10-12 IAN Disappearing Farms

 It’s an age old subject we’ve covered many times and now there’s more. I’m David Sparks and I’ll be right back with the decline of the American farm. Here’s a quote from the Salt Lake Tribune: “For decades, farms in the fertile belt of soil along the Wasatch Front have been sprouting “For Sale” signs and growing housing developments. It’s simply a matter of economics. Houses are a better cash crop.

In the past decade alone, an estimated 500,000 acres of farmland have been taken out of production. Since 1970, Utah has lost farmland equivalent to the combined acreage of Delaware and Rhode Island.

 Douglas R. Jones is the  Executive Director of Growers for Biotechnology, is a former State of Idaho Congressman and is also a farmer: “You could change the name of the newspaper and insert Ada County and have the same story. It’s going on heree and to a lesser extent in other parts of the state. If you are a farmer in Ada and/or Canyon counties, with the development that has occurred here, when you get ready to retire the return on that sale to a developer is significantly higher than selling it to a neighbor farmer who might want to keep it in crop production.” So where does it all end up? Hunger?