Farmland tenure shapes many farm decisions, including those related to production, conservation, and succession planning. The relatively advanced age of many farmers raises questions abut land ownership, especially how land will be transferred to the next generation of agricultural landowners and operators. This study provides a descriptive baseline analysis of land ownership and then focuses on more detailed aspects of land tenure, including non-operator landlords, rental agreements, the acquisition and transfer of land, and how decisionmaking is shared by landlords and their tenants. The report is designed to support broad discussions related to agricultural land ownership and to provide a starting point for more detailed statistical analysis. Figures and tables. This is a print on demand report.
Long viewed as a problem in other countries, the ownership of land and resources is becoming an issue of mounting concern in the United States. Nowhere has it surfaced more dramatically than in the southern Appalachians where the exploitation of timber and mineral resources has been recently aggravated by the ravages of strip-mining and flash floods. This landmark study of the mountain region documents for the first time the full scale and extent of the ownership and control of the region's land and resources and shows in a compelling, yet non-polemical fashion the relationship between this control and conditions affecting the lives of the region's people. Begun in 1978 and extending through 1980, this survey of land ownership is notable for the magnitude of its coverage. It embraces six states of the southern Appalachian region—Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama. From these states the research team selected 80 counties, and within those counties field workers documented the ownership of over 55,000 parcels of property, totaling over 20 million acres of land and mineral rights. The survey is equally significant for its systematic investigation of the relations between ownership and conditions within Appalachian communities. Researchers compiled data on 100 socioeconomic indicators and correlated these with the ownership of land and mineral rights. The findings of the survey form a generally dark picture of the region—local governments struggling to provide needed services on tax revenues that are at once inadequate and inequitable; economic development and diversification stifled; increasing loss of farmland, a traditional source of subsistence in the region. Most evident perhaps is the adverse effect upon housing resulting from corporate ownership and land speculation. Nor is the trend toward greater conglomerate ownership of energy resources, the expansion of absentee ownership into new areas, and the search for new mineral and energy sources encouraging. Who Owns Appalachia? will be an enduring resource for all those interested in this region and its problems. It is, moreover, both a model and a document for social and economic concerns likely to be of critical importance for the entire nation.
On the eve of his coming of age, a young Lord begins to see the truth of his parents' lives: his mother cannot buy her way into society no matter how hard he tries, and his father is being ruined by her continued attempts. The young Lord then travels to his home in Ireland, encountering adventure on the way, and discovers that the native residents are being exploited in his father's absence.
This book examines the foundations of the system for owning and taxing agricultural land in the United States. It considers the conditions of land policy at several levels of government and questions some of the historical views of progress.
