The problem of vanishing farmlands is becoming critical in America as bulldozers gobble up agricultural lands for development.
Roads, subdivisions and enterprlsesare taking over cropland at the rate of some four square miles a day, warned Sen. John A. Durkin, D-N.H. recently.
Durkin referred to an article in the New York Times by M. Rupert Cutler, assistant secretary ol’ agriculture. who said the natlon is “on the brink of a crisis in loss of farmland” that may soon undermine our ability to produce sufficient food.
“Visualize a strip of land a half-mile wide stretching from New York to California,” wrote Cutler. “That’s a million acres – the amount of prime farmland irreversibly lost to agriculture every year through urban sprawl.”
Cutler declared that Florida, “producer of half the world’s grapefruit and one-fourth of the world’s oranges, will lose all of its unique and prime lands in less than 20 years if the current conversion rate continues. New Hampshire and Rhode Island also are destined to lose all their prime agricultural land.”
Cutler quoted a national agricultural lands study being conducted by a federal inter-agency task force led by President Carter’s council on environmental quality and the department of agriculture. The survey projected “grave loose of prime cropland” in many states if development continues at the 1967-77 rate.
West Virginia will lose 73 percent of its prime farmland in less than a generation, according to the projection; Connecticut, 70 percent; Massachusetts, 51; Maryland and New Mexico 44; Vermont, 43; Utah 35; Virginia, 24; Washington, 23; and Pennsylvania, 21 percent.
California and New York, both key agricultural producers, will lose 15 and 16 percent, respectively, and New Jersey, 9 percent.
The problem also applies to the corn belt states in America’s heartland. Cutler quoted Allen Hidlebaugh, resource inventory specialist in the inter-agency task force, as saying;
“We anticipate a total 3.2 rullllon acre prime farmland loss inIowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Missouri combined if present trends continue to the year 2000.”
Leadership awareness of the problem is a step toward finding solution. Public education is vital plus acceleration of efforts already under way by government and private agencies and inventive ideas for diverting development away from choice farm lands.
Oregon and Wisconsin, Cutler noted, have sophisticated farmland retention programs under way. Most other states are attempting, with varying success, to protect critical lands. Zoning and referential taxation are applied widely… but often they merely delay rather than prevent development.
Florida’s state commissioner of agriculture, Doyle Conner accented the irreplaceable value of prime croplands in this statement:
“Every time a highway or retirement home ls built on farmland we increase the likelihood of our dependence on other nations for food. Already the U.S. is importing vegetables from Mexico and South America, today we are experiencing deprivation because of our dependence on foreign oil. Is the next deprivation food?”