Farmland under urbanization pressure: conversion motivation among Norwegian landowners

ABSTRACT

Irreversible conversion of farmland to built-up land occurs globally. Despite farmlands’ importance for food supply agricultural businesses, little research investigates what motivates landowners to convert their land. This paper aims to fill this gap. Based on a survey among owners of farmland in Norway, we found significant correlations between social structures and landowners’ motivation for converting farmland, namely family understanding and willingness of other local landowners to convert their land. Values and interests were also significant; landowners emphasizing private interests and private property rights were most often motivated for conversion. Further, they often struggled to realize agricultural investments, and had limited agricultural income. Landowners located in highly productive agricultural areas, but facing urban growth, were significantly more motivated to convert farmland than others. They were also more often in contact with developers. This paper adds new empirical knowledge and develops theories to understand underlying farmland conversion causes among landowners, and provide insights for future policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Land use planning
• farmland conversion
• landowners
• causes

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to informants and landowners who responded to the survey, as well as colleagues who provided expertise that greatly assisted our research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

We would like to thank the Agricultural Directorate of Norway for financial and technical support to carry out the survey for this research, and the Norwegian Research Council program SAMKUL (No. 220691) for funding part of the work leading up to this article.