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- Info
Farming on the urban fringe
| Author: |
Coughlin, Robert E. |
| Date: |
1980 |
| Periodical: |
Environment |
| Abstract: |
Metropolitan areas in the United States contain 20.2 percent of the nation's prime agricultural land and 76 percent of its population. Together with the ring of counties adjacent to them, these areas account for 51.7 percent of prime land. In recent decades population growth has been concentrated within metropolitan counties, and during the 1970s those counties just beyond the metropolitan boundaries have experienced rapid growth rates. This expansion of urban areas and the impact of spreading urban populations threaten a large proportion of the nation's stock of farmland. Historically, urban settlements have tended to be near prime farmland. While metropolitan areas contain only 16.7 percent of the nation's land, they contain 20.2 percent of the nation's prime agricultural land. A similar bias exists for metropolitan areas and adjacent counties taken together, which collectively contain 51.7 percent of the prime land but only 43.2 percent of all land. At the broad regional scale, therefore, the nation's prime agricultural land appears to be under somewhat greater pressure from urbanization than the nation's total stock of land. The annual loss of prime agricultural land due to urbanization is between 390,000 acres' and 760,000 acres. These losses, projected to the year 2000, suggest a further loss of between 2.8 percent and 5.5 percent of the nation's stock of prime land, as measured in 1975. To replace that loss, other prime land with "high or medium potential for conversion to cropland's could be brought into production. However, this reserve of land is relatively limited in supply (about 46 million acres). Between 21.2 and 41.3 percent of all prime land in reserve would be needed to replace the anticipated loss of prime farmland due to urbanization between now and the turn of the century! If the losses due to urbanization are projected over a longer time period- one more appropriate to the evaluation of the loss of a resource that is vital to life and finite in supply and if the remaining prime land is compared with increasing world population, whose demands for food are also rising because of increasing incomes, it becomes obvious that the loss of prime land due to urbanization presents a serious problem. |
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