| Abstract: | The need to take land out of intensive arable production offers possibilities for conservation. Assuming that such schemes will operate on a voluntary basis, farmers' reactions to incentives encouraging them to divert land to other uses must be crucial. Samples of farmers in three areas of England were presented with hypothetical schemes to divert cereal land to fallow, permanent pasture and woodland. They were asked for a money ‘bid’ equivalent to the minimum sum to persuade them to enrol land in the scheme an the acreage they would enrol at that level of payment. On average the 147 farmers wanted £348/ha to fallow cereal land, £336/ha to divert arable land to permanent pasture and £437/ha to grow trees. The hypothesis that farmers' response to land diversion initiatives would depend on interaction of conservation attitudes and structural/financial constraints received some support, a result with implications for the design of future land diversion schemes. |
