A Program for Land Use in Northern Minnesota

A Type Study in Land Utilization

Authors:

Oscar B. Jesness and Reynolds I. Nowell

A Program for Land Use in Northern Minnesota was first published in 1935. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

With half of its privately owned lands tax delinquent, millions of acres returning to public ownership, a per capita debt twice as large as that for the rest of the state, and large areas in no economic use whatsoever, northeastern Minnesota, like many other cut-over regions of the country, faces a serious situation.

These fourteen counties, as the authors show, are suffering from the unwise land policies of the past – policies not peculiar to Minnesota. Is there a solution to the problem, or must Minnesota and other states continue to pay the price for their past mistakes?

The authors of this volume believe there is a remedy. From a first-hand investigation and careful analysis of conditions in this area, they have arrived at definite conclusions and a specific program. They describe concretely how desirable shifts in land use and changes in government can be accomplished: what legislation should be enacted; how the cooperation of local officers, the settlers, and the general public can be won, and how in the process of readjustment the farmer can be saved from undue hardship and embarrassment.

A volume for the legislator, the public official, the landowner, the agricultural economist, and every taxpayer in the state.

Oscar B. Jesness was a professor and Chief of the Division of Agricultural Economics at the University of Minnesota and Chairman of the Committee on Land Utilization for the Minnesota State Planning Board.

Reynolds I. Nowell was an agricultural economist with the United States Bureau of Agricultural Economics and Regional Director of the Land Policy Section for the Division of Program Planning, A.A.A.

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