Ag First: How Rural Land Use Policy Protects Working Ground

The development application is straightforward on paper.

Twelve residential lots on forty acres of prime ag land, five miles outside of town. The heirs of the family that farmed it want to sell. A developer has found buyers. The parcel is accessible from a county road. No wetlands. No floodplain. Nothing obviously wrong.

The planning commission looks at the future land use map. The parcel is designated agricultural.

Someone asks: Why does that matter? We need more houses. It’s a fair question. And answering it honestly is what agricultural land use policy is for.

An agricultural designation is not a promise that nothing can ever change. It is the community’s decision that productive working land should not be converted by default—and that every development proposal should be judged against the larger pattern of land, infrastructure, public cost, and community capacity around it.

This is the second of four installments this month on land use and your comprehensive plan. Last Sunday’s post was about the future land use map itself—where it comes from, what it is not, and why the answer to a development question ought to be written down before anyone knows whose land is at issue. This week we open the map to the largest category on it. I have spent the last several years writing these chapters for counties and small cities across Middle America, including Colorado, Nebraska, and New Mexico, and rather than describe agricultural policy in the abstract, I want to show you the actual language, the actual numbers, and the actual tradeoffs that sit inside adopted plans.

Aerial view of prime midwestern farmland in late summer showing rich dark soil and crop rows — agricultural land use policy rural planning

I. What “Ag First” Actually Means

The phrase is not mine, and it is not a slogan. It appears in the plans themselves, in the district descriptions, in almost identical words across every county and city chapter I have worked on. In Hall County, Nebraska’s, Comprehensive Development Plan our Agriculture General district begins this way: “In this ‘ag first’ area, agricultural activities should be given primary consideration as the highest and best use of land. Livestock production and feeding operations are allowed and non-farm residential development is discouraged.” Across our Nebraska plans, in Thayer County, Jefferson County, Clay County, and the City of Grand Island all carry versions of the same sentence. Clay County states it as policy: “Recognize production agriculture as the highest and best use of land in agricultural districts.”

Read that phrase carefully—highest and best use. That is appraisal language, borrowed deliberately, from those dusty old textbooks in planning school. It is an economic claim, not a sentimental one. The plan is saying that on this ground, in this location, under these conditions, farming produces more lasting value for the community than the alternative. Not because farming is sacred. Not because development is bad. Because in a rural economy, the land is the asset, and how it gets used over the next generation determines whether the county remains viable.

“Ag First” is not an anti-development argument. It is a growth management strategy.

The distinction matters. A County that says no development, ever, anywhere outside city limits is not doing land use planning. It is doing land use freezing. That is not what agricultural land use policy is designed to do, and the plans are explicit about the difference. Hall County’s Agriculture General policies require the regulations to “provide for at least one farm/ranch home per 20 acre parcel,” allow that “an 80+ acre tract may be split once for a single-family dwelling site,” and leave an opening for “small lot development… in limited circumstances as a Planned Unit Development”—outside prime farmland. Those are not the provisions of a plan trying to stop everything.

What agricultural policy is designed to do is ask a harder question before the yes: Is this the right development, in the right place, at the right time? Jefferson County and Thayer County both express it as a goal rather than a prohibition—“Agriculture is protected from premature development”—and the operative word is premature, not prohibited. Burwell, a city of about twelve hundred people, uses the identical phrasing in its own plan. Development that is intentional, contiguous, and supportable by existing infrastructure is a different thing from development that is scattered wherever somebody happens to own a parcel and want to sell it.

The first kind of development builds communities. The second kind costs them.

Agricultural land use policy does not decide that every field must remain untouched forever. It decides that productive ground should not be converted by default simply because a subdivision is technically possible.

Hall County, Nebraska, Prime Farmland map 2025 — *Hall County, Nebraska, Prime Farmland. Map by Mason Herrman, MPC*

What Agricultural Land Use Policy Actually Protects

Prime farmland is not simply a synonym for good agricultural ground. It reflects specific soil and site characteristics—depth, drainage, water-holding capacity, growing season—mapped by USDA to show land particularly well suited to sustained agricultural production. Clay County’s land use chapter points back to its own natural resources inventory and draws the conclusion plainly: prime farmland “is best suited to producing food, feed, forage, fiber, and oilseed crops—Agriculture should be considered the highest and best use for prime farmland in most cases.” Hall County considers protection of prime farmland for public health impacts, while Grand Island looks at prime farmland in their Sustainability chapter. When prime farmland gets converted to residential development, it does not come back. The soils that took thousands of years to develop do not reassemble themselves under a subdivision.

Several plans translate that finding into a mapped directive rather than a statement of regret. Hall County and Clay County both carry the action “Direct development away from prime farmland and environmentally sensitive areas.” Grand Island, which zones two miles of Hall County farmland under its extraterritorial jurisdiction, commits to “Discourage low-density, non-farm residential development in prime farmland areas of the ETJ.” And Hall County goes furthest of any plan in this group, with a single sentence that decides the hard cases in advance: “Residential development is limited to agricultural housing in prime farmland areas.” That is a county agreeing, in public, before it knows the applicant’s name, that some ground is off the table for house sites.

Prime farmland is important, yet we should remember that classification is not the only one that matters. A County may also need to protect other productive working ground because of irrigation, grazing capacity, field configuration, access to farm facilities, proximity to livestock operations, or its role in a larger contiguous agricultural operation. A piece of ground may not carry the highest soil classification and still be essential to a farm’s ability to move equipment, rotate crops, manage livestock, reach water, or maintain a workable field pattern.

The plans find different ways to say this. Jefferson County lists “Prime farmland, both irrigated and dryland” among the defining characteristics of its land use situation, which is the Planning Commission pointing out that the dryland ground is doing work too. Hall County created an Agriculture River Corridor category for the Platte River bottoms and a Valentine Soil Area Overlay for its sandy soils, on the grounds that “Valentine Soils are subject to extensive erosion and high permeability rates.” Thayer County’s Agriculture Primary district contains what may be the most operationally honest clause in any of these documents: “New parcels should not impact ability to irrigate remainder ag land.” That is not about acres. It is about whether the pivot can still make the circle.

The New Mexico plans I worked on were from the city and town perspective, yet also make the same point through water rather than soil, and the mechanism is worth knowing even if you never work there. Aztec’s plan records that the Aztec Ditch and Lower Animas Ditch “serve 425 irrigated parcels in Aztec, making up over 107 acres,” drawn from the Animas River under water rights dating from 1877, and that those ditch associations are “recognized under New Mexico law as political subdivisions of the State.” Bernalillo treats its acequias as land use structure rather than local color, noting that “Homes were built at the edge of long lots and fields laid out in ‘varas’, thereby maintaining access to the acequias,” and setting the policy accordingly: “The acequias need to be protected from encroachments while they continue to provide irrigation for agriculture.” A subdivision that severs a ditch easement in New Mexico has not merely inconvenienced a neighbor. It has interfered with a political subdivision of the state.

The point is not to treat all open land alike. It is to know which land is doing work for the local economy before it is treated as vacant land awaiting conversion.

The Impact Reaches Beyond the Acreage

A dozen residential lots on forty acres sounds contained. In practice, the impact on surrounding agricultural land can extend well beyond the property line.

New residential development in a farming area changes the physical pattern of the land. Driveways and access points can alter field boundaries, drainage patterns, and access to adjoining ground. A rural road that once moved combines, grain trucks, livestock trailers, and a modest number of local vehicles now also carries regular commuter traffic, school buses, delivery vehicles, and visitors.

It also introduces friction that did not exist before. Hall County’s plan is unusually candid about this, and we devoted a section called Urban/Rural Interface to naming it out loud: “At times, newcomers from urban areas and the long-term residents of rural areas bring different expectations to land use. Farmers preparing for planting and then harvesting work long hours, often with loud machinery, while rural residents seek to enjoy peace and quiet.” In the same section, we noted that the friction runs in both directions—“New development may bring paved roads, security lighting, and other ‘improvements’, while long-term residents dislike increased traffic and car crashes, and inability to see the stars due to light pollution.”

Residents who did not grow up next to farming operations may be unaccustomed to—or actively opposed to—the realities of agricultural production: dust from tillage, odors from livestock, the noise of early-morning equipment, slow-moving farm machinery on shared roads, and the application of crop-protection products near homes. Aerial applicators are fascinating to watch until the spray drifts over your roof. Hall County names those specific grievances and then assigns them to the new development rather than to the farm, directing that “New development should provide buffers, including windbreaks and shelterbelts,” designed “to minimize the contentious issues (e.g., spray drift, noise, odor) while providing amenities (e.g., trails, community gardens).” The same plan recommends the county “Consider adoption of Right-to-Farm policies supporting the business of agriculture” and review its regulations so that livestock feeding operations have adequate setbacks.

Clay County reaches the same place from the other direction, listing among the issues in its agricultural district the “Proximity of conflicting uses such as acreages near livestock confinements, mining, renewable energy facilities, etc.,” and adopting the policy that “Separation distances should be applied to rural acreages and uses with off-site impacts.” Note whose burden that is. The acreage is the use being separated, not the feedlot.

Those conflicts are not hypothetical, and they matter not just as neighbor disputes but as land use outcomes: over time, the pressure from scattered residential development can discourage the kind of long-term agricultural investment—drainage tile, soil improvement, facility upgrades—that keeps working ground working.

There is also the question of field configuration. Modern farm operations are generally more efficient on large, contiguous fields. Residential conversion—even of a single parcel—can fragment field patterns, eliminate field access points, and reduce the operational efficiency of surrounding ground in ways that are not visible on a plat map. Hall County addresses the geometry directly with a four-word policy that a lot of plans should copy: “Odd-shaped parcels such as flag lots should be avoided.” A flag lot is what happens when somebody needs road frontage and does not want to give up tillable ground, and the result is a parcel that serves neither purpose well.

One subdivision may appear manageable. Five similar approvals along the same county road or around the same town can transform the land-use pattern, public-service demands, and political tolerance for normal agricultural operations. Residents see it coming even when boards do not: in Hall County’s countywide survey, 48% of respondents identified conversion of farmland to residential development as a threat to agriculture, and 43% said the same about conversion to commercial and industrial uses, including solar and wind installations.

The footprint of rural residential development is larger than the acreage it consumes. Agricultural land use policy exists, in part, to keep that larger footprint visible when a proposal arrives.

That larger footprint is not limited to the farm operation either. It extends to the road system, emergency services, school transportation, and every other public obligation that follows people into a formerly agricultural landscape.

*Hall County, Nebraska, Future Land Use. Map by Mason Herrman, MPC*

Put the Policy on the Map

A statement that farmland matters is not enough. The comprehensive plan has to show, on the future land use map, where long-term agricultural production is the preferred use, where transition may be appropriate, and where rural residential development should be limited or directed.

The future land use map is where the community makes its long-range judgment about the preferred pattern of development. It is not the zoning map, and it should not try to function like one. Jefferson County says it in one clause: the future land use areas “are intended to be aspirational, not regulatory, while providing the basis for current and future zoning districts.” Kimball puts it even more bluntly at the top of its land use chapter—“The land use element does not regulate land use—it is a general guide for future decision making”—and Clay County and Hall County both open their inventories with the same four-word reminder: “Land use is not zoning.”

Zoning tells a landowner what can be built today. The future land use map tells the County, its municipalities, landowners, and future applicants what pattern of land use the community intends to support over time. The two documents should be consistent, but they are not interchangeable. How tightly they are coupled is itself a choice: Hall County and Grand Island both state flatly that “Zoning regulations and the zoning map must be consistent with the Future Land Use Map in this plan,” while Thayer County takes the sequencing approach and commits that “The first implementation action of the comprehensive plan will be to review and update the zoning regulations.” Aspirational and binding are not contradictory positions. They are different points in the same system.

Here are the components we have actually used, with the names as they appear on the maps:

Agricultural Production or Agriculture Primary

Working land intended to remain in long-term agricultural use. Thayer County’s Agriculture Primary and Jefferson County’s Agricultural Production districts both “provide for all types of agriculture” and discourage non-farm residential development; Hall County’s Agriculture General adds the resource dimension, intending the district “to conserve and protect the value of open space, wooded areas, streams, mineral deposits, and other natural resources.”

Agricultural Transition

Land near a municipality or planned growth area where change may occur over time, but premature scattered development is still avoided. The shared definition across Clay, Jefferson, Thayer, Hall, Burwell, and Grand Island reads: “the area where agriculture is protected, but may be limited due to proximity to cities and villages.” Kimball’s version names the trigger for change: “there may be urban-scale development when city utilities can be extended.”

Agricultural Highway

Jefferson County’s addition, for “low-density acreage residential development within reasonable access to major rural roads.” It exists to give acreages somewhere to go that does not put them at the end of a minimum maintenance road.

Rural Residential

Places already characterized by rural homes or appropriate for carefully designed, low-density development. Jefferson, Thayer, Hall, and Grand Island all attach the same design expectation: “These areas should be designed as clustered developments to conserve agricultural land and open space.”

Townsite

In Clay County and Jefferson County, we used this for historic unincorporated places—Eldorado, Inland, and Verona in Clay County; Gladstone, Helvey, Powell, and Thompson in Jefferson—“where small lots were created long ago.” A conventional rural residential designation would have made every one of those lots nonconforming.

Conservation or resource overlays

Areas where prime soils, floodplains, wetlands, groundwater recharge, habitat, or terrain should shape how—and whether—development occurs. Hall County’s Valentine Soil Area Overlay and Agriculture River Corridor are soil- and river-specific; wellhead protection overlays appear in nearly every plan, with nine Thayer County municipalities carrying approved Wellhead Protection Plans as of March 2023.

Municipal growth and ETJ areas

Areas requiring county and municipal coordination so that development does not fall into a gap between jurisdictions. Kimball states the reach plainly: “The Future land use plan also applies to the ETJ, with or without annexation into the city limits.” Raton, New Mexico, achieves the same thing through zoning rather than mapping, with an R-HZ Rural Holding Zone “intended for areas to be developed when municipal water and sanitary sewer service can be extended,” permitting agriculture and ranching in the meantime on a 2.5-acre minimum lot, with the permitted use list reviewed every five years. Most of Raton’s extraterritorial zone is R-HZ, and Colfax County has not otherwise adopted zoning—so the city’s holding zone is the only land use regulation on that ground.

Pro tip: Give future land use categories and zoning districts different names. Clay County’s future map carries Agriculture General, Agriculture Transition, and Townsite; its zoning ordinance carries AG Agricultural, R-1 Rural Residential, and R-2 Urban Residential. If both maps use the same labels, readers will assume they do the same job—and then someone at the public hearing will have to explain why they do not.

A clear agricultural policy gives landowners, applicants, and neighbors the same advance notice: the community has identified where agricultural production should remain the dominant land use, where future change may be considered, and what standards will apply when a proposal arrives. That does not eliminate disagreement. It does mean the County is applying a policy adopted in public before it knows whose land is at issue.

Aerial view of Nebraska farmland, small town, and gravel roads showing existing rural land use patterns — land use inventory rural county

Write Down the Number

Here is where most plans quit too early. A category called Agricultural Transition means nothing at the podium until somebody attaches a density to it, and the moment you do, an argument about whether twelve houses is too many becomes a calculation anybody in the room can check.

Compare the dial settings across four Nebraska county plans built on the same template. Thayer County and Jefferson County both allow “no more than 2 dwelling units per 1/4 section of land, to allow room for continued ag operations” in their primary agricultural district. Clay County and Hall County set theirs at four. Move one step toward town and Thayer allows four in Agriculture Transitional, Clay stays at four, and Jefferson and Hall both go to eight. Jefferson’s three-step ladder—two, then four in Agricultural Highway, then eight in Agricultural Transition—is the cleanest expression of a graduated, town-oriented rural density policy I have written.

Same words. Four different policies. Each admittedly rooted in previous policy, reviewed under current conditions. And the differences are not arbitrary: Thayer County averaged 8.8 residents per square mile in 2020, Clay County 10.6, Jefferson County 12.6, and Hall County 110. A county absorbing exurban pressure from Grand Island, Hastings, and Kearney is answering a different question than a county with fewer than nine people per square mile.

The standards that travel with the density matter just as much, and they tend to be unglamorous. A three-acre minimum lot size in Nebraska, for example, is rooted in the state’s standard for Onsite Wastewater Treatment Systems (OWTS or “septic” systems). Clay County’s zoning requires a three-acre minimum lot for single-family dwellings in the agricultural district and a “1,000 foot minimum distance between dwellings located in the same quarter section.” Jefferson County’s Rural Residential lots “should be no smaller than 3.0 acres on well or septic,” and its Agricultural Highway district requires that “Dwellings shall be adjacent to improved all-weather roads (above minimum maintenance road).” Thayer County places the same requirement in its transportation chapter: “New homes should have access to an existing public road, other than a roadway designated by the Thayer County Board of Commissioners as a minimum maintenance road.” Hall County recommends a three-acre minimum unless a development connects to municipal services, and allows greater density only through a planned unit development.

Read that last cluster again, because it is the sleeper policy in this whole article. A county that requires all-weather road frontage has quietly answered the twelve-lot question for a large share of its territory without ever mentioning farmland.

And where development in the countryside does make sense, the design deserves as much attention as the count. Every one of these plans carries a conservation development discussion, and Hall County explains the incentive mechanics: “Many jurisdictions have provided a system of density bonuses for conservation development. For example, a developer may be able to build twice as many homes as typical zoning would allow if they conserve substantial open space or prime farmland.” The listed benefits include “Preservation of farmland” and “Lower costs of infrastructure,” and Clay County adds the builder’s case: “The smaller developed area reduces costs for infrastructure such as roads and provides a variety of lot options for home builders and buyers.” Twelve houses clustered on the thin ground in the northwest corner, sharing one access point, is a materially different proposal from twelve houses strung along a half mile of road frontage.

Narrow county gravel road through Nebraska farmland with no residential development — rural road maintenance costs sprawl

II. The Service Obligation That Comes With Development

Working agricultural land supports a county’s tax base in ways that are easy to underestimate. Farm operations generate property tax revenue while placing relatively little demand on public services. A section of cropland does not need school bus service, fire department runs, or EMS response at two in the morning.

A subdivision does.

This is not an inference. It is rooted in a generation of cost-of-services studies across the country. In Hall County, we wrote the fiscal argument directly into the purpose statement of its largest land use district, immediately after the ag-first language: “Premature residential development in these areas also puts undue demand on public services.” Grand Island carries the identical sentence in its own Agriculture General district. The cost of service is not an afterthought in these documents. It is part of the definition of the district.

When A Rural Road Becomes a Residential Street

Six homes, let alone a dozen, change how the county road serving them functions. What was primarily an agricultural access road now becomes part of the community’s everyday residential network—with daily commuters, school transportation, deliveries, snow-removal expectations, and emergency access. Whether that requires immediate capital improvement depends on the road. What does not depend on the road is that the County or Township has taken on a different and more continuous service obligation.

The change is not always visible in the first year. The gravel road may still look like the same road, and the County or Township may not have to rebuild it immediately. But its function has changed. A road built and maintained primarily for agricultural access now carries daily residential traffic and must reliably serve ordinary passenger vehicles, school buses, delivery trucks, and emergency responders.

Rural roads are not failures because they are rural roads. They are designed for a different job. Many were built to connect farms, small towns, grain elevators, and highways—not to function as low-density subdivisions with multiple driveways, daily peak-hour traffic, and resident expectations of urban-level convenience. A County or Township does not need to pave every gravel road to serve agriculture well—in fact, many farm implements don’t do so well on hard surface highways. We do need to be honest with ourselves about the different standard of service people may expect once houses begin lining what they call a street even if the map still calls it a road.

Thayer County’s transportation chapter names the feedback loop most plans leave unsaid: “improved roads attract more intense land use into areas which may not provide other necessary infrastructure, or may not be compatible with existing land uses.” Fix the road because the farmers need it, and you have also advertised the frontage. That is not a reason to leave roads unimproved. It is a reason to know what you are doing when you improve them.

Residents reasonably expect a residential street to perform differently from a farm road. They expect it to be passable after a storm, plowed after snow, maintained for daily travel, and accessible when an ambulance or fire apparatus is needed. Those expectations are understandable. They are also a continuing public obligation that was not present when the land was in production. Thayer County’s own survey suggests the ledger is already strained: while eighty-eight percent of respondents agreed the county has a likable rural and small-town atmosphere, about forty-nine percent disagreed that county roads are in good condition. Those are the same people, in the same survey, naming the asset and the unpaid bill.

Meanwhile the capital program is measured in culverts. Thayer County’s One and Six Year Road Plan listed four priority projects for 2023, including a $175,000 bridge match near Davenport and three culvert projects. That is the scale of discretionary money available when a new subdivision changes what a road segment has to do.

One new driveway may be manageable. Repeated access points along a rural road can affect drainage, sight distance, farm-equipment movement, maintenance operations, and long-term traffic safety. A subdivision plat may show lot lines and driveways; the County or Township has to see the road system that will serve them for decades.

The Cost is Cumulative

A new subdivision not only adds tax base; it also adds residential addresses to the fire and EMS service area. One six-lot development, let alone a dozen lots, may have little effect on its own. But repeated approvals in scattered locations can increase travel distances, complicate emergency access, and over time create pressure for additional equipment, staffing, or facilities.

The fiscal question is rarely whether one small subdivision will bankrupt a County or Township. It will not. The question is what happens when the same decision is made repeatedly, in scattered locations, over ten or twenty years. And the honest answer is that rural counties do not get enough applications to build muscle memory about it. Thayer County’s zoning administrator processed fifty-four zoning permits in 2022, down from sixty-one in 2020, with roughly forty percent in the unincorporated county. That is not a flood of development. It is exactly why each decision carries so much weight: every proposal arrives feeling like the first one.

The difficulty is that the bill does not always arrive at one desk. The County may carry the road and development-review responsibility. The Township may maintain a local road. The school district absorbs longer bus routes. A rural fire district, volunteer department, or EMS provider covers emergency response. A municipality may eventually face pressure to extend water or sewer. Each agency sees its own part of the demand, while no one is necessarily responsible for adding up the full cost of a scattered development pattern.

The jurisdictional seams are real, and the better plans map them on purpose. Clay County “zones property within the municipal planning areas to meet seamlessly with municipal zoning ETJs, to leave no gaps between County and City/Village zoning districts.” Hall County explains where the line actually falls: “Land between the municipal planning area boundary and the ETJ remains the County’s zoning jurisdiction.” Jefferson County describes the default that catches everything else—“County zoning applies up to the municipal limits where villages have chosen not to assert jurisdiction over an ETJ”—and then lists the villages of Daykin, Endicott, Harbine, Reynolds, and Steele City as unzoned, and therefore without an ETJ at all. Somebody is going to review the proposal on the edge of those villages, and in every case it is the County.

The obligations are not limited to pavement. School transportation extends farther. Snow removal becomes more urgent on road segments that now serve permanent residences. Utility questions become harder when private wells or septic systems fail, when a subdivision begins to expect municipal water or sewer, or when new homes are located near an expanding town but outside its existing service area. Development also creates administrative work—subdivision review, inspections, permitting, enforcement, and coordination—that scales with the number and complexity of proposals rather than with the number of agricultural acres.

Some of those costs appear quickly. Others arrive later—after the road wears differently, after drainage infrastructure needs replacement, after a private well or septic system fails, or after residents begin to expect paving, municipal utilities, street lighting, or faster emergency response. The original approval may be old by then. The service obligation is not.

Outskirts of Raton, New Mexico, off I-25

Put the Test in the Plan

The strongest thing a plan can do with this argument is convert it into criteria that apply before anyone submits a plat. Hall County’s land use chapter does exactly that. The threshold policy says: “No proposed rural development shall require extension of costly public services and facilities, nor impose inordinate additional costs of public services.”

Then we set out a list of criteria that all proposed rural development must satisfy. It must “Be appropriately, if not uniquely, suited to the area or site proposed for development.” It must “Have adequate access, including a minimum of two entrances/exits.” It must “Have adequate individual or community water supply and wastewater treatment.” And then the one that decides most of the twelve-lot cases in this article: a proposal must “Not be justified solely or even primarily, on the argument the land is less costly than alternative sites.”

Cheap land is not a plan. It is the single most common reason a proposal shows up five miles from town, and Hall County simply wrote down in advance that it does not count as a justification.

Alongside that sits the cost-allocation policy shared by Thayer, Jefferson, Hall, and Grand Island in nearly identical words: “Developers are prepared to pay the cost of necessary and required on-site and off-site improvements.” Off-site is the operative word. It is the difference between a development paying for its own street and a development paying for the turn lane, the culvert, and the water main extension that its approval made necessary.

In Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico, we stated the principle in the language of its zoning code, and I think it works for any small-town or city out there. The City’s annexation policy provides that annexation “shall not impose an economic burden on the City or result in an indirect subsidy of services by the City.” Indirect subsidy of services. That is the whole argument, in four words, adopted by a city of about two thousand people. It applies equally for a city of 200,000 or more.

This is the fiscal reality that agricultural land use policy is designed to keep visible. When a county board evaluates a development proposal, the question is not just, What does this generate in tax revenue? It is, What does this cost to serve, for the next thirty years? Looking at both numbers can produce a very different picture from a presentation built around new tax revenue alone.

The County or Township is not deciding only whether twelve homes can fit on forty acres. It is deciding whether that location is one of the places where the community is prepared to accept the permanent public obligations that residential development brings.

Aerial view of small Nebraska town with water tower, main street and surrounding farmland — town-centered growth strategy rural planning

III. Town-Centered Growth Is Not Anti-Growth

The alternative to scattered rural development is not no development. It is development directed toward the places that are already built to support it. And it is about being smart about that.

Every county plan I have worked on in Nebraska carries this as a numbered goal. Thayer County: “New development is focused within Thayer County’s cities and villages.” Clay County and Jefferson County say the same about their own. Hall County states it with the reason attached: “New development is focused within municipal limits, protecting agriculture, the environment, and natural resources.” Kimball, Burwell, and Grand Island carry municipal versions. Under each goal sits the same supporting action, and it is a fiscal statement rather than an aesthetic one: “Support annexation by cities and villages to minimize the County’s cost of public services.”

That is a local government stating in writing that it would rather see a house inside town than three miles outside it, and giving a public-cost reason for the preference.

Grow Where You Can Afford to Grow

Cities and villages are more likely to have water and sewer infrastructure, established fire and EMS service areas, schools, clinics, Main Street businesses, and the accumulated public investment of generations. Where that capacity exists—or can be extended in a planned and financially responsible way—those communities are generally better positioned to accommodate new development without pushing public services farther across the rural landscape.

The plans then take the next step and prohibit the specific pattern that defeats the strategy. Clay, Jefferson, Thayer; Kimball, Burwell, and Grand Island all adopt a version of the same action: “New development should be contiguous to existing developed areas, and avoid ‘leapfrog’ patterns inefficient for public services.” Hall County adds a policy that recognizes the County and its municipalities can end up competing: “New development in the county jurisdiction should not compete with municipalities in regard to density or new urban services.” A County that approves urban-density subdivisions in the countryside has undercut the towns it depends on, whatever its goals chapter says.

And the strategy has a mirror image on the annexation side. Burwell’s plan draws the line in a single sentence: “Agricultural lands which are ‘rural in character’ are not eligible for annexation.” Kimball punctures the assumption that annexation means an immediate utility bill—“Annexation DOES NOT commit the City to extend services in the near term… Annexation DOES NOT require the City to pay for the extension of services”—which is exactly the fear that keeps rural landowners opposed to it. And Raton, New Mexico, phases its four priority annexation areas, roughly 1,250 acres of unincorporated Colfax County, with a stated test: “each area will be evaluated based on a cost-benefit analysis to ensure the City of Raton is capable of providing utilities and other municipal infrastructure in a cost efficient manner.”

A community can need housing and still make poor decisions about where that housing goes. The housing question is not answered simply by finding any available parcel. It also requires asking whether the location can be served, whether it strengthens an existing community, and whether it converts land the community will later wish it had retained for production, infrastructure, or future choices.

Kimball’s plan is refreshingly specific about what actually limits a small city’s growth, listing among its land use constraints the “Cost to extend infrastructure including streets, electricity, water, and sewer service” and “The reach of the gravity-fed sewer system, without adding lift stations.” That is the real boundary of where a town can afford to grow, and it is a line on an engineering drawing rather than a line on a policy map. Burwell frames the same idea as an obligation to its own residents: the land use element must “reflect the needs and preferences of Burwell residents and property owners, while being clear about the constraints of the land, infrastructure, and fiscal responsibility.”

A town-centered growth strategy says: grow where you can afford to grow. Protect the land that generates value while placing relatively little demand on public services. And when development does occur outside established service areas, make sure the community has thought through what it will take to serve it—not just today, but for the life of the infrastructure being built.

That is not a constraint on growth. It is a discipline about where growth happens.

Make Growth Part of the Community

Housing is not simply a collection of rooftops. Where homes are located affects whether a child can walk or ride to school, whether a family is close enough to use a grocery store or clinic, whether a local business has enough customers to stay open, and whether an aging resident can remain connected to services without a long drive.

That is why town-centered growth is about more than pipes and pavement. New homes inside or adjacent to an established city or village can strengthen the places that already carry the community’s civic life: the Main Street businesses, library, park, school, church, volunteer fire department, and local events that make a town more than a mailing address. Scattered rural development may meet a housing demand, but it does not necessarily strengthen the community that must support it.

Residents understand this better than they are usually given credit for. Seventy percent of Clay County survey respondents agreed that protecting farmland should be the county’s top priority. And when asked whether new business should locate along highway corridors instead of the downtowns, 56% of Clay County respondents and 67% of Hall County respondents disagreed. That is not nostalgia. That is fiscal reasoning about existing investment, expressed in the language people actually use.

The distribution of housing already reflects the pattern these plans are trying to protect. Over 60% of Thayer County’s housing units sit inside its cities and villages; in Jefferson County it is over 70%, in Clay County roughly 75%, and in Hall County about 90%. The towns are where the people already live, on a small fraction of the land area. That distribution is the argument for the whole strategy.

Several plans then reach for the same tool from opposite ends of the size spectrum. In Thayer County and Jefferson County both, they “Encourage development of ‘Missing Middle’ housing types across the county where infrastructure is available.” Hall County directs the County to “Provide incentives for in-fill development of vacant land located near cities and villages,” and Grand Island commits that “Priority areas shall be identified and incentives established for infill and redevelopment.” Duplexes, fourplexes, and small courts spread the cost of infrastructure across more households on the same pipe.

The community of Bernalillo, New Mexico, shows what it looks like when a fast-growing community accepts this discipline instead of chasing the edge. Having noted that it has been among the fastest growing municipalities in the state, and that it prefers to respond to annexation requests rather than promote them, the plan concludes: “Given these limitations, new growth and development will mostly be accommodated within the existing Town limits through infill.” Aztec makes the case in one line—“Another advantage of infill development is better utilization of existing infrastructure, such as roads, water, and sewer systems, in a more efficient development pattern”—and Raton attaches the objective that infill is supposed to achieve: “To achieve more efficient and cost-effective delivery of City services.”

And sometimes town-centered growth means building the center first. Ruidoso Downs grew as a linear strip along US 70 and never had a downtown, so its plan puts one on the map: a Town Center near the Hubbard Museum of the American West that “would provide a visible focus area along US 70, and include a new City Hall, commercial development, and a public gathering space for community events.” A community that lacks a center can decide to make one. That is the same policy instinct as protecting farmland, pointed in the other direction.

Some county comprehensive plans make the direction explicit: preserve productive agricultural land while directing new development toward cities and villages where infrastructure and urban services already exist. The point is not nostalgia. It is to avoid extending public obligations across the countryside when capacity is already available—or can be provided more efficiently—closer to town. That is not anti-growth. It is a discipline about where growth happens and what the community asks it to accomplish.

Rural county planning commission reviewing a subdivision plat application — agricultural land use rural comprehensive plan

Back to the 12 Lots

The planning commission has the application. The future land use map identifies agricultural preservation as a priority. The applicant says it is only a dozen houses.

A County with a clear agricultural land use policy has a framework for that conversation, and it does not require anyone to invent a value judgment on the spot. What designation covers the parcel—Agriculture Primary, Agriculture Transition, or Rural Residential? What density does that designation allow, and does twelve lots on forty acres fit inside it? Is the ground mapped as prime farmland, and does the plan limit residential development there to agricultural housing? Does the proposal leave the remainder of the operation able to irrigate, turn equipment, and reach its own fields? Is the access an improved all-weather road or a minimum maintenance road? Is the parcel inside a village’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, and is annexation plausible within the planning horizon? And is the only real argument for this location that the land was cheaper here?

The question is not simply, Can this parcel be developed? Almost any parcel can be developed in a technical sense. The question is whether the proposal is consistent with the land-use pattern the community decided it wanted—and whether the County can afford to serve it over time.

The answer may be approval because the land is in a planned transition area, close to services, and designed in a way that preserves the surrounding operation. It may be a request to revise the proposal, cluster the homes, address access or drainage, or pursue a site closer to town. Or the answer may be no because the proposal conflicts with the plan’s agricultural policy and imposes costs the community did not intend to take on.

In each case, the County has something to stand on: not arbitrary resistance to change, but policy grounded in public process, mapped conditions, and the long-term obligations that follow development. That is what agricultural land use policy is for.

Ag first is not a wall around the countryside. It is a community deciding, in advance and in public, which ground is already earning its keep—and what it will cost everyone if that ground is traded away one forty-acre parcel at a time.

Checklist question for this week: Does your comprehensive plan identify the preservation of productive agricultural land as a central priority — and does your zoning code back that up?

Next Sunday: The comprehensive plan says the community wants a certain kind of place. Does the zoning code make that place possible to build — or does it quietly prohibit the very pattern people call “small town character”?

Have you taken the SaveYour.Town Survey of Rural Challenges Yet? If no, why not??? Check out what small town people see as their biggest challenges and what topics rural people most want help with. Now what >>I<< think. What >>THEY<< have told Becky McCray and Deb Brown for over 10 years running now. The 2026 survey is open thru the end of next month. But don’t wait, have you say NOW.

John C. Shepard, AICP, is a planner and economic development practitioner with more than thirty years in public-sector and consulting practice, and serves on the executive committee of the American Planning Association’s Small Town and Rural Planning Division. The views expressed here are his own.

September 2026 — Land Use

Week 1 — The Future Land Use Map: Your Community’s Most Important Document
Week 2 — Ag First: How Rural Land Use Policy Protects Working Ground (this article)
Week 3 — When the Zoning Code Works Against the Plan
Week 4 — Growth Has a Price: Who Pays When Development Sprawls?

Agricultural planning documents and soil survey maps on a wooden desk — farmland preservation rural planning resources

USDA NRCS — Farmland Protection Policy Act (FPPA) — Intended to minimize the impact Federal programs have on the unnecessary and irreversible conversion of farmland to nonagricultural uses.
USDA NRCS — Prime and Unique Farmlands — Special environmental resource concerns brief.
American Farmland Trust — Farms Under Threat — National data on farmland conversion rates and the fiscal impact of agricultural land loss.

Reports & Research

Cost of Community Services Studies — American Farmland Trust’s research on the fiscal return of agricultural land versus residential development — essential reading for any county board evaluating a conversion proposal.
American Farmland Trust — Planning for Agriculture — AFT resources to support public policies promoting resilient food and farming systems.
US EPA — Agriculture and Land Use — Briefing page on ag operations water/wetlands.
USDA Economic Research Service — Major Land Uses — Data product providing a comprehensive, national accounting of land use.

Planning Guidance

APA Knowledge Center — Farmland Protection — Resources for farmland protection from across the country.
APA Policy Guide — Agricultural Land Preservation — American Planning Association policy statement (Adopted 1999)
APA Small Town & Rural Planning Division — The STaR homepage, with links to the Division Knowledge Center and Award-winning projects.

Books

No Farms, No Food: Uniting Farmers and Environmentalists to Transform American Agriculture by Don Stuart (Island Press, 2022)
A peak inside the political and policy battles that determine the fate of our nation’s farmland, food policy, environmental protection, and sustainable farming.
American Farmland Preservation: Policies, Practices, and the Politics of Place (Earthscan Food and Agriculture) by Andrew Waters (Routledge, 2026)
A new book examining modern American farmland preservation written by the farmland preservation coordinator for Chatham County, North Carolina.
Farmland Preservation: Land for Future Generations, 2nd edition, by Caldwell, Hilts, Wilton, ed. (University of Manitoba Press, 2017)
Essays and case studies from across Canada, the US, and around the world.
Design with Nature (25th anniversary edition) by Ian McHarg (John Wiley & Sons, 1995)
McHarg’s 1969 book is a foundational treatise on ecological planning and landscape architecture. The 25th anniversary edition presents a visionary and practical approach to creating sustainable, healthy landscapes. Our September 2026 book of the month and a Planetizen Top 20 All-Time Planning Book.

Some links above may be affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, JCShepard.com earns from qualifying purchases.

Resources

Rural-Ready Engagement: Practical Tools for Small Town Planners

Watch the full replay: youtube.com/@Engaging-Communities (February 2026)

Community engagement can look very different in small towns and rural communities. This webcast was co-sponsored by the APA Community Engagement Interest Group and the Small Town & Rural Planning Division.

Dynamic Decisions Podcast (Season 2 Episode 15)

“Stop Chasing Smokestacks. Grow What You Have” with Teasha Cable of cModel Data, now playing on Youtube (audio), Apple Podcasts, Spotify (May 2026). Other listening links here.

The Rural Impact Podcast (Episode #86)

“Pathways to Powering Rural America” My guest spot on Michelle Rathman’s podcast. Episode page here, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or watch (!) on youtube. We talked about energy, data centers, and good governance, plus so much more.

Ag First: How Rural Land Use Policy Protects Working Ground

I. What “Ag First” Actually Means