Returning Land Tenure to the Forefront of Rural Sociology

Geisler, Charles; Salomon, Sonya

doi:10.1111/j.1549-0831.1993.tb00509.x

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 6 publications

(3 reference statements)

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“…Intentional governance refers to conscious, purposeful governance, of which agreement and ownership are two forms. In practice, the long-term nature of agricultural production has meant that intentional governance through agreement and ownership have been the most widely used ways to control farmland (Geisler and Salamon, 1993).…”

Section: Farmland Control E Changes In Property Relations In Europementioning

confidence: 99%

Drivers of change in Norwegian agricultural land control and the emergence of rental farming

Forbord

Bjørkhaug

Burton

2014

Journal of Rural Studies

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a b s t r a c tNorway represents one of the last countries in Europe where the structural development of agriculture is strongly state regulated through legislation and economic instruments. The result is an agriculture dominated by very small farms while, in most of the rest of Europe, farming has been rationalised into much larger units e thus improving the structural efficiency of agriculture. This study looks at how and why the pattern of farmland control (ownership and renting) in Norway has changed over the last fifty years. Using a study of agricultural policy documents, an investigation of statistics on farmland control changes, and a qualitative survey, we explore the considerable growth in the number of partly rented farms over this period. We suggest that change is attributable to three key factors: techno-economic development leading to a growing need for economies of scale, social norms curbing the transfer of farm properties outside of the family, and policy and legal instruments reducing the extent of property transfer. In addition, the weakening of compensation to smaller farmers since the 1990s has encouraged many to leave agriculture and made more rental land available e ultimately leading to a rapid shift from traditional owner occupation to a predominantly rented land system.

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Section: Farmland Control E Changes In Property Relations In Europementioning

confidence: 99%

Drivers of change in Norwegian agricultural land control and the emergence of rental farming

Forbord

Bjørkhaug

Burton

2014

Journal of Rural Studies

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“…A central constraint to examining ownership of land is that data are extremely difficult to come by (Geisler 1993) and there is a natural tendency to study that which is most easily measured (Wollenberg 2000). A full year of effort was needed to compile our database due to resistance in some county courthouses despite the public nature of property tax records.…”

Section: Centrality Of Landmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taking Goldschmidt to the Woods: Timberland Ownership and Quality of Life in Alabama*

Bailey¹,

Gopaul

Thomson³

et al. 2020

Rural Sociology

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We use a database of property tax records for 13.6 million acres representing every parcel of privately owned timberland in 48 rural Alabama counties to test two hypotheses inspired by Walter Goldschmidt relating land ownership and quality of life. Our data show private ownership is highly concentrated and 62 percent is absentee owned. We employed Pearson correlations alongside Poisson and negative binomial regression models to estimate influence of both concentrated private ownership and absentee ownership of timberland. Our findings support Goldschmidt-inspired hypotheses that concentrated and absentee ownership of timberland exhibit a significant adverse relationship with quality of life as measured by educational attainment, poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, eligibility for free or reduced price lunch at public schools, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program participation, and population density. Low property taxes in Alabama limit the ability of local governments to generate revenue to support public education or meet other infrastructural or service needs in rural areas. We call on rural sociologists and kindred spirits to pay more attention to the fundamental importance of land ownership which shapes the foundations of power and inequality affecting rural life in America and beyond.

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“…Salamon argued that as families clustered in ethnic islands and collectively enacted inheritance traditions, regional agricultural structure was influenced in recognizable patterns (Salamon ; 1985b:126). Land tenure, that legal or customary claim to property, involves more than a material relationship between people and place (Geisler and Salamon ). Land itself is, as Simmel () described, a tangible, persistent, and seemingly indestructible “material symbol” reinforcing the experience of self within the social institutions of a community.…”

Section: Conceptualizing Culture In Agriculturementioning

confidence: 99%

Keeping the Farm in the Family Name: Patrimonial Narratives and Negotiations among German‐Heritage Farmers

Lequieu

2014

Rural Sociology

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Sociologists tend to view rural culture as an inertial force, committing members to past cultural patterns which, in turn, inform their present courses of action. By emphasizing such cultural stasis, we obscure how members of cultural enclaves negotiate, recommit to, or revise certain cultural traditions. This article explores how rural culture is in dialogue with changing external contexts. Drawing on interviews I conducted among a small group of German-heritage farmers in southern Wisconsin, I find that farmers select legal arrangements, entrepreneurial actions, and traditional male succession in order to fulfill the "yeoman" goal of keeping the farm in the family name. I explore how the narratives farmers develop about the cultural priority of transferring the home-farm to a new generation allow sociological insight into their creative negotiations between cultural traditions and a greatly altered context of agricultural production. I argue that this dialogue between a historically persistent cultural tradition and very present pressures of agricultural production makes a significant contribution to the dynamics of modern rural life.

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Returning Land Tenure to the Forefront of Rural Sociology

Cited by 16 publications

References 6 publications

Drivers of change in Norwegian agricultural land control and the emergence of rental farming

Drivers of change in Norwegian agricultural land control and the emergence of rental farming

Taking Goldschmidt to the Woods: Timberland Ownership and Quality of Life in Alabama*

Keeping the Farm in the Family Name: Patrimonial Narratives and Negotiations among German‐Heritage Farmers

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