Which policy aims to protect farmland and prevent it from being sold for nonagricultural uses?

• A. Urban Decentralization
• B. Farmland Protection Policies
• C. Brownfields
• D. Edge Cities

Answer: (B)

Protecting farmland through policy aims to keep land in agricultural use and prevent its sale or conversion to homes, malls, or factories. This is typically achieved with farmland protection policies that use tools like zoning limits on development, conservation easements, or the purchase of development rights, sometimes backed by growth boundaries to steer development away from farmland. The result is preserving the agricultural land base for food production, rural livelihoods, and ecosystem services. By contrast, urban decentralization focuses on spreading growth to multiple centers, brownfields refer to redeveloping contaminated urban sites, and edge cities describe new, satellite urban centers outside traditional downtowns. The policy specifically designed to shield farmland from nonagricultural uses is farmland protection policies.