Why Protect Farmland—the Global Importance of Farmland Preservation
Most of us don’t think of land as a finite resource. The United States is certainly flush with land compared to other countries. However, not all land is created equally. Really productive land is made up of prime soils. Those are the soils identified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as having the best combination of physical and chemical characteristics for producing food, feed, forage, fiber, and oilseed crops and is available for these uses. There are only four areas in the world, consisting of about 3% of the Earth’s surface, that contain prime soils: the Ukraine, China, Brazil into Argentina, and the U.S. Corn Belt. Within the U.S. Corn Belt, the four largest states with prime soils are Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and Ohio. And within Ohio, prime soils exist primarily in the western half of the state. Ohio has 13,600,000 acres of farmland, 44% of which is considered prime. Prime soils are hugely important to global food supplies and being able to grow food efficiently on those soils is critical to feeding a growing population and minimizing impacts to the environment.
Despite having the best soils on Earth, Ohio is experiencing incredible pressures to convert these soils to other uses. According to the American Farmland Trust, Ohio lost 312,000 acres of farmland to commercial, industrial, residential, and utility uses between 2001-2016. Farm fields in our part of Ohio are generally flat with few obstructions making them easy to develop. Land in Ohio, according to some developers, is cheap compared to other parts of the country (tell that to a young farmer looking to buy land), which is another reason land is
converted. In the face of a changing climate the pressure to convert more of Ohio’s land is only going to increase.
Tecumseh Land Trust is in the business of preserving these prime soils forever and we don’t intend to slow our pace of preservation in southwest Ohio. However our state and local leaders really ought to be thinking of prime soils in the context of the finite resource that they are. Even if land can be converted back to agriculture after a development, research today is showing that those soils are never as productive as they were and require more inputs and resources in order to attain the pre-development yields. In 1997, Governor Voinovich created the Ohio Farmland Protection Policy by Executive Order because he recognized then that agricultural lands were finite and in need of protection. He understood that once converted these lands wouldn’t be as productive. Governor Voinovich made it the responsibility of all state agencies to consider their impacts to agricultural lands, not just the Ohio Department of Agriculture. Perhaps its time we all start getting back to this way of thinking.
— Michele Burns, Executive Director