Regional Variation in the Efficacy of Conservation Programs

根据1985年《食品安全法》的一项条款——保护储备计划（CRP），联邦政府每年向同意将2500多万英亩农田退田的土地所有者支付10亿多美元。然而，人们对这个项目的效率和公平性知之甚少，也不知道它在塑造美国土地利用方面的作用。从地理角度来看，该项目将涉及使用基于地图的文件证据和密集的实地调查，包括在16个研究地区进行访谈。它将综合地理学科不同方面的数据，包括关于农业土地利用和做法的微妙梯度、个别土地所有权内土壤生产力和可蚀性的微观空间格局的详细资料；以及区域观念对土地所有者在应对不断变化的经济和政治条件时的影响。这个项目的主要重点是地理学的核心，即记录土地使用的模式和随后查明有助于解释这些模式的因素。在这种背景下，这样的分析有可能导致新的理论的发展，包括农民如何在预期政府政策的情况下采取行动的长期动态效应。

Under the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), a provision of the Food Security Act of 1985, the federal government pays more than a billion dollars annually to landowners who have agreed to retire more than 25 million acres of cropland. Little is known, however, about the efficiency or equity of this program or its role in shaping land use in America. Using a geographical perspective, this project will involve the use of map-based documentary evidence and intensive fieldwork, including interviews conducted in 16 study areas. It will integrate data from disparate elements of the discipline of geography, including detailed information on the subtle gradients in agricultural land use and practices, micro-spatial patterns of soil productivity and erodibility within individual landholdings, and the influence of regional perceptions on landowners as they respond to changing economic and political conditions. The primary focus of this project is at the heart of geography, that is, the recording of patterns of land use and the subsequent identification of factors that help explain those patterns. Such an analysis in this context has the potential to lead to the development of new theory encompassing long-run dynamic effects of how farmers act in anticipation of government policies.