I have lived most of my life on the edge of the city of San
Diego and have become very familiar with city and suburban life. Even though I
have lived in the suburbs I have not been totally isolated from the thought of
rural America. I have a horse and have had chickens, goats, and vegetable
gardens at my house most of my life, and have always liked the thought of rural
lifestyle even though I live around millions of people. My high school even had
the largest agricultural program in the county and it kept growing even though
many other schools were loosing their programs. Agriculture has always seemed
to be to there and has seemed to be a major part of the American lifestyle,
because that is what most of the country was founded on, but what I didn’t
really realize is that how much it is disappearing and how America may no
longer be the premiere farming country it used to be.
America is
loosing its precious farmland everyday to modern development, which can be very
bad for not just Americans but also the world. According to American Farmland
Trust the United States is loosing an acre of farmland or ranches every minute
to urban development, and that in a five year period between 2002-2007 4,080,300
acres of agricultural land were turned into developments which is roughly the
size of the state of Massachusetts. In the past twenty-five years the states
that have lost the most agricultural land were Texas, Ohio, North Carolina,
California, and Georgia with a combined total of 4,244,000 acres. It’s shocking
how much rural land has been developed and how much food production was
probably lost from it. Urban sprawl is starting to become out of hand in this
country and farmers are no longer able to afford their land, which is so
precious to developers. A lot of modern
farmers that have had their land for many generations are starting to wonder if
they should fight off development and stay on their land or take the money and
move to a city where there is “a better lifestyle”.
Even though
what is happening to America’s rural land may seem bleak there has also been
people that are there to help protect farmlands. For example California
Rangeland Trust is a nonprofit organization founded by ranchers in 1998, to
conserve the open space, natural habitat, and stewardship provided by
California’s ranches. In their sixteen year history California Rangeland Trust
has permanently saved over 275,000 acres of ranch land from being developed.
Also schools like University of California Davis have been doing projects to
help promote and protect California’s nature preserves. Furthermore smaller
groups like Friends of the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve helped to save the
Fiscalini Ranch, which is on the coast of Central California, from being turned
into a housing complex instead into a open nature preserve owned by the state
of California so that future generations can enjoy pristine open coastline. The
Williamson Act in California is what helped turn the Fiscalini Ranch into an
open-air preserve. The goal of the Williamson Act enables local governments to enter into contracts with
private landowners for the purpose of restricting specific parcels of land to
agricultural or related open space use. In return, landowners receive property
tax assessments that are much lower than normal because they are based upon
farming and open space uses as opposed to full market value.
As America moves into a
postindustrial society it is also moving away from its farming heritage. Cities
and suburban neighborhoods are growing way past their boundary lines and new
types of developments and designs need to be reconsidered before America is no
longer able to grow its own crops. One way I propose reconsidering development
is to make cities a lot denser. Los Angeles already has enough land within its
boundaries instead of sprawling outward the city needs to grown upward, and
that goes for every city in America. I really do enjoy city life, but that
doesn’t mean that the whole country needs to be turned into a giant metropolis.
It is important that America keeps its farmland both environmentally and
economically.