A survey of all county planning departments in Washington State indicated that protecting agricultural land is a major concern at the county level. Maintenance of the agribusiness sector is the main reason for protecting agricultural land, while the preservation of open space and rural lifestyles was of secondary importance. As a result, most Washington counties have implemented a broad range o...

The associations between habitat and other factors that lead to the risk of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in diary cattle were examined in an unmatched case-control study. Data from 60 herds with recent history of bTB and 60 controls were analysed using logistic regression. The predictors included farmland habitat, topography, indices of badger density and herd size. Information-theoretic approache...

Farming households with close kinship ties in northeast Thailand have long been practising joint utilization of farmland. They used this multihousehold farming method even more actively to cope with the macroeconomic development beginning in the 1960s. A 1989 survey of a village by the author found more than one-third of farmland under such communal use. However, the share decreased drastically...

In stated preference valuation of farmland preservation, respondents are often told that preservation will occur within a given jurisdictional scale—e.g., community, state, county—but do not know the specific location of parcels in question. Hence, welfare estimates may be available for different scales and/or states, providing numerous avenues for benefit transfer. This paper provides a system...

We introduce the Gini coefficient to assess the rationality of land use structure. The rapid transformation of land use in China provides a typical case for land use structure analysis. In this study, a land Gini coefficient (LGC) analysis tool was developed. The land use structure rationality was analyzed and evaluated based on statistical data for China between 1996 and 2008. The results show...