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Rural Policy

Uneven Ground: An Asymmetrical Comparative Case Study of Wetland & Farmland Protection Policy Environments in North Carolina Mike Ortosky*, Mike Ortosky,

North Carolina ranks first in the United States in the percentage of farmland loss to non-agricultural uses.  This is mainly due to a lack of an effective farmland protection policy in the peri-urban areas of metropolitan counties, where demand for residential development is high.  Unfortunately, the best soil landscapes for agricultural production are also generally the best areas for residential development.  The economic present value of those landscapes for development is higher than for agricultural use, creating uncertainty among agricultural landowners and frequently leading to the sale of farms for development, the fragmentation of agricultural landscapes, and an increasing sense of impermanence among remaining farms.  Once developed, the valuable characteristics of the naturally occurring soil and topographic resources for agricultural use are irreversibly lost, along with some associated ecosystem services.  Research literature, government, and non-government data confirm these trends; terminology is important for interpreting that data.  Since terms such as farms, farmland, and cropland imply cultural aspects of ownership and management, the term prime soil-landscapes is offered to describe the base-level natural resources, independent of ownership or management.  Increasing awareness of this problematic trend is driving efforts to develop public policy responses to protect farmland at the state and county levels.  Conflicting interests among associated actors, stakeholders, and interest groups make policy design and implementation difficult, particularly in the absence of a comprehensively accepted public policy theory.  An in-depth case study of a relatively effective natural resource protection policy prototype, the United States federal wetlands policy, is investigated to evaluate its history, structure, and causal processes and mechanisms, for contrast with current farmland policy in North Carolina.  This qualitative research uses an asymmetrical comparative case study and process-tracing methods to determine how and why wetlands protection policy is significantly more effective than farmland protection policy.  Comparable aspects of wetlands and prime soil-landscapes as natural resources include: both are components of the terrestrial ecosystem, defined by specific soil and water regimes, are valuable and limited in extent, and are subject to loss from human activity.  While there has never been a comprehensive policy specifically intended to protect wetlands, an effective policy environment comprised of components of individual policies has developed over time as a complex, reactively emergent phenomenon in dynamic equilibrium with its contributory environment.  Four policy artifacts represent the tactical essence and efficacy of the wetland policy environment: specific resource identification criteria, demonstrable avoidance and minimization of resource impacts, and compensatory mitigation of unavoidable impacts.  Recognition of natural resource protection policy development as a non-linear, complex, and reactively emergent process driven by the actions of business interests, legislative entities, government agencies, and the judiciary is essential for framing policymakers’ actions.  Policy artifacts resulting from those collective actions in the historical development of the wetlands protection policy environment in the United States represent valuable paradigms for the incremental implementation of farmland protection policy.