Pressure Easing on
Farmland
Conversion
Stewart Truelsen
The Great Recession had many economic
consequences, most of them bad, some still lingering,
but the recession also helped slow the conversion of
farmland to development. Typically, when farmland
is developed it is turned into housing tracts, shopping
malls, roads, other public works projects, golf courses
and the like.
All of these activities were impacted by the recession.
Single-family housing starts peaked at 1.7 million on an
annualized basis in 2006. They are just now returning
to the 1-million mark. Retail construction suffered
a similar fate. New shopping center construction
plummeted in 2009, and 11 percent of retail space was
vacant. A recovery finally began last year. Recreational
development also declined. According to the National
Golf Foundation, more golf courses are closing than
opening. A little more than a dozen 18-hole courses
opened in 2013, while 157 closed.
National Resources Inventory,
a survey conducted every five
years, but a mid-cycle release
reported that the annual loss
of farmland to development
was down 38 percent from the
period preceding the recession.
At this point, the nation
has around 300-million acres
of prime farmland. This is
farmland best suited to grow
a crop because of soil quality,
growing season and water
supply. Not all farmland that is
developed is prime farmland,
thank goodness, but over a 25year stretch, every state lost
some of its prime farmland to
development.
Now that economic growth is taking hold, does it
mean that farmland conversion will accelerate? Not
necessarily. Times have changed. Prime farmland is
much more valuable today than it was in 1980, when
farmland preservation first became an issue.
Since then, federal, state and local programs were
added to as