2.1. Defining New Ruralism
NR seeks to alleviate many of the issues involved with agricultural conversion through creating carefully planned, agrarian-based rural suburbs which seek to counteract current consumerist-based sprawl [
15]. William Ellis coined the term in The Futurist, focusing initially on adapting rural land uses to post-industrial technological change [
16]. Proponents of contemporary NR adjusted the term’s connotation, referring more to sustainable growth in rural areas within urbanizing influences. It intertwines ideas embedded within multiple contemporary trends: Smart Growth, Agricultural Urbanism and New Urbanism (See
Table 1). For example, the preservation of agricultural lands for working rural landscapes, wildlife habitats, urban parks, recreational trails, and water supply/floodplain protection has emerged as an integral component of Smart Growth and other related sustainable growth programs [
17]. An important component to creating NR development is establishing an apparatus to permanently conserve farmland as both food sources for urban regions and frameworks to appropriately locate new development [
13,
14].
While principles for NR have been only loosely drafted, its roles in sustainable local and regional food supplies and supporting farmland preservation are not yet fully understood. The concept’s principles are in their exploratory phase and are extremely broad. There are also a minimal amount of NR-based developments currently built, as the concept was not officially designated until 2006. Two characteristics typify NR: First, any rural area under development must establish an identity rooted in the economic, ecological, and cultural systems of the surrounding agricultural environment; and second, the primary use of the land should be dedicated to farming in small-to medium-scaled agricultural plots which are integrated with areas of regional wildlife and habitat management [
13]. Development-based objectives to achieve these principles include increased density, mixed-land uses and public environments that are accessible to residents and visitors from all segments of society.
New Urbanism principles do not always translate easily into NR philosophies. Rural communities experience difficulty integrating New Urbanist concepts in low-density environments [
14]. While New Urbanism concentrates new development around transit-centered areas and encourages reinvestment in older, urban areas, NR concentrates on preserving lands in rural areas at risk from suburbanization, environmental degradation, and deindustrialization. Lower density development is another distinguishing factor separating NR from New Urbanism [
18,
19,
20]. Each concept applies its principles at opposite ends of the rural-urban interface, unavoidably resulting in major differences. The common thread between NR and New Urbanism is the emphasis on minimizing land consumption but NR focuses on minimizing rural agricultural land consumption for non-agricultural uses. NR was originally introduced as a regional, agricultural-based framework within which New Urbanist developments could occur. Duany, a founder of New Urbanism, recanted the NR term and referred to it simply as Agricultural Urbanism to detach from the concept. [
19]. Both NR and Agricultural Urbanism seek to act as vaccines against sprawl, promote land as a preserved amenity rather than a commodity for future development and integrate sustainable food and agricultural networks into community, neighborhood, and site scales to generate agricultural systems which build place around food [
21].
2.2. Approaches and Limitations to Farmland Preservation Techniques
The promotion of farmland preservation policies, such as those involved with concepts such as NR, can slow sprawl, a key contribution being the creation of non-developable parcels of land. In the 1970’s, population migration from urban to rural areas, new transportation subsidies for highways and upsurges in rural industries and commerce significantly threatened rural and agricultural land preservation in the U.S. [
22,
23] Farmland preservation and related federal programs/policies, despite dating back to the 1950s and 1960s, were then widely introduced as a response to these changes in the 1970s and then gained momentum as an offshoot of environmental conservationist ideals as a means of funneling development into desired areas and containing cities [
24].
Currently, planning strategies at the state and municipal levels focus on preventing farmland conversion. Each of these strategies are all options for maximizing NR based farmland preserves, but are typically based on location. The effectiveness of these strategies vary, but most involve the readjustment of existing and future land uses. For example, Santa Clara Valley, California utilized agricultural zoning to help regulate population growth and sprawl from San Francisco and expansion into unincorporated areas of the county [
25]. New agricultural zoning regulations prohibited or limited non-agricultural land uses in the new zones. Other areas such as Suffolk County, New York concentrated on using the purchase of development rights (PDRs), to regulate farmland preservation [
26]. Using PDRs, a landowner such as local government or a private land trust, can buy the development rights from a parcel and a permanent deed restriction is then placed on that property, restricting land uses in perpetuity. Transfers of development rights (TDRs) can also help manage farmland preservation. In this approach, development rights can be reallocated to developers for use in other areas within the same zone planned for development or in areas outside the agricultural zone. Owners of these rights are then allowed to develop the land in transfer receiving areas at higher densities than previously allowed. Some areas apply agricultural districts, which set aside a minimum amount of acreage for agriculture purposes in developing areas [
26]. Unlike zoning, if the minimum amount of farmland is met, there are no restrictions on land use.
These and other land-protection techniques (such as regulatory-based policies) help protect farmland. No single land-protection technique, however, can fully accomplish the job; yet each plays a role in achieving the desired result [
27]. A combined approach of the aforementioned strategies is on the rise, especially in more progressive states such as Oregon. The synthesis of various techniques and their application overcome the fallacies inherent to each individual method. Thus, a multi-combinational approach in NR based developments should be aspired.
The ability to preserve farmland depends largely on the intensity and viability of the existing farms surrounding urban areas [
28]. Leapfrog development often hinders farmland preservation, where urban growth jumps over restricted areas [
29]. Daniels suggests as more people move to the fringes of cities, they bid up the price of land, isolate tracks of farmland through leapfrog development, and hasten the decline of local farming [
30]. Isolated and disconnected preserved parcels are less impactful at curtailing sprawl and, because farmland preservation is commonly voluntary, the protection of large contiguous tracts of land can be difficult [
31]. One major barrier to voluntarily preserving farmland is that participation in farmland conservation incentive programs is limited due to the lack of awareness about these options [
32]. For example, a survey sponsored by American Farmland Trust (AFT) found that only 38 percent of agricultural landowners in Washington’s Snohomish and Stillaguamish watersheds had ever participated in a conservation incentive program; 25 percent had never heard of any of the programs available [
33]. Other reasons for not volunteering included lack of financial incentive, competition with development potential, and possible issues of future land uses due to multiple owners.
Surprisingly, during the recent economic downturn, many operating farms managed to survive the economy’s instability as strong farm earnings helped withstand the significant downturn in residential housing markets [
34]. However, since farmland is typically cheaper to develop, the availability of low interest rates on loans has lowered the total cost of purchasing agricultural land and made farmland more attractive as an investment [
35]. As a result, the process of buying up farmland and sitting on agricultural properties until the market rebounds grew rapidly during the downturn. For these and other reasons, despite the efforts of agricultural preservationists, nearly 43 million acres of rural land were developed between 1982 and 2010, 56 percent of which were agricultural lands [
36]. Furthermore, only around two and a half million acres have been protected by state farmland preservation programs nationally; comparatively speaking, this is not a large proportion of the available land base for development [
37]. Only 4.6 percent of the U.S. land area had been developed as of 2000 but this percentage increased to 5.6 percent by 2010 [
38]. Between 1960 and 1990, urban density decreased cumulatively by 28 percent in the United States, with nearly 2.2 million acres, or about 10 percent of the nation’s farmland, per year converted to urban use [
39,
40]. As of 2012, there was an annual conversion of over 1,236,000 acres away from food production systems; coupled with an average one percent annual population increase, this rate projects to reduce the current 1.5 acres of agricultural-based land per person by nearly 50 percent to 0.74 acres by 2050 [
41].
These statistics indicate that agricultural conversion has not significantly decelerated, despite the development of policies and strategies to preserve farmland. The pace of land development doubled from 1990 to 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture [
22]. The Great Recession (2007–2009) may have slowed this pattern, but more recent statistics suggest that between 2000 and 2010, urban land area in the U.S. still increased by 15 percent and the changing of land use from agricultural use to suburban and urban use is increasing [
41]. Urban influenced areas are experiencing a disproportionate loss of land relative to population increase [
37,
41]. Urbanization affects about 17 percent of the nation’s agricultural land [
42,
43]. A growing number of U.S. cities are expanding, driving up farmland values closer to the urban fringe, thereby increasing potential for conversion to residential or commercial use. Irwin and Bockstael found that fragmentation of land uses increased as distance from the urban center increased. Specifically, farmland parcels nearer the urban fringe were more likely to be divided into smaller pieces and surrounded by other land uses [
42]. This pattern reduces agricultural production due to farmland loss and the quantity and quality of nonmonetary benefits of agricultural lands [
44].
The toughest challenge to preventing farmland conversion is that land considered ideal for farming also makes it ideal for development [
43]. Good farmland is flat with minimal slope, is well drained, has low soil erodibility, and is already cleared of vegetation. These characteristics can increase the developmental potential of farmland in that development costs are reduced. Barnard found that the U.S. average value of non-urban farmland was $640 per acre, while urban farmland was nearly three times higher at $1880 [
42]. On average, the development potential of a farm contributes about 10 percent of the total value of farmland, and this percentage increases with proximity to urban areas [
44,
45]. Some research suggests that over half of the variation in farmland prices is due to non-farm factors such as future developability [
46,
47]. Platinga,
et al., showed that farmland prices reflect not only the current use of land, but potential uses as well. Using a cross-section of approximately three thousand U.S. counties, the results suggested that counties near urban centers had, future development rents accounting for more than half of the agricultural land values [
44]. This result implies that landowners would require substantial economic compensation if the development potential was not met.
As of 2007, 922 million acres (40 percent) of the nation’s land base was farmland [
35]. Not all of this land base is high quality agricultural land. As of 2012, there were about 445 million acres of high-quality, productive farmland in the U.S. [
39]. There is widespread uncertainty over whether this can be preserved due to land-use changes and population shifts. Some farms can adapt to the changes caused by urbanization through implementation of evolving technologies. Heimlich and Barnard found that adaptive farms that alter crops to more intense and high-quantity yields compete better in urbanizing areas than do traditional farms. In these cases, production and output have not diminished despite the loss of farmland area [
48]. Continually improving technology such as hybrid seeds, irrigation advancements, and mechanical innovations continue to raise yields and limit acreage expansion required to keep pace with demand [
45]. The 1997 Farming on the Edge Study by the AFT demonstrated that the nation’s highest quality farmlands coincided with high-growth areas, and some industries proved to be remarkably adaptive to new development [
47]. For example, vegetable production has not significantly diminished over the past several decades and has remained relatively stable in urbanizing areas. In fact, 66 percent of the nation’s vegetable production was produced in California, Texas, Florida, and Arizona—four of the nation’s fastest growing states [
49].
Development has also not been a major threat to national food and fiber production although it shows potential to reduce the production of specialty crops [
50]. Adaptive farms typically alter their operations to emphasize common agricultural products which can sometimes result in specialty crop reductions in some regions [
51]. Specialty crops are, however, an essential ingredient to the success of most local food systems [
50]. Producers in urban areas such as the northeast commonly move toward high value specialty crop production because they can be more readily sold in urban markets through direct marketing channels. Consumers who value high-quality foods produced with low environmental impact are willing to pay more for food grown locally [
51]. This condition amplified the economic value of agritourism. Schilling,
et al., found a correlation in percentage of farm income derived from direct marketing and the portion of income derived from agritourism, in the Northeastern U.S. [
51]. This suggests that agritourism can be an important factor for increasing agricultural viability for farmers at the urban fringe and may provide additional protection for farmlands within urban influenced areas.