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- Info
Prospects for a sustainable agriculture in the northeast
| Author: |
Pfeffer, Max J.; Lapping, Mark B. |
| Date: |
1995 |
| Periodical: |
Research in Rural Sociology and Development. JAI Press inc. |
| Abstract: |
New opportunities for profitable production of specialized farm commodities have emerged in areas where agriculture was previously expected to disappear. Farmers in rural/ urban fringe areas who have retreated from production of low value staple commodities for mass markets have been successful in capturing specialty markets in geographically expanding urban areas. Farms that have been successfully adapted to the urbanizing environment are also considered an amenity and an environmentally sound land use by ex-urbanites who seek a rural ambience in moving to the rural/ urban fringe. While agriculture in these areas is considered desirable by many people, its potential is limited by continued development pressures and demands for the conversion of farmland to non-agricultural uses. Our objective here is to critically evaluate recent developments in rural/ urban fringe agriculture in the Northeastern United States in terms of sustainability. The search for a sustainable agriculture is largely a response to environmental and economic problems in the contemporary agricultural system. This system has encouraged specialization and concentration of production at the national, regional, and farm levels, but emerging problems have led to demands for significant changes in farm organization. Discussions of sustainable agriculture call for diversification of production at all levels, the pursuit of new market opportunities, and a return to greater local and regional self-sufficiency in food production. The Northeast is the most densely populated area in the nation, and offers a variety of possibilities and pitfalls for the development of a sustainable regional agriculture. We begin by situating Northeastern rural/ urban fringe agriculture within the context of large-scale economic changes, and then move on to consider the way metropolitan agriculture has evolved under these circumstances. After we lay out some criteria for sustainability, we present specific agricultural trends in the 1980s and then report how planners working on farmland preservation in the region see these changes playing out in the future. We also discuss some of the problems that must be overcome if agriculture, in some form, is to survive in this setting and we consider some policies that have been implemented to address these problems. We conclude with an assessment of the possibilities for, and scope of, sustainable agriculture in rural/ urban fringe areas of the Northeast. |
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