoption and intensity of use, perform robustness tests and estimate alternative models.

A theoretical analysis of equilibrium contracts between risk neutral landlords and tenants when tenants' soil exploitation is non-contractible indicates that landlords will overinvest in conservation structures. An empirical model using farm-level data provides evidence that investment in contractible soil conservation measures is greater on rental land.

Woody plant encroachment restricts forage production and capacity to produce grazing livestock. Biophysical plant growth simulation and economic simulation were used to evaluate a prescribed burning range management technique. Modeling systems incorporated management practices and costs, historical climate data, vegetation and soil inventories, livestock production data, and historical regional livestock prices. The process compared baseline non-treatment return estimates to expected change in livestock returns resulting from prescribed burning.