Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

What's happening to our farmland?
http://www.farmland.org/resources/fote/default.asp

Each year you have to drive a little farther out to find it. Slowed by
traffic, through tangled intersections, past rows of houses that seem to
have sprouted from the field, finally, you can see the bountiful farmland.
For the past two decades, we've paved over our farmland for roads, houses
and malls. Wasteful land use puts America's farmland at risk, especially
our most fertile and productive—our most valuable—farmland.

We're needlessly wasting one of the world's most important resources. Less
than one-fifth of U.S. land is high quality, and we are losing this finest
land to development at an accelerating rate. U.S. agricultural land
provides the nation—and the world—with an unparalleled abundance of
food. But farmland means much more than food. Well-managed farmland
shelters wildlife, supplies scenic open space and helps filter impurities
from our air and water. These working lands keep our taxes down and
maintain the legacy of our agricultural heritage. It makes no sense to
develop our best farmland. Instead, we have a responsibility to protect
this most valuable resource for future generations.

    * Every single minute of every day, America loses two acres of
farmland.
      From 1992-1997, we converted to developed uses more than six million
acres of agricultural land—an area the size of Maryland.

    * We lost farm and ranch land 51 percent faster in the 1990s than in
the 1980s.
      The rate of loss for 1992-1997, 1.2 million acres per year, was 51
percent higher than from 1982-1992.

    * We're losing our best land—most fertile and productive—the
fastest.
      The rate of conversion of prime land was 30 percent faster,
proportionally, than the rate for non-prime rural land from 1992-1997. This
results in marginal land, which requires more resources like water, being
put into production.

    * Our food is increasingly in the path of development.
      86 percent of U.S. fruits and vegetables, and 63 percent of our dairy
products, are produced in urban-influenced areas.

    * Wasteful land use is the problem, not growth itself.
      From 1982-1997, U.S. population grew by 17 percent, while urbanized
land grew by 47 percent. Over the past 20 years, the acreage per person for
new housing almost doubled; since 1994, 10+ acre housing lots have
accounted for 55 percent of the land developed.

    * Every state is losing some of its best farmland.
      Texas leads the nation in high-quality acres lost, followed by Ohio,
Georgia, North Carolina and Illinois. And for each of the top 20 states,
the problem is getting worse.