Rice harvesting in Fort Bend County, Texas (Photo by David Nance, courtesy of the USDA)
The US is not farming as much land. Kyle Norris reports farmland equal to the size of the entire state of West Virginia has been taken out of production in the last few years:
Transcript
The US is not farming as much land. Kyle Norris reports farmland equal to the size of the entire state of West Virginia has been taken out of production in the last few years:
The United States Department of Agriculture surveyed farmers from 2002 to 2007.
During that time farmers stopped planting more than 16 million acres of farmland.
In some cases farmers retired. Or they just decided not to plant crops. Or sold the land to developers in sprawling areas.
Don Buckloh is with the American Farmland Trust. He says what happens to farmland should be important to people.
“They should be interested in whether good farm land is remaining available to produce the food they’re interested in eating. And then secondly just how strong is agriculture in the community as an economic force.”
While less land is being farmed, the USDA says there are more farms. The survey counted 291,000 new farms during that time. Most of those new farms are smaller operations.
For The Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.