Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 431}446
Social norms, rationales and policies:
reframing farmland protection in Israel
Eran Feitelson
Department of Geography The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel
Abstract
This paper analyzes the role of legitimization processes in the struggle over farmland protection policies in Israel. In the early sixties
a centralized farmland protection program was institutionalized, curtailing private land owners& and leaseholders' property rights on
farmlands. The legitimacy accorded to such measures is explained as a function of the congruence between social norms, power
structure and dominant ideology at the time. Then, the paper follows the changes in power, ideology, social norms, sanctioned
discourse and the role of agriculture in the economy. These changes undermined the basis of the farmland protection rationales, and
led to a crisis of legitimacy in the early nineties. As a result of several institutional and policy shifts in the early nineties, a time of rapid
growth, concern shifted to the implications of growth for the future of open spaces. This concern over the loss of positive externalities
was shared by environmentalists, urban and exurban consumption interests, planners and several elements within the rural
establishment. As a result a new set of plans was introduced. Focusing on the central district, where the most severe development
pressures are felt, the paper compares the sanctioned discourse and use of rationales in the new plans and documents to those of
previous plans. These plans focus on averting the loss of positive externalities, rather than productive capacity, and are couched in
economic terms, rather than ideological terms, re#ecting the shift in language of the sanctioned discourse. It shows that the choice of
rationales for legitimizing countryside conservation re#ects the struggle over rural landscapes, as the rationales are used to cobble
a coalition of planners, environmentalists, farmers, urbanites and exurbanites, against a powerful development coalition. 1999
Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Farmland protection programs in Israel have been
among the most stringent and comprehensive in western
democratic market-based societies (Alterman, 1997). Yet,
these programs currently face a crisis of legitimacy, arising from a widening discrepancy between the programs'
structure and rationales and the dominant social norms.
Social norms change as a result of macro social trends
and shifts in power structures. Processes of legitimization
need to re#ect these macro social trends, and the shifts in
sanctioned discourse brought about by such trends. At
the same time the rationales advanced in order to
legitimize programs a!ect the programs' goals and structure. The shifts in the rationalization of farmland protection and conservation programs are thus an important
linchpin in the adaptation process of such programs to
macro social trends.
Both Farmland protection programs and the e!ects of
macro social shifts for the rural sector have been analyzed extensively (Cloke, 1989a; Cloke and Goodwin,
1992; Flynn and Murdoch, 1995; Goodwin et al., 1995).
These studies have shown that in recent years the composition and economy of the rural sector has changed,
and consequently perceptions of this sector and its physical setting have been reconstructed. Yet, the contours
and focus of such reconstruction are mediated by the
attributes and history of locales, creating a highly di!erentiated rural regulation regime (Marsden, 1995). As a
result the focus of the discourse on countryside planning
has changed (Allanston et al., 1996; Bunce, 1998; Gilg,
1996). Yet, as Marsden (1995) notes, there is a need for
studies that scrutinize how change occurs * how the
rural space is reconstructed when social norms and
power relationships change, and what are the adaptation
processes of institutions and property relations to such
changes. This need is especially apparent when venturing
beyond the British context, as so much of the recent
literature on the shifts in the rural sector has focused
exclusively on the British case.
This paper analyzes the e!ects of macro social shifts on
the legitimization processes of farmland protection
0743-0167/99/$ - see front matter 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 7 4 3 - 0 1 6 7 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 1 3 - 3
432
E. Feitelson / Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 431}446
programs in Israel. The legitimacy of programs is a
function of the dominant social norms, and of the way
a program is rationalized (Dery, 1984). The support
for a program hinges to a signi"cant degree on the ability
of its proponents to show that the program addresses
a &real' (socially construed) need or problem in a
socially accepted way. Rationales are advanced, therefore, in order to legitimize programs by identifying a concern that the program addresses. The use of rationales
has, however, implications for the content and focus of
the programs. I begin, therefore, with an overview of the
possible rationales that can be used to legitimize farmland protection and their implications for the spatial
orientation and policy tools used in farmland protection
programs. Then, the implications of shifts in power structures and social norms for the choice of rationales used to
legitimize farmland protection programs in Israel are
explored.
The Israeli case is analyzed at two levels. One, institutionalization and legitimization processes of farmland
protection policies at the national level are analyzed
longitudinally, as a function of shifts in social, economic,
ideological and political power structures. Two, the rationalization and content of the Central District master
plan update is scrutinized. As the original plan was prepared during the seventies, a discussion of the recent
(mid-nineties) update to the plan allows for a comparison
of past to current rationalization of plans for the same
area (encompassing the median and outer rings of the Tel
Aviv metropolitan region).
The analysis of the Israeli case is based on a multitude
of sources, including unpublished government documents and reports. In addition, the author's involvement
as a participant-observer in the formulation and discussions of the new rationales in di!erent planning forums allows for insights and interpretations gained from
informal comments by various participants. Naturally, it
is possible that other observers may have somewhat
di!erent perceptions of such comments. Still, the multiplicity of sources should make the main "ndings of the
study fairly robust.
2. The shifts in rationales for farmland protection
All farmland protection programs are, essentially, a set
of conventions and entitlements determining the nature
and scope for individual and business choice sets with
regard to the use of such land. These institutional structures change over time, re#ecting changing social norms,
power structures, and production and consumption possibilities (Bromley, 1989). Such changes, however, do not
occur at random. Rather, new policies emerge when
solutions advanced by &policy communities' (usually
composed of specialists in a certain "eld) are coupled
with problems at politically propitious moments, termed
by Kingdon (1984) &policy windows'. Thus, for a farmland
protection program to be established, or modi"ed, it
needs to be presented as a solution to a concern that
requires immediate action. The legitimization of farmland protection is therefore necessarily presented as a response to some concerns. Yet, these concerns change
over time, as a function of macro trends, requiring an
adaptation of the rationales used to legitimize farmland
protection. The main types of rationales used are listed in
Table 1.
Table 1
The policy implications of farmland protection rationales
Rationale
Focus of program
Possible tools
Food security
Prime farmland
Negative externalities of urban fringe
Urban}rural interface
Loss of positive externalities
High amenity areas
Environmentally important or sensitive areas
Highly visible areas
Rural idyll
Rural areas
Agrarian idyll
Rural-agricultural areas
Family or small-size farms
Land ethic
Remote and diverse areas
Agricultural zoning based on soil productivity; purchase of development rights on high productivity
areas; very large lot zoning; directing urban development to low-productivity land.
Right to farm laws; use value taxation; back payment
of tax bene"ts at time of development.
Easement and development right purchases in high
amenity and sensitive areas;
growth controls in sensitive areas; designation of environmentally sensitive areas; transferable development rights; limitations on agricultural practices.
Rural conservation zones; growth boundaries or
caps; tenure limitations; transferable development
rights.
Agricultural conservation zones; tenure limitations;
support for family farms; transferable development
rights.
Growth controls; ecologically based planning; limitations on agricultural practices; easement purchases.
E. Feitelson / Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 431}446
Urbanization in the nineteenth and early twentieth
century was largely based on the ability to expropriate
the surpluses from natural resource exploitation in the
hinterland (Cronon, 1991). The "rst rationale usually
advanced for farmland protection pertained therefore to
its productive capacity. The concerns over food security,
originally raised by Malthus, generally arose in periods
of rapid growth, following disruptions of distribution
systems (such as during wars), or when new data on the
deterioration of the land resource base became widely
available. In Britain these concerns surfaced during the
Second World War, as manifest in the Scott report of
1942, focusing on the vulnerability of food supply in
wartime, and leading to the enactment of the Agricultural
Act of 1947 (Gilg, 1996). In the US such concerns gained
prominence in the thirties, as a result of new data on soil
erosion, and again during the seventies, following two
decades of rapid growth and large-scale suburbanization
(Lehman, 1995). In most cases these concerns were advanced by agricultural lobbies, acting as &policy entrepreneurs', to rationalize the priority given to agricultural
production interests.
However, the success of agriculture in producing more
crops with less land, labor and water resources has
undermined both the political and analytical basis of this
rationale. It is di$cult to argue for the retention of land
in agriculture when capital can demonstrably be substituted for it. Moreover, as the competition over state
support in most western countries became keener, and the
number of farmers declined, so eventually did the power of
agricultural lobbies to expropriate state surpluses in order to maintain farming production capacities.
In the last "fteen years several trends have combined
to further discredit the food security rationale for farmland protection. Consistent food surpluses coupled with
a general reduction in transportation costs, helped foster
global markets, thus reducing dependence on local food
production. While global food security concerns are still
being raised, they center on freshwater and agricultural
policy issues (Brown, 1994). From a global perspective
the amount of land lost to urbanization is low, especially
when the major food basket of the US is critically scrutinized (Fischel, 1982; Simon and Sudman, 1982). Moreover, the importance of land as a factor of production is
declining worldwide (Johnson, 1997), and it is increasingly recognized that the growth in demand may also slow
down (Bender, 1997). Engle's law, low population
growth, and increasing farm productivity have combined
to defray expectations for increases in local food prices in
developed countries. These factors, accentuated by the
EU setaside policy, have led several analysts to suggest
that there may be a long-term excess of farmland even in
relatively densely populated countries such as Britain
(Potter et al., 1991).
While food security concerns have waned other concerns have arisen (Bunce, 1998; Ewig, 1997). The techno-
433
logical innovations allowing seemingly ever increasing
separation between production and consumption spaces,
has led to concerns being raised with regard to the
processes at the urban}rural fringe. Essentially the concern is that the fragmentation of farmlands, well in
advance of development, and the introduction of exurbanites seeking a higher quality of life into active farming
areas, and subsequent demands brought against farming,
will reduce farming pro"tability beyond the urban fringe
(Furuseth and Pierce, 1982; Healy and Short, 1983). As
a result, the use value of land in agriculture near the cities
declined, and the rate of farmland conversion is accelerating (Dunford, 1984). Moreover, as the market values of
farmlands near the urban fringe rise tax liabilities increase, further reducing the pro"tability of farming and
accelerating the exodus of farmers (Berry, 1978). These
processes may be further accelerated as a result of actions
by local agencies promoting their self-interests (Bryant,
1995). In other words, the concern is that the conversion
process is sub-optimal. The policy focus needs to be,
therefore, on improving the process, rather than on its
outcome (excessive sprawl). These concerns have been
most pronounced in countries where rapid deconcentration trends have been apparent, and where land use
controls have been less e!ective in containing urban
growth, such as in North America (Daniels et al., 1989;
Bryant, 1989).
The most widely discussed shift in the countryside,
however, is the shift from production to consumption
concerns. With rising income and motorization rates,
and consequently mobility, urbanites have come to view
the rural hinterland as part of their consumption spaces,
rather than as a base for sustenance. This change in
perceptions has contributed to the rising awareness that
farmland conversion may lead to a loss of amenity
values, and that these are not re#ected in market processes (Maguire et al., 1997). In other words, farmland
conversion entails a loss of positive externalities provided
by rural landscapes. With the increasing numbers of
highly mobile urbanites suburbanites and exurbanites
interested in the consumption value of the countryside,
and the increase in rural tourism capitalizing on this
value, the political strength of the lobbies interested in
conserving amenity values has been rising in many developed countries (Cloke, 1989a).
In addition to the direct amenity bene"ts several potential environmental bene"ts of farmlands have increasingly stressed. If appropriately managed, farmlands
can provide a range of public goods: ground water recharge, storm water management, water pollution control (including the recycling of wastewater) and
enhancement of biodiversity. In many cases, however,
these bene"ts are not realized due to current farming
practices. Still, when faced with development pressures
that may preclude future realization of these potential
bene"ts, environmental lobbies have increasingly formed
434
E. Feitelson / Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 431}446
coalitions with middle-class amenity interests about the
conservation of farmlands as open spaces, promoting the
re-regulation of rural areas (Cloke, 1989b; Munton, 1995;
Pierce, 1995). This coalition is particularly potent as its
main argument, that potential environmental bene"ts are
not realized in farmland market values and hence intervention is warranted, seem to receive wide public support
(Kline and Wichens, 1997).
While the previous discussion focused on the economic-rationalistic discourse of farmland protection,
farmland preservation, as all land use issues, has also
a normative dimension (Beatley, 1994). This dimension
has been the focus of an ongoing concurrent discourse,
dating back to the previous century. It is concerned with
the role of open spaces, including farmlands, in fostering
ethically or ideologically preferred agendas (Beatley,
1994).
Much of this discourse can be traced to the di!erences
in the view and valuation of nature (Harvey, 1996). For
the purpose of this paper two views are of particular
importance. The "rst view to emerge, mainly in response
to the social implications of industrialization and largescale urbanization, was the decentralized communitarian
view, largely modeled on anarchist lines (Hall, 1992;
Harvey, 1996). This view advances a &rural idyll', which is
essentially an idealization of a rural past (Williams, 1973),
as an alternative to the dominant forms of capital accumulation in the fordist period. This type of idyll has
a strong resonance in the professional planning epistemic
community, due to works of its seers, in particular
Ebenezer Howard and Patrick Geddes (Hall, 1988), and
is widely espoused in many rural communities today
(Halfacree, 1995). Farmland protection from this perspective is part of a comprehensive attempt to create
a more humane environment, where people maintain
a harmonious relation with nature. Thus, countryside
conservation does not focus on the farmlands as such, as
much as on their location and tenure vis-a-vis human settlements, and is closely intertwined with the planning of
the built environment (Hall, 1992; Gilg, 1996, Chapter 5).
A di!erent idyll, promulgated primarily in the US is
the land ethic idyll. Stemming from the writing of Aldo
Leopold (1949), it advances an ethically driven approach
to land use in rural areas focusing on the primacy of
ecological processes (Bunce, 1998). From such a perspective the primary challenge of farmland preservation programs is the identi"cation of appropriate place and scale
of human interference in natural processes, given the
changing understanding of ecological processes (Adams,
1997; Naveh and Lieberman, 1994). This approach gives
precedence to ecological considerations over both production and consumption concerns. It is, thus advocated
by &deep green' environmentalists that do not join the
environmental-amenity interest coalitions.
A closely related idyll that beacons to a wider coalition
is the agrarian idyll. This idyll focuses on the farmer as
the agent assuring stewardship of the land, on one hand,
and as the basis for community life, on the other hand.
This idyll has been central in the North American discourse on farmland protection, where it allowed a coalition of farmers, exurbanites and environmentalists to
support farmland protection (Bunce, 1998). The focus of
farmland protection from this vantage point, however, is
on the conservation of farming, and particularly family
farms.
Farmlands can be protected also as a mean to other
ends. For example, farmland protection can serve as
a mean to contain urban development, where such development is seen as negative for reasons that concern the
urban, rather than the rural (Feitelson, 1996). Alterman
(1997) suggests that the success of the British and Dutch
cases can be attributed to the prominence of urban containment rationales as guiding tools for planning policies
since the second World War. In recent years there has
been an extensive debate on the e!ects of urban form on
energy consumption (Anderson et al., 1996; Breheny,
1995). One implication of this debate has been the advancement of policies intended to control urban form so
as to reduce energy consumption per capita, especially in
transport. Perhaps the most notable initiative in recent
years has been the EU's compact cities initiative. As these
rationales gain ground farmland protection increasingly
becomes enmeshed within urban containment policies,
advanced for di!erent reasons.
Shifts in farmland protection rationales are not merely
adaptations of argumentation to changing agendas. They
have substantial spatial and policy implications. Di!erent rationales imply that di!erent areas should be protected, and that di!erent policy tools be used. Table 1
summarizes some spatial and policy implications of the
basic rationales discussed above.
Combining Table 1 and the descriptions of shifts in
viability of rationales over time suggests that the spatial
focus and contents of programs have been shifting in
response to the changes in rationalization. The original
programs, whose main rationale has been food security,
focused on prime farmland identi"ed according to its
food production potential and protected vast amounts of
land. In the United States, for example, much of the
discussion has been based on the classi"cation of land
into categories according to their productivity (Lehman,
1995). The need to protect large tracts of prime farmland
with low amenity or environmental values had direct
rami"cations for the type of instruments that could be
used. Even in the regulation resistant USA agricultural
zoning has been a preferred tool, while the much advocated market based measures played only a minor role
and in very limited areas.
When consumption concerns arise programs increasingly focus on areas with important amenity, environmental or ecological values. As such areas are diverse,
and more "nely speci"ed spatially, programs that try to
E. Feitelson / Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 431}446
preclude the loss of positive externalities are likely to be
composed of an amalgam of land use designations, many
covering relatively small areas. This allows for the use of
a di!erent slew of policy measures, examples of which are
presented in the right hand column in Table 1. Consequently, in countries where the shift from production to
consumption and environmental focus has taken place,
current programs are characterized by increasing diversity of land use designations, and use of a widening array
of tools for protecting these areas (Potter et al., 1991;
Gilg, 1996). However, it is important to notice that such
shifts are not global, and that rural areas in di!erent
regions and countries face di!erent agendas (Marsden,
1995), and are hence likely to be amenable to di!erent
rationales. As a result it is likely that farmland protection
or countryside conservation programs in di!erent regions and countries may take very di!erent forms.
The relations presented in Table 1 are merely optional.
They indicate that shifts in policy focus may take several
forms in practice. The actual forms chosen would be
a function of the particular discourse and hence rationales adopted in di!erent societies or regions at di!erent
points in time. Moreover, as programs are usually instituted and modi"ed in an incremental manner through
political action they are likely to re#ect the coalitions
backing them, and their historical antecedents. Thus, the
actual programs are likely to be an amalgam of measures
implementing di!erent rationales, thus re#ecting the history of program enactment and the vicissitudes of the
policy discourse.
The discussion so far does not explain which of the
options listed in Table 1 would be followed in practice, or
how and when are programs modi"ed. Yet, identi"cation
of the situations where the legitimacy of existing programs is questioned and therefore new rationales are
introduced is central to the understanding of the adaptation processes of conservation programs to macro-social
changes.
While the discussion has outlined some general shifts
in the viability of rationales it did not clarify to what
extent are such shifts and adaptation processes a function
of macro-economic trends or of the societal peculiarities
of the limited number of societies on which it is based. To
address these issues we turn now to the Israeli case.
Israel has undergone several signi"cant transformations in its "fty-year history. From a frontier-mentality
country struggling to feed and house its population it has
become a market-oriented society with the sixteenth largest GDP per-capita (over $17,000 by 1996), placing it
(along several dimensions) closer to most developed
countries than to the developing countries it resembled
"fty years ago (Shachar and Choshen, 1993). This transformation had concurrent social, political and ideological facets (Ben-Dor, 1998). As a result the issues faced by
Israel in several "elds within "fty years re#ect those faced
by other nations over a longer period of time. This is
435
especially true with regard to farmland. From a society
where agriculture was a central sector for economic,
social and ideological reasons, Israel has become a highly
urbanized congested country, where agriculture is increasingly marginalized. Moreover, given its already high
density levels and rapid population growth Israel faces
today greater pressures on its farmlands than most western countries (Mazor, 1993). An analysis of the vicissitudes of the farmland protection discourse in Israel may
thus shed light on the ways farmland issues are framed,
or might be framed in the future, in a signi"cantly wider
array of cases.
3. The genesis and institutionalization of farmland
protection in Israel
Three major concerns underlay the rural policies of
Israel in the "rst years after the establishment of the state
in 1948. The "rst was establishment of control over the
land and absorption of a massive immigration wave, as
part of a nation-building e!ort (Kellerman, 1993). As the
land under Israeli control in the wake of the war was
larger than the area allotted to it in the 1947 UN resolution, there was concern that Israel may be forced to
return to the less advantageous 1947 lines. Moreover,
there was concern that Palestinian refugees may return to
the areas they left or were driven from during the war. To
counter these perceived threats establishment of permanent civilian presence in the contested areas was seen as
essential (Kimmerling, 1983; Morris, 1994). Based on the
pre-state experience rural settlements, and particularly
collective settlements, were viewed as an e!ective way to
establish control over these areas. It is not surprising that
the settlement e!orts in the "rst years were directed to the
areas perceived to be thus threatened (Reichman, 1990).
A second concern was food security for the burgeoning
population. In the years following independence over
a million new immigrants arrived. In the early "fties food
rationing was introduced. Moreover, the memories of the
disruption of distribution systems during the Second
World War and the 1948 war of independence were fresh,
and the danger of an additional war and possible disruptions had to be planned for.
A third concern was the absorption of the massive
immigration wave. The scarcity of shelter and resources
led to the establishment of large temporary camps. By the
end of 1951 some 250,000 new immigrants lacked permanent shelter, a half of which lived in tents, all su!ering
from unsatisfactory sanitary and health conditions (made
worse by especially harsh winters in 1950 and 1951), and
most being unemployed or under employed (Hacohen,
1994). In this circumstance the settlement of new immigrants on the land was viewed as a way to improve their
life conditions and facilitate the integration into the labor
force (Bein, 1982).
436
E. Feitelson / Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 431}446
The response to these concerns was in#uenced by an
additional, ideological, factor. The Zionist movement,
and especially the labor parties dominating it at the time,
was strongly committed ideologically to an agrarian
ideology (Cohen, 1970; de-Shalit, 1995). An agrarian
existence was viewed both as an element for increasing
the productivity and changing the employment base of
the Jewish people, and contributing to nation building by
creating closer links between the recently arrived immigrants from the Diaspora and their ancient homeland
(Willner, 1969). In addition, the planners preparing the
settlement plans were strongly in#uenced by the then
dominant ruralistic attitudes in the international planning community (Brutzkus, 1988), manifest for example in
the British new towns and greenbelt plans prepared approximately at the same time.
These concerns and ideology underlay the two major
plans completed in 1951 to settle the incoming immigration wave. The Sharon plan recommended the establishment of a series of new towns, siting most of them on
lands that were perceived to be inferior from an agricultural point of view. These towns included a new tier,
urban}rural centers, where supplementary agriculture
was planned, largely based on Ebenezer Howard's (1902)
propositions. The second plan identi"ed sites and water
requirements for 400 new rural settlements (Rokach and
Weitz, 1991), 105 of which were established by 1954.
Virtually all these settlements were cooperative settlements, re#ecting the ideological preference of the ruling
labor party, many of whose leaders came from the fully
collective kibbutzim.
The need to build rapidly large low-cost housing estates led to the construction of such estates on the more
readily available publicly controlled land at the outskirts
of existing towns, often at a distance from the built up
area on prime farmland (Gonen, 1995). The concern that
productive agricultural land would be subsequently lost
led to a government decision in June 1953 requiring that
any development on agricultural land receive a special
permit, and setting up an advisory Commission for Protection of Agricultural Land (CPAL). This commission
did not have any formal power. However, given closeknit social and professional network of planners and
decision-makers dealing with land and settlement issues,
and their common ideological base, this commission was
in#uential in de#ecting development from lands viewed
at the time as prime farmlands.
In the early sixties farmland protection was ingrained
in the formal institutional structures set up, as part of the
general trend toward greater institutionalization and
bureaucratization of governance in Israel. The comprehensiveness of this e!ort can be assessed in Table 2.
In essence three factors need to be addressed when
putting together a development initiative: the property
rights of current tenants, the ability to obtain a title to the
land, and the ability to obtain development rights on the
land. As can be seen in Table 2, all three elements were
addressed by the policies that were institutionalized in
the early sixties.
The "rst step was the consolidation of all Jewish
National Fund (JNF) and government held or owned
land (comprising almost 92% of the country's territory)
in the hands of a single agency, the Israel land Authority
(ILA), set up in 1960. The ILA was put under the responsibility of the minister of agriculture. An Israel Land
Council (ILC), comprising of government and JNF representatives was established to set the policies for the
ILA. This policy was decreed in the "rst decision of the
ILC in May of 1965. The "rst part of this major policy
statement focuses on agricultural land. It stipulated that
state-owned farmland will not be sold, only leased for 49
years (renewable), cannot be subdivided, and has to be
continuously farmed * thus formalizing the pre-state
policies of the JNF. Moreover, any change in designation
would require that the land be returned to the ILA.
Consequently, leaseholders would have no incentive to
instigate development proposals.
The institutionalization of farmland protection was
completed with the rati"cation of the Planning and
Building Law (PBL) in 1965, and its "rst amendment.
This law set up a three-tier structure of plans and planning authorities. At the top of the pyramid is the National
Table 2
The Israeli Farmland Protection Institutions 1965}1990
Factors
Institution
Mechanism
Current tenants
Cooperative settlements
Israel Land Authority
Land titles
Israel Land Authority
Development rights
Planning Commissions
Covenants restricting land sub-division
Land tenure system precluding pro"ts to leaseholders from
development.
National land ownership
Requirement that all land development on state land will be
initiated by the state.
Change of agricultural designation requires approval at the
national level
Veto power over development of declared farmland, combined
with wide-ranging declaration of farmlands.
Commission for Protection of Agricultural Land
E. Feitelson / Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 431}446
Planning and Building Board (NPBB), below which operate six district commissions and multiple local commissions. Plans (and variances) need to be rati"ed at a level
above which they are prepared. The "rst amendment to
the PBL gave the previously informal CPAL veto power
over any development on land it declared as important
for agriculture. It thus placed the CPAL, a majority
of whose members represented various agricultural or
planning interests and thus supported farmland protection, alongside the NPBB with a veto power over NPBB
decisions pertaining to farmlands. Moreover, in
contrast to other countries, the CPAL declared most of
the open lands in Israel as agricultural land, regardless of
soil characteristics, arguing that in a small country like
Israel almost all lands have some relevance for agriculture, as most have implications for water #ows (Flor,
1980). The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that this wideranging declaration did not constitute a &taking' and thus
did not entitle compensation. As a result a coalition of
the agricultural sector, representing mainly the leaseholders, and planners obtained a virtual veto power over
all development on most farmlands and open spaces, at
no cost.
The ability of the state to establish such a comprehensive draconian regime without any meaningful opposition,
in e!ect taking from most farmers (including private land
owners) any feasible option to develop the land they
tilled owned or leased, can only be explained by the
widespread legitimacy accorded to this action. This legitimacy was an outcome of the congruence between policies, economic structures, power structures, dominant
ideology and social norms at the time. The statutes that
gave absolute power to the state to manage natural
resources were part of the centralized pattern of governance seen as economically and socially necessary, and
ideologically legitimate in Israel of the early sixties
(Aharoni, 1998; Kleiman, 1997). The priority given to
agriculture re#ected the ideological preference of farming
as a way of life, manifest in the prestige enjoyed by
farmers as pioneers ful"lling national goals, and the disproportionate political power of the agricultural sector.
437
"fties and early sixties the increase in agricultural output
was associated with an increase in cultivated land, and
particularly irrigated land (Rokach and Weitz, 1991).
However, as can be seen in Fig. 1, agricultural output
continued to increase during the seventies and eighties
while land and water inputs remained virtually constant.
This was allowed by increasing capital investments and
crop substitution (Kislev, 1990).
In the mid-sixties focus of agricultural production shifted from self-su$ciency to exports. This shift had longterm implications for the way that agriculture came to be
viewed. From being seen as a preferred way of life whose
productive capacity is crucial for survival it increasingly
came to be viewed as an economic sector, that needs to be
evaluated on an economic basis. From this perspective
the importance of the agricultural sector has been declining since the mid-sixties. This is manifest in the declining
share of agriculture in the labor force and its diminishing
contribution to the GDP (see Fig. 1). In 1996 agriculture
accounted only for 2.2% of the GDP, and employed only
3.5% of the labor force. While the contribution to the
GDP may understate the importance of agriculture in
the Israeli economy, due to the positive externality e!ects
of farming for agricultural R and D, for which Israel has
become well-known internationally, the share in the
labor force is probably an over-estimate. Regardless, of
these possible inaccuracies, the general trends seen in
Fig. 1 are unmistakable. These trends accelerated in the
mid-eighties as a result of falling product prices and
a severe debt crisis that engulfed much of the cooperative
rural sector.
The implications of these trends, however, go well
beyond the purely economic realm. As a result of the
decline in the importance of agriculture from a macroeconomic perspective, and following the aforementioned
debt crisis, the political power of the agricultural sector
declined. The debt crisis led to the dissolution of many of
the supra-village cooperative institutions that were the
economic and political backbone of the agricultural establishment. Moreover, from being hailed as an internationally acclaimed success story the rural sector, and
particularly the cooperative settlements, came to be
viewed as an economic failure requiring state assistance
4. Emerging incongruence between norms, power and
programs: 1970}1989
The institutional structure outlined above protected
farmlands for almost a quarter of a century, virtually
unhindered. After initial legal challenges were rebu!ed
the procedures for operating this system were routinized.
Yet, shifts in dominant ideologies, social structures and
power, combined with economic restructuring, gradually
undermined the rationales underlying the farmland protection programs, and thus eroded their legitimacy.
From a technical-economic perspective the importance of land for agricultural production declined. In the
In the rural sector, and particularly the cooperative settlements,
most semi-employed, underemployed or even unemployed persons
above 18 years of age are often listed as fully-employed in agriculture.
Thus the number of people listed as employed in this sector probably
over-states the real number of employees in agriculture, and hence
overestimates the share of agriculture in the national labor force.
The debt crisis resulted from the government's anti-in#ation policy
enacted in August 1985 and its refusal to assist the kibbutzim and
moshavim purchasing organizations (thus forcing the kibbutz and
moshav members to shoulder the debt). This refusal was part of the
general change in Israel's political economy, discussed by Aharoni
(1998) and picked up later in this paper.
438
E. Feitelson / Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 431}446
Fig. 1. Agricultural inputs, outputs and contribution to the GDP 1948}1995.
Source: CBS, Statistical Abstracts of Israel, various years.
(and hence in direct competition with other sectors clamoring for such assistance).
A second factor that weakened the agricultural lobby
is the rise of the Likud party to power in 1977, and its
dominance throughout the eighties. In contrast to the
labor party urban interests dominated the Likud. Moreover, due to the close historical connections between the
cooperative movements and the labor party, the Likud
did not feel committed to the cooperative sector's goals
or interests, and in some cases took a contrary attitude
toward this sector. The 1977 election also signi"es the
demise of the integrated policy community that controlled Israel since its establishment, of which the
cooperative agricultural establishment was an integral
part. Since 1977 the policy making system has been
increasingly fragmentized (Zalmanovitch, 1998). As a result the civil society has changed, with new elites and
issue-oriented civic organizations emerging on the policy
making scene and exerting increasing in#uence on it
(Yishai, 1998). Consequently, the agricultural lobby was
demoted from a central actor in the land policy making
scene to being one of many rent-seeking interests.
While agriculture enjoyed substantial state support since the state's
establishment, that support was rationalized as a mean to advance
national goals, and was largely obscure from the public. In contrast, the
debt-relief support was much publicized, and served as a bail-out for
what was seen as the "nancial mishandling, and in some cases corruption, of the rural establishment.
As a result of the Six-day War of 1967 the focus of
political discourse in Israeli society changed. While the
previous borders were no longer seen as threatened, the
newly occupied territories became the focus of contention. In the "rst decade after 1967 the labor party used
the well-tested mechanism of agricultural settlements to
establish control over areas seen by it as strategically
importance. After the Likud's ascent to power the discourse increasingly focussed on the mountainous Arabpopulated West Bank (Efrat, 1988). This region could not
sustain new agricultural settlements. Therefore, new
settlement approaches were used, utilizing the latent demand for suburban and exurban housing among middle
class Israelis (Kellerman, 1993; Kipnis, 1989; Newman,
1984). As a result the previous preconception of a direct
link between agricultural land and geo-political goals
was also severed.
The shift in focus of political discourse re#ected a shift
in dominant ideology toward the right that cut across
party lines. As a result of its increasing a$liation to the
middle class, whose attitudes toward questions of government control and market structure increasingly mirror those of the middle class in Western Europe and
North America, and the rise of a new largely urban
leadership, the socialist-ruralistic-statist inclination of
the labor party weakened. Thus, a general trend toward
greater acceptance of market mechanisms, and increasing
rejection of central government control can be detected
in Israel across the main political divide (Kleiman, 1997).
E. Feitelson / Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 431}446
439
Table 3
Main features of land policies 1964}1997
Goals and concerns
Sale of urban land
Sale of agricultural land
Subdivision of agricultural
land
Development of state-owned
land
1964
1986
1997
Maximal agricultural use of land;
management of urban state-owned
land; prevention of speculation
Prohibited; minority view
condones it
Prohibited
Supply of land reserves; e$ciency of
land development; reduction of
bureaucracy in land management
Allow sale of intensively developed
land beyond 100,000 dunams
Prohibited
High housing costs; quality of life;
inelastic supply; ine$cient use;
transaction cost of land development
Privatization considered
Prohibited
Prohibited
Only by ILA
Only by ILA
As part of these ideological shift natural resources, land
and water in particular, have increasingly been referred
to as commodities that can be traded at market-determined prices.
The shift in attitudes toward land resources is seen in
Table 3. In this table the discourse on land policies is
traced on the basis of the three commission reports
dealing with land policies in Israel. The "rst, the Weitz
Commission, prepared the background document for the
"rst ILC decision. The second, the Goldenberg Commission, submitted in 1986 a comprehensive report assessing
land policies to a national unity government. The third,
the Ronen Committee, submitted in 1997 a draft report
to the Minister of National Infrastructure, to whose
responsibility the ILA was transferred in 1996. These
reports essentially framed the sanctioned discourse on
farmlands, the discourse seen as politically logical at each
time period. The three reports were scrutinized in terms
of their recommendations and the attitude of their members toward a series of issues.
Despite the twenty plus years that elapsed there was
only a slight change in emphasis between the "rst two
commissions, toward greater concern for development
interests and greater acceptance of land sales. The recommendations and discourse regarding farmland policies
were virtually unaltered between the early sixties and
mid-eighties. In the subsequent decade, however, the
general gist of the discourse changed. Issues that were
previously considered sacrosanct, such as the sub-division or sale of farmland and leaseholder involvement in
The Ronen committee di!ered from the previous two not only in
the identity of the minister that appointed it, but also in its composition.
In contrast to the "rst two committees which included many representatives of public bodies, the Ronen Committee included only three
members, none of which represented a public body. The background
and implications of the institutional aspects are elaborated in the next
section.
Desired but infeasible at present due
to insu$cient legal infrastructure
Allowed for limited development
Allowed by Kibbutzim and
Moshavim under ILA
supervision; joint public-private
partnerships advanced
land development, became part of the sanctioned discourse in the Ronen Committee report, regardless of its
recommendations.
These substantive changes are a result of two interrelated factors. The "rst is the shift in power between the
national-level settlement bodies and the local level, as
local jurisdictions and settlers gained power vis-a-vis the
national bodies (Applebaum et al., 1989; Applebaum and
Newman, 1997). The second is the crisis in land and
farmland protection policies in the early nineties.
5. Crisis and new concerns: the early nineties
As a result of the macro-societal shifts none of the
rationales that legitimized the farmland protection structures instituted in the sixties was relevant by the late
eighties. Still, the institutional structure and program
procedures were not challenged until 1990. That year
over 200,000 new immigrants #ocked to Israel, mostly
from the ex-Soviet Union, catching the government and
planning system unprepared. As shown in Fig. 2, the
ensuing response had major implications for farmland
protection.
The main problem faced by government in 1990}1991
was perceived to be the lack of adequate housing in the
face of rapidly escalating demand, and the inelasticity of
housing supply (Alterman, 1995). Land policies, planning
procedures and farmland protection in particular came
to be viewed as major obstacles to the ability to provide
adequate housing rapidly. As a result the government
took a number of actions that undermined the agricultural land protection structure. The "rst of these steps
was a directive to the CPAL that it should identify 90,000
dunam for immediate release for residential development. While this step placed the blame for the housing
shortage on farmland protection, thus changing the discourse about farmlands, it did not in itself seriously
440
E. Feitelson / Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 431}446
Fig. 2. The crisis in farmland protection, 1990.
threaten the farmlands (Shlain and Feitelson, 1996).
However, once the discourse changed additional steps
followed that did undermine the foundation of the farmland protection structures (Feitelson, 1995a; Shlain and
Feitelson, 1996).
In essence, the Israeli government took two main directions of action. The "rst was a reformulation of land
policy goals and a change in the institutional a$liation of
the ILA. From being the responsibility of the Minister of
Agriculture the ILA became the Minister of Housing and
Building's responsibility. This shift re#ects the demise in
power of the agricultural sector and the reorientation of
national priorities from farmland protection to the provision of adequate sites for residential development.
As noted above, in 1996 the ILA was moved again to the newlyformed Ministry of National Infrastructure. However, from this paper'
perspective the important point is that a return of the ILA to the
Ministry of Agriculture was not even seriously contemplated at the
time.
Following the shift in institutional a$liation the ILC
made several policy decisions whose common goal was
to reduce the transaction cost of land development. The
essence of these decisions was to allow leaseholders to
enjoy some of the pro"ts from development, and in some
cases to instigate such development without returning
the land to the ILA. In return they are to forfeit their
rights for compensation for past agricultural investments.
Such forfeiture reduces transaction costs, as the settlement of such compensation claims required protracted
negotiations. In another decision the ILC allowed new
neighborhoods to be built by the cooperative moshavim
and collective kibbutzim for people who would not be
These decisions were a source of contentions among various elements of the rural sector and the ILA. Consequently, they were overhauled, challenged in courts, discussed and modi"ed several times
between 1991 and 1995. However, all the discussions were over the
division of the surpluses and the degree of control the ILA would
maintain. At no point during these years were the essentials noted
above challenged.
E. Feitelson / Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 431}446
part of the cooperative or collective entity, thus introducing exurban development into these settlements. This
policy change allowed the cooperative sector, for the "rst
time, to use development on publicly owned land development as a basis for revenues. Hence such came to be
viewed by this sector and by the "nancial establishment
(particularly the banks) as a way to resolve the mounting
debt crisis. Consequently, the attitude of representatives
of the rural sector in various planning commissions toward development proposals on farmlands changed.
The second focus of government action was to weaken
the planning system by introducing emergency procedures (Alterman, 1995). These reduced public participation, strengthened the hand of development oriented
agencies in planning decisions at the regional level (where
most decisions are made), and shortened the time allowed for discussions. One of the measures introduced as
part of this emergency legislation stated that plans on
declared agricultural land would need to come before the
CPAL only if a CPAL representative (usually a junior
o$cial) explicitly required it. Then the CPAL had to give
a decision within 15 days. In practice most of the major
development initiatives were not required to come before
the CPAL, thus signi"cantly diminishing its stature.
These shifts were presented as essential for containing
housing price increases, and successful absorption of the
immigration wave. Both of these goals enjoyed widespread legitimacy in Israel. These shifts served the interests of the debt-ridden rural sector, the "nancial sector
(particularly the banks burdened by bad rural sector
debt), developers who were given easier access to stateowned land, and the development-oriented agencies
within government. These changes gave rise, however, to
objections from two distinct groups. The "rst were environmentalists, who had long-standing concerns over open
space issues, and the second were planners, often acting
as an epistemic community rather than merely as representatives of di!erent agencies or unconcerned professionals.
Until the early nineties environmentalists' concerns
focused on the most sensitive areas, usually designated as
nature reserves or national parks. However, the undermining of the farmland protection structures, combined
with the massive development pressures further fueled by
the rapid economic growth, due to the combination of
immigration and improving peace prospects (between
1993 and 1996), led to a growing concern among them
over the total supply of open spaces. Here planners
and middle class urbanites joined environmentalists.
The planners were concerned about the weakening of
the planning system, and increasingly about open space
issues per-se. These concerns were given much exposure in
the background document prepared as part of the Israel
2020 initiative (Mazor, 1993). In this document the rate of
development was extrapolated to 2020, showing that
within a single generation the urban footprint (the urban
441
areas plus the main inter-urban infrastructure facilities)
would cover more than 50% of the land between Haifa
and Jerusalem, more that doubling the current coverage
(see Fig. 3).
The concern over open space struck a bell among
a wide urban middle class constituency whose rising
mobility led it to view such areas increasingly as part of
its consumption space. In addition, part of the rural
establishment became concerned over the rate of annexation the forecasts imply (Razin and Hasson, 1994), and
the loss of rural amenities for themselves.
The planning establishment responded to these threats
by preparing a series of plans and documents, mostly at
the national level, outlining how development can be
accommodated without sacri"cing too much open spaces
(Feitelson, 1994,1998). As part of these e!orts the rationales for farmland protection were reframed. One of the
plans where this process can best be seen is the Central
District plan.
6. The central district plan
The central district includes the median and outer
rings of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. It has been
attracting migration from other parts of the country, and
from the core and inner rings since the early seventies
(Lipshitz, 1987; Gonen, 1995). It has thus been the main
locus of development since the seventies. As can be seen
in Fig. 3 this is the area projected to su!er the greatest
loss of open space within the next twenty-"ve years. Most
of the district's area is farmland, with only few sites of
importance from a natural resource perspective (Feitelson, 1995b).
The preparation of the initial district plan commenced
in the sixties. However, it was completed only in the late
seventies. It was approved by the NPBB in 1980 and
"nally rati"ed in 1983. By this time the need for an
update was felt. The same planning team that prepared
the initial plan was asked to undertake the background
surveys, and later the preparation of an update. The
updated plan was "rst presented in 1993. The District
Commission rati"ed it for public comments in 1996 and
the NPBB in August of 1997. As part of this update the
farmland issue was raised, and a new conception of open
space protection was presented.
In Table 4 the way farmland and opens space issues
were addressed in the original plan (as approved by the
NPBB) and the updated version are compared. The main
di!erence between the two plans, prepared for the same
region, is in the way open space and farmland issues are
framed. In the 1980 plan most of the district's area was
designated as farmland. This designation was not
backed, however, by any analysis of the farming industry
or of its land requirements. Rather, all the area lacking
any features making it suitable for another designation
442
E. Feitelson / Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 431}446
(either for development or unique natural features) was
designated as farmland. This designation encompassed
an area wider than that actually used for farming at the
time. This re#ected the widespread acceptance of farmland being an uncontested preferred use. Moreover, the
designation as agricultural land was seen as a measure
for controlling urban development, as it assured that any
proposal beyond the areas designated for urban development would need to be brought up to the NPBB and the
CPAL.
By contrast, in the 1997 plan a substantive e!ort was
made to rationalize why open spaces in general, and
farmlands in particular, should be protected, and to
identify the areas to which each rationale pertained. The
rationalization of the need to protect the maximal viable
amount of open spaces was made in economic terms. It
was argued that there is an inherent market failure in the
development of green"eld sites as a result of our inability
to estimate the full social cost of the alternative use of
such sites as open areas for future generations (Feitelson,
1995b). The reason for this inability is the lack of su$ciently accurate methods for estimating the value of the
full range of services provided by open spaces, and of the
inability to assess the future increase in the real term
value of open spaces over time. It is expected that the
value of open space would increase over time, in real
terms, as the availability of such space decreases and the
demand for it by a larger more mobile population rises.
A second part of the rationalization e!ort enumerated
the positive externalities of open spaces by identifying the
di!erent types of non-market services they provide. The
need to provide this wide set of services was explicitly
recognized in the plan's goals. In order to achieve these
goals a diverse set of open space designations was advanced (see Table 4), each emphasizing a di!erent set of
services. In addition, alternative spatial layouts of open
spaces were analyzed according to criteria derived from
the plan's goals (Feitelson, 1995b).
In summary, the comparison between the 1980 Central
District plan and its 1997 overhaul suggests that a major
change occurred in the attitudes toward farmlands in
Israel during this period. In 1980 farmland protection
was viewed as an end to itself, that does not need much in
terms of justi"cation. As the rationales were so well
ingrained in planning thought it was not seen as necessary to elaborate them. In addition, farmland protection
Fig. 3. Built up area by district.
Source: Israel 2020: A strategic Plan for Israel, The Technion, Haifa.
While it is possible to obtain estimates for the current recreational
demand for many areas, and some willingness-to-pay estimates for
visual amenities and important ecosystems, it is still infeasible to obtain
accurate estimates for the full range of ecosystem services and environmental bene"ts of open spaces. Moreover, the estimates that can be
obtained may also be highly dependent on the elicitation technique (for
a review, see: Smith, 1993). As a result Shabman and Stephenson (1996)
have recently suggested that perhaps it be may be impossible to derive
&correct' bene"t estimates.
E. Feitelson / Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 431}446
443
Table 4
Comparison of the central district plans 1980, 1997
Criteria
1980 plan
1997 plan
Goals
Assure adequate land for timely facility
development
Spatial array of open spaces
Most unbuilt areas designated as farmland.
Scattered high-quality designations (reserves,
parks, beaches, forests)
Supply-based (site attributes); Identi"cation of
areas not needed for development.
Nature reserves, parks and landscape reserves.
Forests; bathing beaches; agricultural land.
Areas for future planning.
Assure land use compatibility with infrastructure and
environment.
Protect landscapes and the environment and assure
adequate recreational opportunities.
Best use of land resources.
Adaptation to economic shifts
Continuous designations of beaches and stream areas.
Rural open spaces create semi-rings around urban
centers connecting stream valleys.
Maximal protection principle; analysis of spatial outlays;
attempt to address diverse needs for open spaces
Nature reserves, parks, and landscape reserves.
Stream valleys.
Forests; beaches; metropolitan recreation areas.
Rural landscape areas. Agricultural open areas
Open-space analysis
Open-space designations
served as a useful tool for controlling urban development.
In 1997 the need for farmland protection was not clear
at all. Therefore a substantial e!ort was made to elucidate the need to protect farmlands. Yet, the rationales
used were very di!erent from those implied in the previous plan. The rationales focused on the consumption
and environmental roles of open spaces, rather than on
production and ideologically based justi"cations, and
were couched in an economic approach and terminology.
7. Reframing farmland protection: discussion
Farmlands in Israel are increasingly the focus of con#icts. These con#icts involving urban versus rural jurisdictions, development versus conservation lobbies and
production versus consumption interests evolve around
economic, "scal, environmental, equity, administrative control, and ideological issues (Applebaum and
Newman, 1997; Newman and Applebaum, 1995; Razin
and Hasson, 1994). Concurrently, farmlands in the country's core are subject to increasing development pressures
(Feitelson, 1995a; Razin, 1996). Under such circumstances the ability to protect farmlands is highly contingent
on the support farmland protection programs can muster. This support is a function of the way farmland
protection is rationalized.
The farmland protection programs instituted in the
sixties re#ected the power structures, core values and
dominant ideology of the time, and were couched in the
terms of the sanctioned discourse of that era. The programs were legitimized as assuring food security and
providing the basis for the politically dominant ideologically preferred agricultural sector. The actual plans for-
mulated gave precedence therefore to agricultural land as
such, allowing on it any activity needed for agricultural
production. These programs, however, were not modi"ed
or re-examined, while the coalition that put them in place
crumbled and the sanctioned discourse changed. Thus,
when a crisis occurred the programs were seen as outdated (see also Plesner and Zusman, 1997), and consequently were weakened signi"cantly.
The new coalition interested in farmland protection
includes environmentalists, planners, and exurbanites
seeking to preserve the rural atmosphere, the urban
middle class seeking to protect its potential recreation
areas and visual amenities, and several regional councils
(the rural local jurisdictions) concerned about urban encroachment and shifts in local political power. However,
this coalition is not politically or ideologically dominant,
as was the agricultural coalition that instituted the farmland protection program in the sixties. Moreover, it faces
a more powerful coalition of developers, government
agencies (particularly the Ministry of Housing and Building and the ILA), the "nancial sector and many regional
councils and rural settlements trying to alleviate their
debt burden. Therefore, the new coalition has to advance
new rationales for farmland protection that would be
able to muster as wide a support a possible.
Given the economic, social, ideological and political
shifts that occurred in Israel over the last twenty years,
the new rationales advanced focus on the loss of positive
externalities and are couched in an economic terminology. This terminology is today increasingly the accepted
language in the sanctioned discourse on land use issues.
The shift in rationalization approach has direct rami"cations for the content of the plans advanced. The Central district plan is but one of the new generation of plans
advanced in recent years, ultimately overhauling the
444
E. Feitelson / Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 431}446
prior planning doctrine. One facet of this transformation
was the integration of environmental planning, and open
space issues in particular, as central elements of the new
doctrine (Feitelson, 1998; Shachar, 1998). As part of this
change economic and "scal instruments were advanced
for protecting open space in other plans and documents
prepared in recent years (Feitelson, 1995b, Razin, 1998).
Currently the implications of environmental goals for
production practices are being discussed as part of the
Israeli sustainable development initiative. Yet, the need
to maintain a broad coalition in support of farmland
protection also limits the steps that can be taken. Thus, in
the plans advanced so far, no limitations were placed on
agricultural production so as not to alienate those elements in the agricultural sector that favor farmland protection. In other words, a tradeo! between the need to
cobble a wide-ranging coalition to oppose development
interests and the ability to follow through the logic of all
the rationales used to legitimize conservation programs
is becoming apparent, as the rationales are not fully
compatible.
8. Conclusions
Alterman (1997) has recently concluded on the basis
of an international comparison of farmland protection
program that the success of such programs depends
primarily on the level of support they receive, which is a
function of the legitimacy accorded to them. One of the
factors a!ecting the legitimacy accorded to such programs is the way they are rationalized. Yet, the receptivity to arguments varies over time as a function of shifts in
social norms, sanctioned discourse, power structures and
ideologies.
Farmland protection programs need, therefore, to continuously adapt themselves to the shifts in these parameters. This means that the rationales for such programs
need to be reviewed periodically. If the acceptability of
the rationales declines they need to be modi"ed, or couched in di!erent terms. Yet, the process is not limited to
the adaptation of the discourse to changing fads. Rather,
changes in rationales have very substantive implications
for program structures and for plans prepared as part of
such programs. Thus, such reviews imply that program
contents be also continuously adjusted to conform to the
rationales used to legitimize the programs.
The rationales used for legitimizing farmland protection programs are not some &objective' elements which
are part of the professional discourse. Rather, they are
tools used in the socio-political struggles over the future
of rural landscapes. Yet, while the use of rationales is
sensitive to shifts in political power and sanctioned discourse patterns, and instrumental in adapting countryside conservation programs to such shifts, they cannot be
changed in a haphazard way because any change in the
rationales has long term implications for program structures. Such structures and the tools used to implement
them have to be in force for substantial periods of time to
have an e!ect on development patterns.
The struggles and discussions of program rationales
mediate thus between di!erent time frames, forms of
discourse, interest groups and epistemic communities.
They are therefore at the center of countryside conservation controversies, and not incidental to them. The study
of legitimization processes is an important window for
understanding the changing environment of rural land
policies. These changes di!er, however, across regions
and societies and over time. The use of rationales for
countryside conservation re#ects these di!erences, and
thus the study of rationalization processes illuminates the
continuos ongoing multiple-level struggle over the future
of rural landscapes in di!erent locales.
Acknowledgements
This paper was written while the author was a visiting
research associate at the Center for Urban Policy and the
Environment, at the School of Public and Environmental
A!airs, Indiana University, Indianapolis. The author is
thankful for the helpful comments of two anonymous
reviewers. The usual disclaimer applies.
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