Ownership Of Rural Land In The Southeast

Long viewed as a problem in other countries, the ownership of land and resources is becoming an issue of mounting concern in the United States. Nowhere has it surfaced more dramatically than in the southern Appalachians where the exploitation of timber and mineral resources has been recently aggravated by the ravages of strip-mining and flash floods. This landmark study of the mountain region documents for the first time the full scale and extent of the ownership and control of the region's land and resources and shows in a compelling, yet non-polemical fashion the relationship between this control and conditions affecting the lives of the region's people. Begun in 1978 and extending through 1980, this survey of land ownership is notable for the magnitude of its coverage. It embraces six states of the southern Appalachian region—Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama. From these states the research team selected 80 counties, and within those counties field workers documented the ownership of over 55,000 parcels of property, totaling over 20 million acres of land and mineral rights. The survey is equally significant for its systematic investigation of the relations between ownership and conditions within Appalachian communities. Researchers compiled data on 100 socioeconomic indicators and correlated these with the ownership of land and mineral rights. The findings of the survey form a generally dark picture of the region—local governments struggling to provide needed services on tax revenues that are at once inadequate and inequitable; economic development and diversification stifled; increasing loss of farmland, a traditional source of subsistence in the region. Most evident perhaps is the adverse effect upon housing resulting from corporate ownership and land speculation. Nor is the trend toward greater conglomerate ownership of energy resources, the expansion of absentee ownership into new areas, and the search for new mineral and energy sources encouraging. Who Owns Appalachia? will be an enduring resource for all those interested in this region and its problems. It is, moreover, both a model and a document for social and economic concerns likely to be of critical importance for the entire nation.

The land trust is seen as a way For example, a landowner might have a bun- to both balance the legitimate rights of the indi- dle of rights to a section of land. [...] The common, and private forms of property, and trust owns the land and the lessee or the user concludes that the land trust does not fit neat- owns the improvement. [...] The land use agreement. 5 easement transfers with the title of the property In Canada, the greatest number of land trusts and may impact the market value of the property. [...] There is a growing interest A "positive easement" gives the holder of the in housing trusts (CLTs), which are much more easement the right to enter on the land for a par- common in the U. S. Agricultural land trusts are ticular reason. [...] The development of agricultural land for free, where the restrictive nature of the ease- trusts is a relatively new phenomenon, and most ment is consistent with the landowner's long term of them are designed to address the issue of farm- desire for how the land is to be used.