COLLEGE STATION — Lack of respect is at the heart of the private property rights issue, and youth should be targeted in efforts to reverse that pattern.
Both notions were expressed during a series of six-person focus groups across Texas in late December. The opinions of landowners and urbanites were collected in the Lubbock, Midland/Odessa, Tyler, San Benito and San Angelo areas by a team led by Dr. Amy Purvis Pagano, assistant professor of agricultural economics/rangeland ecology and management at Texas A&M University.
“The viewpoints of people in mid-sized cities on property rights and environmental regulations were closely aligned with landowners’ main points,” Pagano said.
Pagano, with colleagues Drs. Richard Conner and Ed Smith, both Texas A&M agricultural economists, and Dr. John Holt, professor of food and resource economics at the University of Florida, met with 10 separate focus groups in a first attempt to seek input from the public about property rights. The heated issue stirred Texas residents last fall over endangered species management and is expected to return to the forefront this legislative session.
But the focus groups indicated that the property rights issue is much deeper than endangered species or environmental concerns. They said that property rights are tied to responsibilities, and appreciation for property must be instilled in children.
In fact, landowners believe that responsibility — to neighbors and family — can’t be separated from private property rights. They are most worried about how increasing levels of misguided environmental regulation will affect future generations’ land management options, Pagano noted.
Similarly, residents of mid-sized cities emphasized family values in their understanding of the issue.
“Children learn respect for each other and for others’ property at home, according to the city residents,” Pagano said. “They feel adults have taught children that they have rights but failed to teach them that with rights come responsibilities.”
That failure has had a direct impact on the increase in crime, according to the city dwellers, due to the erosion of respect for other people and their property.
Both sectors called for youth education to instill a sense of responsibility and pride in community.
Regulators were cited by both sectors as the reason for many property rights and environmental issues problems.
The landowners’ belief that common sense is missing from most regulations met with the urban consensus that while “everyone is in favor of clean air and water, problems arise in how bureaucrats interpret and carry out the law,” Pagano noted.
Some said regulators are uninformed about agricultural management and are neither interested in nor concerned about learning. The landowners called for collaborative decision making rather than “mandatory, top-down rules.”
“You can lead me a long way, but you can’t shove me an inch,” one rancher said.
The landowners said willing participation in resource protection and conservation programs is economically efficient for their operations.
Urban residents, too, expressed a desire to improve safe use of chemicals on lawns, golf courses and highways which they believe are as potentially harmful in cities as agricultural practices on the farm.
The economists said the first phase of focus group studies revealed many unexpected similarities, but they agreed that additional focus groups are necessary to obtain a broader sense of the Texas public.
“The city residents we spoke to were in close proximity with agricultural production and may not necessarily represent big cities,” she said.
Pagano plans to expand the focus groups effort to other important audiences such as large-urban residents, youth, environmental groups and government agencies.
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