A new poll indicates the majority of voters are concerned that farmland is being paved over by urban sprawl. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
A new poll indicates the majority of voters are concerned that farmland is being paved over by urban sprawl. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.
The American Farmland Trust conducted a nationwide poll that found
53-percent of the nation’s registered voters want federal dollars spent to keep farmland from being developed. That was nowhere as true as in five midwestern states where sprawl is a pressing issue. In that region 73-percent of those surveyed agreed farmland should be protected from sprawl. Ed Minihan is the Director of the Upper Midwest Field Office of the American Farmland Trust.
“The general populous sees this. You can’t miss it. I mean, you just can’t miss it. And it’s pretty clear that the general public is far ahead of the politicians on this.”
Most of the midwestern states have not yet passed legislation to protect farmland from development. Across the nation, approximately one million acres of prime farmland are lost each year due to sprawl.