Around Charlottesville, I’ve seen many bumper stickers that read — when I read it I imagine Ron White saying it as he is impersonating his in-laws:
“Farmland lost is farmland lost forever.”
The bumper sticker bothers me for two reasons.
1 - I believe it’s false.
2 - I can’t figure out why the fuck it matters.
Lawtonfunk Says:
It means if you take away farmland for urban development, you’ve lost it forever. Probably because it is much less profitable to convert a strip mall into farmland than vice versa.
nobrainer Says:
I agree that right now it is probably more profitable to build something useful on a farm than to keep it as a farm.
But, if food remains cheap, as in there is bountiful supply, then why should I care?
And, if there is suddenly a supply shortage, I’m fairly certain that farmland that was “lost forever” will suddenly be farmland again.
Wha Says:
I’m pretty sure that though I havea relatively small yard, I can turn it into a graden if need be. One large enough that I could sustain on all veggie requirements for myself, and probably a few other home inhabintants or neighbors. I remember being small and the family having one. We always gave away a ton of stuff and mom canned stuff for the winter. With this in mind and as Nobrainer states, the fact that producing food products are abundant and cheap (relatively speaking) gives us little reason to be worried. When food becomes less abundant and therefore more profitable to produce when faced with other job/labor options, I’m pretty sure farms will reappear.
Lawtonfunk Says:
I was merely stating what I thought it was talking about. I am no way an authority on farmland. I grew up in the ‘burbs.
But I still say its true statement.
Lawtonfunk Says:
I was merely stating what I thought it was talking about. I am no way an authority on farmland. I grew up in the ‘burbs.
But I still say its true statement.
nobrainer Says:
I found this this morning:
Agricultural land cover accounts for more than 30% of the land base in Virginia with over 8 million acres under cultivation. Agriculture is the second leading industry in the Commonwealth, generating more than 10% of the Total Gross Product. The rate of loss of prime agricultural land in Virginia increased 76% in a recent five year period. If this loss rate persists for the next twenty years, more than 400,000 additional acres of Virginia’s prime farmland will be lost. An American Farmland Trust bumper sticker reminds us that ‘farmland lost is farmland lost forever’. Discouragingly, Virginia ranks 16th among states in the rate of loss of prime farmland (AFT). The Southern Environmental Law Center placed this into a perspective we can understand – “Virginia is, in effect, developing the equivalent of a farm each day.”
Let’s break out the calculators. We’re talking about four-hundred thousand acres, which certainly sounds like a lot, especially when you write it out like I just did. And there are 8 million acres of farmland. Which means the amount of land “at risk” is a whopping 5% of the total land. 5%. Five fucking percent. And that’s over 20 years. Excuse me while I freak out.
Well, you’ve got to eat something, and it all comes from farms, originally. What with the sun being the only input into the closed loop that is Earth.
That doesn’t help.