The Impact of Major New Roads on Agriculture:Economic and Procedural Aspects

Abstract

Investigations were carried out to discover the scale and incidence of the impact of major new roads upon agriculture. It was found that resources are being wasted because agricultural considerations are not being given full recognition at any stage of the development of new roads. Two solutions were offered: firstly, in order to improve the position in the short-term, a booklet, entitled "Motorway Trunk Road Development and the Farmer: an information pack for the guidance of NFU County Secretaries," was produced in conjunction with the National Farmers Union. This explained the administrative procedures involved and the problems likely to arise; the advice offered was based upon interviews with farmers, engineers and Ministry of Agriculture officials. It was assumed that once farmers were able to understand and manipulate the administrative framework they would be able to minimise their own, and hence national, agricultural losses. Secondly, attention was turned to the more fundamental issue of how the agricultural impact of a proposed scheme can be predicted and, therefore, included in the overall project appraisal. It was discovered that the current consultation between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Road Construction Units does not allow agriculture to be properly integrated into the decision-making. The work of Boddington demonstrated that it is possible to apply the analytics of agricultural economics to the problem of impact prediction. Surveys of two sections of completed motorway provided the empirical data upon which to build a refined predictive technique. The most important aspect of this new approach was that it allowed the effects of post-construction farm system reorganisation to be accounted for.