Losing Farmland
Rural America Continues Losing Farmland Acres at a Rapid Rate
A recent report from American Farmland Trust shows an alarming trend of farmland disappearing from rural America. Angie Doucette (do-SET), the Midwest farmland protection manager with American Farmland Trust, says the number of lost acres is disturbing. She says there’s almost no chance of farmland getting put back into production once it’s lost.
“The strength of our economy takes a direct hit when high-quality cropland is lost forever to urban development. And unfortunately, this disproportionately impacts smaller farms that often serve markets with fresh produce, eggs, dairy, meat, and things like that. Those small and urban farms tend to be the ones that incubate our new farmers, so supporting our farm economy, and as we've seen, due to the impacts of the pandemic, they're instrumental in navigating food supply chain disruptions that we continue to see at our grocery stores across the nation. So, it's a pretty significant impact across many facets of the American lifestyle.”
Doucette says there are things we can do to preserve farm acres.
“Absolutely. The thing about ‘Farms Under Threat’ is we modeled three different scenarios: the runaway sprawl scenario, which is where things just kind of go significantly more rapid in development projection; or the current business-as-usual, where the current trends continue, and we see that 3.1 million acres are lost; but there's a different scenario, A Better-Built City. So, that’s to say that not all hope is not lost. The tools exist to save our region's farmland. So, by embracing ‘Smart Growth,’ permanently protecting agricultural lands, and supporting the next generation of farmers, we can save 1.8 million acres of farmland in this Better-Built Cities, Smart-Growth Urban Investment scenario.”
For more information, go to farmland.org.
