POPULATION SPRAWL VS FOOD PRODUCTION

When my wife and I were first married 40 years ago, we used to take Sunday drives from our home in suburban Maryland up towards Frederick and then west to Middletown and Boonsboro. Middletown was then a very small town about 50 miles from Washington, DC. I used to think how beautiful the Middletown Valley was. It was basically all farmland, with green pastures, cattle and cornfields, few roads and few people.

Today Middletown is just another suburb of Washington, DC, full of houses and townhouses, roads, automobiles, and thousands more people. It has become a sad reminder to me that we have a developing problem in the United States associated with farmland and our food supply. The following is just an overview of the problem as I see it. Hopefully, the government will address this issue in much more detail.

Per the United States Census Bureau, in 2000 the population growth rate in the U.S. was 1.22 percent. The current forecast by the Census Bureau indicates the growth rate will drop to .46 percent by 2050, but this still means that the population of the United States in 2050 will be 390 million people, and the food they eat has to come from somewhere!

Our U.S. farms produce 99.3 percent of our food supply, and about 1.2 acres of farmland is needed for each person in order to have the diversity we enjoy today in our food. Taking the population and farmland data above, by 2050 we will only have .897 acres of farmland per person; as we will undoubtedly increase the amount of ethanol production to supplement the gasoline needed for automobiles and other vehicles, thereby committing more grain (and the land to raise it on) to non-food use, the ratio of farmland-to-food production is only going to get worse.

The Population-Environment Balance (Balance) Organization indicates that in 2000 the United States had 470 million acres of arable land. They stated that we lose about 1 million acres of farmland each year due to urbanization, the addition of new roads and highways, and industrial expansion. In addition, about 2 million acres of farmland are lost each year to erosion, salinization, and waterlogging. Put this all together, and by 2050 we will have lost 120 million acres of farmland in this century alone.

In my opinion, the government needs to address this issue as soon as possible. We must ensure there are programs in place to improve the yield of our farms, and to reduce the rate at which we are losing farmland to natural causes and urbanization. It is clear that the ‘urban sprawl’ which has been taking place is going to have to stop, or at least be limited to land that is unusable for farming. Perhaps we need to put heavy taxes on the sale of farmland for non-farming use, or just not allow the rezoning of farmland to other purposes.

In addition, the era of the super-size suburban home has to come to an end. The mentality of Bigger and Bigger, which too many people have subscribed to, and which has spawned the so-called "McMansions", needs to be replaced with a willingness to return to more modest types of housing. Our farmland is too valuable to be eaten up merely to satisfy the greed of those who feel that 6,000 square foot houses are a necessity.

Are there any plans in place, or a way of monitoring our progress? I see and hear very little on this subject.