Farmers in Wisconsin who are trying to protect their farmland from development are meeting defeat when it comes to voters passing such referendums.

It was the first countywide vote in Wisconsin on a purchase-of-development-rights program that would let owners of farmland sell its development rights, virtually guaranteeing it would never be developed for housing or related purposes. County property taxes would help pay the cost of the purchases. On the same day, voters in the town of Mukwonago, 25 miles southwest of Milwaukee, rejected a plan aimed at saving some of the 4,800 acres of prime farmland left in that community. Elsewhere in Wisconsin, similar proposals are pending in La Crosse and Jefferson counties, and some rural communities have approved them on their own. A recent study by the nonprofit Corporation for Enterprise Development said cropland has been disappearing in Wisconsin faster than any other state in the region, with nearly 5 percent, or the equivalent of 30,000 acres a year, lost from 2000 to 2005.

The proposal drew opposition by the Wisconsin Realtors Association, but spokesman Joe Murray said his group’s $15,000 lobbying effort, mostly mailings and telephone calls, probably wasn’t much of a factor. He said his group is not against land conservation but was concerned that the plan would rely too much on property taxes, should have a more general funding source and had too many other unknowns.