30 YEARS OF FARMLAND PRESERVATION IN NORTH-AMERICA - DISCOURSES AND IDEOLOGIES OF A MOVEMENT

Thirty years after it first captured public attention, farmland preser vation in North America remains a contentious issue which has failed t o mature into an integrated element of rural land use planning. This p aper argues that the explanation for this lies in the examination of t he public discourses of the farmland preservation movement and the ide ologies that underpin them. The evolution of popular and academic disc ourses and the influence of environmental and agrarian ideology are ex plored. This reveals an expanding discourse with ideological foundatio ns riven with internal contradictions yet intersecting in different wa ys. The result has been a policy agenda influenced by a shift to incre asingly broader motivations for farmland preservation and controlled b y largely non-farm interests. Farmers, however, remain at the centre o f the issue, cast in roles ranging from guarantors of food supply to g uardians of nature, open space and rural community. Yet farm voices ar e barely detectable in the discourse of the farmland preservation move ment. This illustrates the representative power of discourse and sugge sts why farmland preservation remains a contentious policy issue. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.