Impacts of Fragmentation and Neighbor Influences on Farmland Conversion: A Case Study of the Edmonton-Calgary Corridor, Canada

Feng Qiu, Brent Swallow, Scott Jeffrey and Larry Laliberté

No 170147, 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Under heavy development pressure, farmland is rapidly being converted to non-agricultural uses such as houses, roads, and recreational facilities. A great deal of research has investigated these farmland losses and their associated drivers. However, the existing empirical studies have neglected two important issues related to farmland conversion: spillover effects from neighboring areas and the impacts of farmland fragmentation. This study incorporates fragmentation and neighboring impacts into the farmland conversion analysis and provides new insights for the land-use/cover change literature. Empirical results indicate that increases in fragmentation further encourage farmland conversion to urban uses, but the effects are not linear with decreasing marginal influences. Land-use activities and decisions have strong spillover effects on neighboring areas. Ignoring this externality could result in biased results and thus misleading policy decisions and recommendations.

Keywords: Land; Economics/Use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea14:170147

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.170147

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