Alvin D. Sokolow

Alvin D. Sokolow

Alvin D. Sokolow is specialist emeritus at the University of California, Davis, who conducts research and writes on farmland policy and local governance issues. In 2003, Sokolow led the nation’s most in-depth study to date on agricultural easement programs in the U.S., a joint project of UC-Davis’ Agricultural Issues Center and the American Farmland Trust. The study’s final reports were released in 2006. FPR spoke with Sokolow Oct. 2, 2009.

FPR: Al, congratulations on your article to be published in Publius … early in 2010, right?
SOKOLOW: Right, if not late this year, early next year.
FPR: In this article you’ve written about the FRPP, a favorite topic of many of my readers… your research shows the FRPP is unlike any other federal assistance program. I think we’ve all sensed that, but this will be the first time we actually compare…
SOKOLOW: Right.
FPR: You state the NRCS has accommodated state and local interests, quote, “while vigorously retaining core agency values and centralized control.” Would you explain that?
SOKOLOW: Sure. On the so-called flexibility side, making the program a bit more adaptable to state and local agency existing programs and procedures, the FRPP, in its short history, has been reworked in several ways, including changing the appraisal requirements, shifting the legislative purpose from protecting topsoil to the more open ended objectives of restricting urban development and changing the limits on impervious surfaces– I call these changes at the margin because they didn’t substantially revise the basic NRCS approach and control over the funding process… do you want to get into that a little bit?
FPR: Yeah….
SOKOLOW: This is where the FRPP is quite different from any other federal aid program… there is, number one, very close scrutiny of each easement proposal– this is done at the state level, and it’s a review process that follows national standards imposed by the national NRCS office with some additional standards added by the state offices, that are compatible with the national standards. There are no other federal aid programs that look so closely at individual, funded projects.
Another thing is that the NRCS and USDA retain an ongoing interest in each easement acquired because of the presumption that in giving money to acquire individual easements the federal government picks up some degree of responsibility for making sure that those easements are maintained as per the original condition…so the feds come in and say, we are your backup – we retain a comparable interest in the event that you fail to do your job here… and this is, in part, tied up with the IRS code where there are standards for charitable contributions and the legal status of state and local governments and land trusts that accept easements.
FPR: Right.
SOKOLOW: I know of no other federal program that has that ongoing involvement and interest in what is being funded. Having said that, we have not had any situation yet where the feds have felt it necessary to step in… that could happen, although my guess is, the feds are not really equipped to do much of that on any kind of regular scale.
Another interesting feature is the extensive use of the administrative rules process to determine the nature of the program and how the funds are to be allocated …the NRCS basically determines how these things are going to run.
FPR: Uh huh… much to the chagrin of many state and local administrators…
SOKOLOW: Yes.
FPR: You detail the criticisms of the FRPP that were raised by state governments, such as the impervious surface limitation. You call it “intergovernmental tension,” but it all goes back to that a federal level scrutiny of every easement, as you say, and that topsoil emphasis, doesn’t it?
SOKOLOW: Yes, yes, of course, the word intergovernmental is used deliberately because the article is going into a journal that specializes in intergovernmental issues, the journal Publius. I wanted to take the material that we worked on, the AFT study of the ag easement arena generally, the study we did…
FPR: In 2003…
SOKOLOW: Right. You contributed some to that study… I wanted to broaden the audience for this information to one beyond agricultural protection nerds like you and me [laughter] and the various programs around the country that specialize in this, and bring it to my original discipline, which is political science. Putting an article in Publius was the ideal opportunity to do this … [because] Publius announced it would put together a special issue on non-metropolitan issues, and so this piece fitted in to that.
FPR: Yes. Well, we certainly need that perspective, don’t we?
SOKOLOW: Yes, I think so.
FPR: It extends even beyond intergovernmental work, because you give a lot of attention to the ways the FRPP gives land trusts a leg up including changes in the funding formula that de-emphasize experience and staff capacity. In your view, are land trust projects, most of which are outside the Northeast, as you said, contributing to farmland preservation in any significant way?
SOKOLOW: They certainly are in California, and they certainly are in the Mountain West states like Colorado and Montana where the rangeland trusts are big, big operators – that’s mentioned in the article. In California it’s also cropland simply because we don’t have much in the way of local government capacity, particularly funding ability, to take on the tasks that counties in the Northeast– in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey– have done so well, where they can use the property tax, and other revenue sources. We don’t have a functional local government finance system in California since Proposition 13, which much restricted the property tax back in 1978, so land trusts, with a few exceptions, are the action here. And yes, they’ve made a big, big difference… they are the major players.
FPR: You are hoping that over time it will make a difference, at least at the county level in some of the counties where land trusts are most active.
SOKOLOW: Yeah.
FPR: Your theme is centralized control, that NRCS has managed to keep over this grant-like program. In your view is that good or bad for farmland preservation per se?
SOKOLOW: Um… OK… I think it’s generally good for farmland protection. My sense is that it’s not… well, let me redirect the question… it’s not bad in the sense that local and state programs that have momentum, that have been around for a while, that have funding sources, continue to expand and grow whether or not they have federal money– it’s not irrelevant, but it’s a very small piece of the action. In other programs, I think the federal interest is good, even with the restrictions, because my sense is it has stimulated some activity in other parts of the country, outside of the Northeast, that would not otherwise have been the case. At a very small scale, compared to the Northeast, but still, some new activity, which may result over time in more programs developing … I don’t see the federal funds as expanding enormously to the point where they become the major, or the main player in the whole game.
Incidentally, I understand why many of the active programs have been so critical of the federal conditions because for them the FRPP is the new kid on the block… most of the Northeast programs were in place with a track record, and here comes another source of funds with all of these strings and conditions, and so for them it makes sense to object. But from a federal perspective I can understand completely why the NRCS keeps things so close to the chest, so to speak… in their role as stewards of the money, it’s entirely appropriate for them to maintain this degree of centralization, although I think they could loosen up stuff here and there, and have done already in a few cases.
FPR: Well, Al, what’s next for you?
SOKOLOW: I have a co-authored an article that’s been accepted by the journal California Agriculture that looks at the agriculture-urban edge conflicts. I’m working in my retirement also for a planning consultant firm on general plan updates of several Central Valley counties. I’m the agriculture person on these projects – which is pretty good for a kid from Chicago… I’d like to work on another piece related to the FRPP, and that’s to look more closely at how agricultural easement programs balance soils and strategic growth considerations.
FPR: Well, Al, thanks for your time and I look forward to your next piece.
SOKOLOW: Thanks, Deborah.