Report outlines dramatic loss of U.S. farmland between 1992-2012

By Sarah Gonzalez, Director of Communications and Digital Media

Almost 31 million acres of agricultural land were lost to development between 1992 and 2012, according to a new report entitled Farms Under Threat: The State of America’s Farmland issued by American Farmland Trust (AFT).

AFT, which advocates for protecting U.S. agricultural land, noted in its assessment that this loss over the course of “less than one generation” included almost 11 million acres of the land best suited for intensive crop production.

“This is land where the soils, micro-climates, growing seasons, and water availability combine to allow intensive production with the fewest environmental impacts,” noted the report published May 9. “These precious and irreplaceable resources comprise less than 17 percent of the total land area in the continental United States. Their conversion was equivalent to losing most of California’s Central Valley, an agricultural powerhouse.”

The analysis assigned values to reflect the productivity, versatility and resiliency of agricultural land for cultivation, which the study termed the “PVR value.”

AFT found that the median PVR value of agricultural land lost to development was 1.3 times greater than the median PVR value of land that stayed in production. “These cumulative and irreversible losses of most productive, versatile and resilient lands have serious implications for agricultural productivity and domestic food security,” the report noted.

By 2012, only 324 million acres, or about one third of agricultural land, had PVR values with optimal soil characteristics and growing conditions, the AFT study found. The loss of high-quality land means cultivation shifts to land with lower PVR values, causing more significant environmental impacts, the report said. For example, from 2001 to 2011, the Midwest lost cropland to urban expansion in the eastern part of the region and gained cropland at the expense of rangeland in the western part, the report noted. “Keeping this new, more marginal cropland in cultivation is dependent on the use of irrigation and the High Plains aquifer. Long term, this trend could be detrimental to the economy, the environment and food security.”

Notably, the report also points out that while urban sprawl is responsible for most of the loss in farmland, a full 41 percent of the lost acres came from development in rural areas. “Taken together, the loss of agricultural land to development is far more widespread than previously documented – nearly double previous estimates,” AFT noted.

Development is just one of many threats to high-quality farmland, the report noted. For example, beginning farmers and ranchers face major barriers to land ownership, including high land costs and limited access to capital. Between 2007 and 2012, the report said, the number of beginning farmers declined by 20 percent. Meanwhile, it said 40 percent of the nation’s agricultural land is owned by people over age 65 and soon will need to change hands or be sold.

“In coming years, how millions of acres of agricultural land transfer and to whom – along with the agricultural infrastructure and assets associated with them – will fundamentally impact the structure of agriculture and rural America for generations to come,” the report stated.

AFT’s suggested strategies to “save the land that sustains us” include:

• A “dramatic increase” in federal investments in the USDA Agricultural Conservation Easement Program – Agricultural Land Easements;
• Fully funding USDA agencies that help monitor changes to U.S. agricultural resources, including the NRCS’ National Resources Inventory, the National Agricultural Statistics Service’s Tenure, Ownership and Transfer of Agricultural Land survey and the Economic Research Service’s Major Land Uses reports; and
• Enacting a federal agricultural land protection platform that includes a national designation for agricultural lands with high PVR values, and affording them special protections.

As Congress works toward passing the 2018 farm bill, the NGFA has been working on conservation reforms that prevent good, productive land from being idled under the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The Association is encouraging senators to support reforms to the CRP called for under the “Give Our Resources the Opportunity to Work” (GROW) Act. USDA data show that more than 25 percent of the 24 million acres now idled in CRP consists of productive farmland. In addition, federal CRP rental rates often exceed local cash rental rates, competing with beginning farmers trying to access land – an issue that also would be addressed by the GROW Act. Learn more here.