Farm and forestland conversion to urban land in Washington continues but slows

Washington Ag Today April 30, 2010 Washington’s prime farm land and forest land continues to be converted to urban land use, but at a slower rate than in previous years. That is according to the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service’s latest Natural Resources Inventory or NRI.

Jan Carlson, a Natural Resource Specialist with the Washington state NRCS office says the conversion rated peaked in the late 90’s and early 2000’s at about 220 to 240-thousand acres every five years.

Carlson: “But that rate has changed. Since I only have state level data I don‘t know exactly where those conversions are taking place, but the pattern had been that bulk of it had been on the west side of the state and then in some of the bedroom communities like Kittitas County and then down by the Tri-Cites. People were moving into those areas there.”

The NRI report shows that forest land represented about 60 percent of the land converted throughout the 1982 through 2007 period. Washington’s urban area now totals about two million acres.

Carlson says that cultivated cropland in Washington declined from 6.9 million acres in 1982 to 5.3 million in 2007, a 22 percent decrease. However, during that time landowners enrolled environmentally sensitive cropland in the Conservation Reserve Program and there were increases in non-cultivated cropland such as orchards and vineyards.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net.