American Farmland: A Disappearing Resource. from Jacob Hill on Vimeo.
By Jacob Hill/Farm to Fork
“I’d rather see corn growing than houses,” said Bowling Green farmer Frank Stagner when asked for his opinion on the housing developments surrounding his property. Stagner, 81, has been farming in the area for the majority of his life.
In the last two decades, the area has seen multiple developments bumping up against his property. The increased traffic on the smaller roads has made it difficult for Stagner to get out to town during the morning rush. Instead of the rural countryside he grew up in, he now sees rows and rows of housing.
Stagner’s situation is not unique. The amount agricultural land in America has been steadily decreasing during the last half of the 20th century. According to the United States Department of Agriculture’s Census of Agriculture, in the last 30 years alone the country has lost more than 92 million acres of farmland. Housing is part of the problem. According to the American Farmland Trust, an advocacy group for farmland conservation, based in Washington D.C., the average acreage per person for new housing almost doubled over the past 20 years, with 55% of developed land since 1994 consisting of housing plots of more than 10 acres.
Western Kentucky University Professor Stephen King, who specializes in agriculture economics, said that the loss of farmland follows a cycle. As cities grow, the price of land around the urban area increases, until eventually it becomes in the farmer’s best financial interest to sell the farmland. Then, the farmer must either move further away from the city to start the process again or pull out of the business entirely.
This process seems to be reversing itself in the now all-but-defunct rust belt cities who now find their industrial engines grinding to a halt. City Officials in Detroit have put forward a plan to turn much of the empty city into reclaimed farmland.
According to an article in the Detroit Free Press, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has pledged to demolish 3000 homes by the end of the year and 10,000 by the end of his term in 2013. This demolition, along with relocating isolated families, is intended to centralize the resources of the city.
A city built to support nearly 2 million residents is now home to around 800,000, according to the article.
Not all of the reduced farmland is due to increased development. Much of it is simply due to better technology and more efficient methods. There are fewer farmers and larger farms, which leads to cheaper labor costs and more profit. According to King, the process of consolidation of farmland has been going on for much of the 20th century. He illustrated the point using an example of four neighboring farms, each with a manager being paid $60,000 a year. If one farmer buys all four farms he can hire a single manager to run the now consolidated farm and pay that one manager $80,000 a year, resulting in a higher profit margin.
Doug Frint, a real estate agent based in Bowling Green, says that much of the problem is increased land costs. The majority of his work is with farmland. Frint grows a small crop of blueberries on his own property, saying that modern farming is hard to do without a large amount of land and capital, so many are turning to specialty crops for profit.
An avid sportsman, Frint finds that many of his clients are seeking land for hunting and fishing. People seeking land for outdoor pursuits are another factor in raising the cost of rural land.
Whether through consolidation or being overrun by development, the trend of disappearing farmland will probably continue.
Jacob
Jacob Hill is a Photojournalism student at Western Kentucky University.