|
|
- Info
Land prices and the changing geography of southern row-crop agriculture
| Author: |
Hite, James C.; Terrell, Emily J.; Shou Lu, Kang |
| Date: |
1999 |
| Periodical: |
SRDC Publ. Starkville, MS: Mississippi State Unhiversity, Southern Rural Development Center |
| Link: |
http://ext.msstate.edu/srde/pubs/rdissues.htm
|
| Abstract: |
Using enterprise budgets for major row-crops and county mean yields, we estimate the returns to land, risk, and management in 12 Southern states
for 1992, and compare the results to mean county farm real estate prices reported in the 1992 Census of Agriculture. Similar analysis is also
performed for six of the state using 1959 budgets and data. Maps and tables are presented. The resulting maps show that traditional row-crop
agriculture remains potentially profitable in some relatively remote counties and in the productive soils of near the Mississippi River. But urbanization, the demand for second or retirement homes, and relative low commodity prices have forced rural land prices above their use values for producing row-crops in much of the rest of the South. The changing geography of rural land prices has implications for land use changes and for the development of a new, niche-based market for garden agriculture in some parts of the South. It also suggests that owners of land, particularly those who have invested in the land at levels that cannot be recouped by
row-crop production, have a strong vested interested in non-agriculturaldevelopment and are likely to be initiators of new types of local economic development activities in places where traditional row-crop production is no longer feasible. |
|
