HE CONVERSION OF FARMLAND to residential sites and to otherT nonagricultural uses is a significant public policy issue in many regions of the United States and other parts of the world. While lost food production potential and the decline of local farming industry are oftencited objections to these shifts in resource use, a more significant issue in land-rich regions, where farming is not seriously constrained by resource availability, may be the site-specific losses of open space amenities associated with agricultural enterprise near population centers. The purpose of this paper is to report on a recent attempt to value these quality-of-environment benefits of farmland in an agricultural region of south central Alaska. We begin with a discussion of a conceptual framework for the valuation of collective goods such as open space and historical values. The next section adapts this framework to the problem under study. This is followed by presentations of the empirical procedures and results. Finally, our discussion relates these results to some earlier work and suggests extensions to the current study. Conceptual BackgroundThe food and fiber outputs of agricultural production in the U.S. are exchanged in well organized, largely competitive markets with the potential for providing efficient quantities of these private goods. The open space and other environmental amenities associated with urban fringe agriculturalThe authors are, respectively, instructor, associate professor, and assistant professor of economics, University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Financial assistance from the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Office of Vice Chancellor for Research and Advanced Study, University of AlaskaFairbanks i s gratefully acknowledged.

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