Introduction

This chapter discusses three types of rural landscape change in America: changes within agricultural production, losses to rural towns and conversion of agricultural land to other uses (Figure 10.1). It describes how federal agricultural policy directly affects rural landscape change, and it will characterise potentials for international trade agreements to affect agricultural policy and rural landscapes. Other federal policies and laws that affect American rural landscapes less obviously but equally profoundly are also discussed. Federal agricultural policy interacts with policy for energy, the environment, housing, transportation, taxes and trade, as well as with the American legal system for land-use controls, all of which propel rural landscape change. At the nexus of all these forces, individual farm operators are confronted with a bewildering array of entrepreneurial opportunities, technological possibilities and policy options from which to make decisions about their farms each year. Only by critically and imaginatively examining these influential policies can we anticipate and affect the future condition and sustainability of local rural landscapes in America. The chapter is in four main parts – first, landscape condition and trends in the Corn Belt are summarised; second, relevant US federal policies are discussed in relation to aims of the WTO; third, the relationship of Corn Belt agriculture to federal policies is briefly reviewed, and finally, the prospect of alternative futures is examined.