New West Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
On Nov. 15, President Obama will receive the report from the America’s Great Outdoors listening sessions, held across the country this summer to get public input in the creation of a conservation agenda for the 21st century. This report will guide the Administration’s efforts to conserve America’s natural resources and reconnect Americans to the outdoors. In the lead up to the report, the Making America’s Outdoors Truly Great blog series will highlight some of the threats our country’s natural resources face and key perspectives from states throughout the U.S. on how the Administration can build on existing programs to guarantee that America’s outdoors remain great for generations to come.
This is the second in the series. Also see: The Great Outdoors: Building and Improving Parks and Trails Must be Part of New Initiative.
People sometimes talk about farm living as the “simple life.” It’s true that there is an inherent simplicity in connecting to the natural environment by working the land everyday. But sustaining our working farms and ranches is anything but simple—requiring collaboration among communities, state and federal agencies, as well as public support.
The America’s Great Outdoors Initiative is a federal effort designed to help reconnect Americans with our natural resources and renew our commitment to preserving them for future generations. The national conversation it inspires can be vital to preserving our agricultural heritage for the health of our families, economy and environment.
Exciting efforts to protect working landscapes are happening nationwide. These collaborations among ranchers, local and federal government, conservationists and others have preserved thousands of farms and ranches, and are truly a model for the rest of the country.
“Americans have taken extraordinary steps to protect our land, water, wildlife and history for future generations,” Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said in April when launching the initiative, “but today the places we love face new challenges that require new ideas and new strategies to solve.”
Like Secretary Salazar, I, too, have a family tradition of farming and ranching. My family operates a corn and soybean farm in McLean County, Illinois. I understand how working the land helps to strengthen our personal connection to our natural heritage and inspires a stewardship ethic in our children.
Regrettably, the farmlands I grew up appreciating are under assault. Every minute of every day, America loses more than an acre of farmland. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, over 4 million acres of active agricultural land were developed—an area nearly the size of the state of Massachusetts.
We’re challenged by the loss of working lands at a time when we are asking more and more from this land than simply the production of food and fiber. Farmers and ranchers worry about losing our livelihoods and family legacies, but every American should be concerned about the loss of our working farm and ranch lands.
In addition to feeding and clothing our families, America’s farms and ranches enhance the quality of life in our communities, provide fiscal stability for local governments, and bolster the national economy. These lands also help control flooding, protect wetlands and watersheds, maintain air and water quality and provide food and cover for wildlife. New energy crops like biofuels and wind even have the potential to replace foreign oil.
The federal government can be an active partner and contributor to the efforts of private landowners, states and communities to secure and manage this resource base for future generations. We welcome the leadership of President Obama, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Secretary Salazar to raise public awareness about the value of our working farms and ranches. With this leadership and full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, farm bill conservation and other partnership programs that protect our land and water, we can sustain our agricultural heritage and natural resources, and inspire the next generation of stewards.
Jon Scholl is the president of American Farmland Trust, a conservation organization dedicated to saving America’s farm and ranch land, promoting environmentally sound farming practices and supporting a sustainable future for farms. Since its founding in 1980 by a group of farmers and citizens concerned about the rapid loss of farmland to development, AFT has helped save more than 3 million acres of farmland from development.
Conserving agricultural lands and open space is good for the national bottom line, and psyche, in our lifetime and down the line. Simple as that. If Dave doesn’t get it, it’s because he doesn’t want to. Self-sufficiency, stewardship, and planning for the future are conservative values. What’s so threatening?
Come on, Dave, it’s not all bad and you know it. This is a bi-partisan issue supported by just about everybody except the cranky fringe ideologues. Why the knee-jerk?
First, food security is a real issue. It has geo-political, health and quality of life ramifications. Where do the best apples and veggies come from? What about meat?
Second, eating locally — and maintaining the ability to make that choice — just makes sense. It doesn’t stop others from buying what they want at the supermarket. But when energy costs get so high that flying produce and bottled beverages across the globe is cost-prohibitive, we’ll be thankful for the patriots who thought ahead and conserved some local farms. That’s going to happen, the only question is when. Plus good local stuff tastes better, a lot.
Third, ag and open space lands provide all sorts of economic and harder to quantify values even if they’re not being farmed and ranched every year at full capacity. Wildlife habitat, water quality, scenery, recreation — the list goes on. Most important is that civilization depends on healthy productive soils.
What made the Louisiana Purchase one of the most brilliant moves by any politician, ever? We got the bread basket of North America because Jefferson was willing to invest money in land for the nation’s future. It’s still a good idea today.
You can’t grow food in a strip mall parking lot. You can live without gasoline, but clean air and water and productive soil are necessities of life. From a bio-diversity perspective, they ain’t making land like they used to. It’s getting scarcer all the time, so why not do what we can to set aside a good chunk of what’s left.
Finally, I’m no expert, but the idea of the conservation easement is that the landowner gets roughly the equivalent in tax benefits and cash when the easement is negotiated — as could have been earned by selling out to developers. It makes sense because society benefits from the easement protecting the land.
What if the owner settles for a little less because they’d rather not see another sub-division? Well, that’s got value to the landowner as well. Who didn’t grow up next to a vacant lot, orchard, or farm that’s now a bunch of look-alike houses on cul de sacs? How many of those farmers wish they had the option of conserving the land as a legacy?
The U.S. is not running out of farm land and the percentage of food costs in transportation is tiny relative to the cost of cultivating and growing, and refrigerating the food. The locavore movement is a thriving niche market based on the false assumptions that local food is more sustainable, more ethical, and more nutritious, and less poisonous, but will never amount to more than 20% of total food Production and consumption in the U.S.
Subsidize farms, but not auto manufacturers, is that it?
As a small farmer I can tell you that with my local farm sales there is no refrigeration costs (because I sell fresh – not “fresh”), I don’t need the huge amounts of fertilizer that agribusiness uses because I don’t pulverize and pound the fertility out of the land, and that cultivation is minimal when you grow green manures and don’t bare the ground for half the year. The U.S. may not be running out of farm land but it is definetely running out of soil. Every year millions of tons of topsoil is eroded into the gulf of mexico itself. the locavore movement is not a niche market in any sense – people from all economic, ethnic, social etc groups buy my food and my business is expanding about 50% every year, and the only reason transportation of food is not as high as it should be is because the subsidy that is paid to the energy sector by way of deferred health/pollution costs is not figured into that sector of the economy…and eating locally is only a solution if you are eating food that is produced in a sustainable way. Sorry Mickey, sustainable is a real word and it has real meaning and the meaning is that a given peice of land is not mined for food and will keep producing for many years. You obviously have never tried or succeeded in producing food sustainably. I have, its called a closed system – waste, energy, labor stay and or are produced locally and are recycled.