THE ECONOMIC PAMPHLETEER: Land Use Planning for Sustainable Food Systems

by John Ikerd

http://dx.doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2011.021.010, pp. 3–5

First paragraph:

A sustainable food system must be firmly rooted in the wise use of land. Fortunately, local foods initiatives increasingly involve planned uses of agricultural land. While professional planners, architects, and staff of nongovernmental organizations may all be involved, land use planning begins with decisions made by state and local governments. Effective land use planning requires a public consensus to support making land use decisions on some basis other than economic value. Such a consensus ostensibly exists in most urban areas for residential and commercial uses of land, although economic interests typically dominate actual planning and zoning decisions. Public support for planning and zoning of agricultural land in rural areas is even more tenuous. Lack of a public consensus for wise land use planning could become a major obstacle in the development of sustainable food systems, thus the need for greater understanding of the issue....

John Ikerd is professor emeritus of agricultural economics, University of Missouri, Columbia. He was raised on a small dairy farm in southwest Missouri and received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural economics from the University of Missouri. He worked in private industry for a time and spent 30 years in various professorial positions at North Carolina State University, Oklahoma State University, University of Georgia, and the University of Missouri before retiring in 2000. Since retiring, he spends most of his time writing and speaking on issues related to sustainability with an emphasis on economics and agriculture. Ikerd is author of Sustainable Capitalism; A Return to Common Sense; Small Farms Are Real Farms; Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture; and, just published, A Revolution of the Middle. More background and selected writings are at http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj.

Why did I name my column “The Economic Pamphleteer”? Pamphlets historically were short, thoughtfully written opinion pieces and were at the center of every revolution in western history. Current ways of economic thinking aren’t working and aren’t going to work in the future. Nowhere are the negative consequences more apparent than in foods, farms, and communities. I know where today’s economists are coming from; I have been there. I spent the first half of my 30-year academic career as a very conventional free-market, bottom-line agricultural economist. I eventually became convinced that the economics I had been taught and was teaching wasn’t good for farmers, wasn’t good for rural communities, and didn’t even produce food that was good for people. I have spent the 25 years since learning and teaching the principles of a new economics of sustainability. Hopefully my “pamphlets” will help spark a revolution in economic thinking.
  

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