Excerpts: This is a series of talks on rural zoning made by Erling D. Solberg, Farm Economics Research Division, Agricultural Research Service, between 1951 and 1959. Most of the talks have been quoted from or cited in zoning, planning, and economic literature. Although each talk deals with rural zoning, the contents of the talks differ. Each speech was a vehicle for developing a different aspect of zoning. For example, in the first, Rural Zoning, Present and Future (page 3), the functional and geographic scope of zoning authority and of zoning regulations in unincorporated areas were discussed, and some emerging land use problems were examined. Then came such talks as Roadside Zoning (page 14), to assure safer and more efficient highways; Rural Zoning Tools and Objectives (page 26), in which was discussed pioneer zoning in the cutover counties of Wisconsin, and later zoning to protect farming areas; Shall Our Better Soils Grow Crops or Houses (page 39), which depicted the loss to agriculture of the more fertile lands on an expanding urban fringe; Some Limitations and Possibilities of Rural Zoning (page 42), Some Agricultural Zoning Problems (page 47), in which were discussed the obstacles that prevent a wider and more effective use of zoning tools for the protection of agriculture; and Cities and Farms, Side by Side (page 52), which debated the advisability of reserving our more productive soils to meet probable future food and fiber needs, described the incidence of benefits from such reservation, and suggested several protective measures. The more recent talks were concerned with Reshaping Zoning Tools to Serve Agriculture, (page 65), with the idea of making them more effective for agriculture, including avoidance of urban-agricultural land use conflicts; Zoning of Prospective Land Use Areas (page 72), which discussed urban- agricultural conflicts and remedial zoning measures from the viewpoint of the suburbanite; and Farmers Too Can Benefit From Zoning (page 84), in which the use of old and new zoning tools for the protection of agriculture, with special reference to the exploding urban fringe, was outlined.