LAND USE AND THE CHANGING FACE OF WISCONSIN
AGRICULTURE
Douglas Jackson-Smith
ABSTRACT
Wisconsin’s rapid growth in the 1990s
has coincided with a period of relatively weak agricultural economy. Competition from residential and recreational
development has put upward pressure on agricultural land markets, making it
difficult for young farmers to enter the sector and providing incentives for
other farmers to sell their land. As
more nonfarm people move out to the countryside,
property taxes tend to rise, demand for public services increases, and there
are more conflicts over noise, odor, and other agricultural nuisances. The result has been an accelerated decline in
the number of commercial farming operations and in the acreage devoted to
farming in Wisconsin.
While land use issues have become
increasingly important to farmers and other rural Wisconsin residents in the last
decade, two recent legislative initiatives will ensure that rural land use
planning will be a critical issue in the coming years. First, the passage of a “Smart Growth” bill
in the 1999 legislature will provide incentives for all cities, villages,
counties, and towns in Wisconsin to develop comprehensive
plans to manage the growth process.
While voluntary at the outset, the bill is designed to provide
significant incentives for local governments to seriously engage the planning
process by the year 2010. At the same
time, changes in Wisconsin Department of Commerce rules governing rural septic
systems will likely permit new technologies to be used on soils that had
hitherto been unacceptable for residential development. Estimates suggest that roughly 40 percent of
rural Wisconsin lands may be opened up for
possible development. Since many rural
governments had relied on the old septic codes to limit development pressure,
they will be forced to consider adopting more stringent land use policies if
they want to control the siting and volume of new
recreational or residential development.
Finally, controverial proposals for large
livestock facilities in several communities have encouraged many local
governments to explore possible manure storage or feedlot ordinances to
regulate the location of these new types of agricultural operations.
This talk will provide an overview
of these recent agricultural and land use trends in Wisconsin. A particular focus will be to explore
regional differences in the rate of urbanization, the decline in farming, and
the local land use policy climate.
Implications for farmers and rural decision-makers will be highlighted.