Recent arrival in OAC hopes to make Department of Agricultural Economics and Business an authority on greenbelt law
BY ANDREW VOWLES
Why do certain basketball players get paid more than others? That's a question Prof. Brady Deaton, Agricultural Economics and Business, likes to throw out to his undergraduate classes. Students usually offer a variety of reasons — player height, speed, jumping ability. Rarely does anyone bounce back this commonsensical answer: Because the rim is set at 10 feet high.
Lower a basketball rim to, say, five feet and you've changed the rules and the economics of the game. Now switch the game to Deaton's research field of property rights and ownership and you start to see how changing the rules governing those rights might affect various players in different ways. Having arrived at Guelph last summer from his native United States, the agricultural economist is interested in applying his ideas about gains and losses to studies of rural and urban property ownership in Ontario.
He got here in time to see a tailor-made field site of sorts fall into his lap, with passage earlier this year of a provincial law to establish a greenbelt around Toronto. The legislation, which pits farmland conservationists and environmentalists against farmers worried about declining property values as their land is sealed off from development, provides a useful test case for an academic interested in how changes to property rights affect different players.
“There's a huge concern among farmers about whether the legislation will reduce the value of agricultural land,” says Deaton.
This summer, he will begin studying the effects of the law in a planned long-term project that he hopes will help his department make a name for itself in this area.
One thing's for sure: It's not a simple matter of taking one side or other in the debate. He says the law may lower the resale value of some farmland by disallowing development opportunities, but it may also make it easier for some farmers to ply their trade, thus raising the value of their parcels.
“We want to tease that out,” he says. “We want to provide a careful assessment of the benefits of preserving farmland and the costs associated with it and the distribution of those costs.”
He's been looking for a reliable data source and setting up a research protocol to assess the effects of the legislation on agricultural and residential property values. He hopes to partner with the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, a former Crown corporation, for information on sales of residential and agricultural lands.
Working with him this summer on an undergraduate research assistantship is Adele Labbe, who this fall will begin the final year of a marine biology major and political science minor.
Citing her longtime interest in conservation biology, ecology and environmental science, she says: “I realized that if I actually want to make a difference, I need to understand the politics involved. Brady's research meshes with my goals in terms of examining environmental protection directly linked to sustainability.”
Ontario's new law requires a 10-year review of its effects. By following developments over the next decade, Deaton hopes to establish himself — and his department — as an authority on the greenbelt legislation and help influence future policy decisions.
Helping to develop policy was an important part of his earlier studies, particularly his PhD in agricultural economics at Michigan State University. There he studied property issues in both urban areas and on the urban-rural fringe. He examined public willingness to support farmland preservation programs in an urbanizing Michigan county and the effect of hazardous waste sites on surrounding property values in the city of Lansing.
He looked at how residents' support for farmland preservation schemes varied with the specific type of farmland.
“When people say they want to preserve farmland, what are the characteristics of farmland that motivate them?” says Deaton, who saw his work considered by authorities weighing farmland preservation and development.
He completed that degree in 2002 and embarked on a two-year post-doc in Michigan before coming to Guelph last year. Earlier, he had studied economics at the University of Missouri and completed a master's in agricultural economics at Virginia Tech University.
His path has been influenced by both his parents. His father, Brady Deaton Sr., is an agricultural economist who last fall was appointed chancellor of the University of Missouri. Never mind the university classroom: Brady says much of his early learning took place around the kitchen table, where he and his siblings were challenged by their father and their social scientist mother, Anne, to discuss all kinds of topics.
“We spent all our youth engaged in social science debates around the table. We were encouraged to ask questions even before we could make sensible statements.”
He also followed his parents' lead with a volunteer stint in Lesotho with the Peace Corps. Earlier, his father had done a Peace Corps posting in Thailand; his mother had served with the Appalachian Volunteers.
Deaton says his two years spent living in a village of about 50 people was a “humbling” experience that taught him not just about international development but also about himself.
“It was everything I needed and nothing I expected,” says Deaton, who was 23 at the time.
He taught English, helped the community set up a holding station for water and helped with the development of small businesses.
He says his current interests lie at the intersection of rural and urban, whether that's investigating a designated greenbelt area or studying and teaching here at U of G. He says agriculture itself is “intersecting with some of the fundamental drivers of modernity,” including urbanization, globalization, and technology and biotechnology. “It's this fascinating field to me.”
