Bid-rent curves are incorporated in a stochastic dynamic programming model of land development around a city when farmland generates both positive and negative externalities. The model delineates how the quantities of land in
various uses over time should depend on the relative social weights assigned to the competing agricultural externalities.

In this paper, we examine command-and-control (CAC) policies and market-based instruments (MBI) in the context of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The CRP, an MBI in the form of subsidies, is by far the largest agro-environmental policy implemented to date. We compare the environmental performance of the CRP as implemented to a few counterfactual CAC polices using EPIC (Environmental Policy Integrated Climate), a bio-physical simulation model. In the context of multiple environmental indicators, no policy alternative emerges as a clear winner.

Negotiated agreements between traditional owners and pastoralists about use and management of lands held under pastoral lease tenures in the arid and semi-arid rangelands of Australia will promote secure futures for both parties. In this paper we will discuss this assertion and the processes of agreement making we are engaged in the South Australian rangelands. First we will explain the particular meaning of the Australian jargon we use throughout this paper - traditional owner, pastoralist and pastoral lease tenure.

This study estimates the impact of school quality on property values within the city limits of Greenville, South Carolina. This study differs from others in its use of a relative, rather than an absolute measure of school quality. We apply a hedonic pricing model to estimate the impact of K-12 rankings on the real constant-quality housing values. Based on 3,731 housing transactions carried out from 1994 to 2000, our results suggest that those who choose to live within the city limits of the study pay a premium to live in high quality school attendance areas.

Land valuation in the landscape consolidation projects is currently based on the Decree no. 38/2005 Coll on determining the value of land and plantations for the purpose of land consolidations. Land value is determined using the evaluation map which in turn is created from the updated ESQU (BPEJ) in the area of the landscape consolidation project. The intersection of the layer of plots' boundaries with the evaluation map is the basis for determining the value of existing and new plots.

Policy issues surrounding Federal programs for land retirement as a means of curtailing soil erosion are discussed in this paper. The analysis is structured around productivity differentials observed for New York cropland rated as highly erosive, moderately erosive, or nonerosive.

The research of the landscape structure and its changes was carried out in a part of the Horná Orava region. Landscape structure was studied and compared in 2 periods (1958 and 2001). Two types of changes were identified: anthropogenic and succession. Succession processes were spontaneous, anthropogenic-conditioned or successive, which were linked with land use changes, reduction of traditional management of non-forest vegetation (mowing, grazing) and consequent climax succession.

This paper reports on a survey of municipal commonage users, which was undertaken in Philippolis in the southern Free State, in May 2005. The survey showed that a significant number of commonage users are committed to their farming enterprises, as shown by five proxy indicators: Their readiness to plough their income into their farming enterprises; their sale of livestock; their desire for more land, and their willingness to pay rental to secure such land; their desire to farm on their own; and their desire to own their own land.

In modern U.S. agriculture, a tenant typically contracts with more than one landlord, although most of the past literature has focused exclusively on bilateral contracts with a single tenant and a single landlord. We argue that, in the presence of contractual externalities under which the landlords do not cooperatively act, multilateral contracting results in higher-powered contracts for the tenant, due to inefficient competition among the landlords, and that this incentive effect becomes a motivation for the use of cash rental contacts.

In this paper, the main socio-economic concepts and their applications in the study of soil degradation are reviewed under three broad headings: soil conservation as an input in agricultural production; topsoil as a natural resource somewhere between being renewable and nonrenewable; and the effects of dealing with common property resources. The treatment of soil conservation as an input has involved the demonstration of damage functions and a study of factors influencing the adoption of soil conservation.

Cadastral valuation model for building land has been approved by Regulations of Cabinet, and is expressed by a mathematical formula. The elements of cadastral valuation model for building land are the following: the base value of the building land, the land area under jurisdiction conditioned by the purpose of use, correction coefficient of the area, the correction coefficient accounting for the changes in the market, the correction coefficient of encumbrances and the correction coefficient of pollution.