Who's Going to Grow Food

Who's Going to Grow Food

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Agricultural land real estate lawyer Kim Maloney and I were talking about the decision on the part of farmers to sell their properties to residential and commercial real estate developers, particularly where existing farms butt up against cities. “That makes the farmer more rural but makes the farm he is selling more urban. “Yes I have seen that happen in a couple of circumstances where maybe there is a housing development going on in a certain area and they want to expand that development on to farmland. If the farmer wants to continue to farm, there may be opportunities to buy other property and to benefit from the sale of the closer in city land. What’s your take when you look at the bumper stickers in Idaho saying… No farms, no food? Are you seeing a lot of farm sales to developers? I’m not sure of the statistics but I saw a chart recently that is put out by the USDA. It’s a chart that shows the entire United States and shows the portions of the country that are devoted to agriculture versus cities and I thought it was pretty fascinating at how much land is still devoted to agriculture and the city land is really pretty compacted.”
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