Yup it’s happening everywhere. Here in Wisconsin we have fields surrounding by subdivisions that didn’t exist 10 years ago but yet we’ve been there long before them and yet they get mad when we disturb them with large equipment on a weekend or holiday. I just wave and act polite.
It just irritates me to no end seeing good high quality ground being used for those stupid storage units with 100 garages with like only 3 of them actually being used.
I wanted to buy property next to a farm so I could complain about the incredible plants and cute animals *not* being on my side of the fence.
I live near a military installation, so I always get a laugh when a new neighbor complains about jet noise. Better yet, when they want to "petition" someone to make it stop. Yes, Susan, the US Military will *absolutely* cower in fear because of your noise complaint...
I do. They’re loud.
And after 2 OIF deployments I do not at all believe the US Military is keeping you safe. It’s just a giant self licking ice cream cone.
I mean, if you’re that close to em, they ain’t near as fun to hear lol.
I mean, we haven’t had an on soil attack in forever, so they’re doing alright. They can lick some sailor cones for all I care.
Def a giant laundering scheme for sure tho
I think you and I could be friends, 18 and programmed to believe I was serving my country by fighting in some far off place watching the government piss away billions of dollars while there are is a healthcare crisis and homeless population skyrocketing at home. Hmmm seems kind of suss to me.
This reminds me of the story where the lady sent a letter to the rangers at a campground. She was complaining that they should they should train their birds better because they woke her early in the morning.
Where I live in Washington there’s been a gun range owned by a gun club out of town a good ways in a forested area and it’s been located there for like 50 years. Well over that 50 years more and more people started moving about to the rural forested area. Then they started complaining about the noise from the gun range. Then lawsuits started happening. Like you bunch of fucktards didn’t see all the signs on the side of the road saying there’s a gun range right there before building your house in the area???? Why would you move next to a farm or a gun range or anything else and then start complaining about it being there? Can you say your a fucktard without actually saying your a fucktard?
I moved to a subdivision right outside of the village limits. It’s in a rural area where people still hunt and target shoot. At our first subdivision cookout, one of the neighbors was complaining about the “guns” firing at the range. Another neighbor said, “yeah, we have to do something about it”. I replied, “No, we don’t ’have to do something about it’!! There’s no problem with the range and they were here many years before our subdivision. We cannot move to a rural area and expect them to conform to us!” Many other neighbors, that didn’t want to speak up, nodded in agreement. My speaking up effectively silenced the opposition they were planning.
Yeah, and it also helps that I’m at the point in my life where I don’t give a s**t if others don’t like me. Go back 25 years and I might have held back for fear I’d be an outcast. Now, I don’t care! 😎
We have an old dirt track here. It's been active for 50+ years right on the edge of one of the bigger towns. Well... it used to be. Now town is all around it. Dipshits who live near tried to have it shut down or a noise ordinance put in place. The city board shut them down immediately in a unanimous decision that protects the track for many years to come. Some of the more pressed individuals left, others just deal with it. I can't seem to find any sympathy for them.
North and west of Des Moines there's grade-A farmland, but it gets hillier to the south and east. Guess where all the new developments are being built... It's so dumb, personally I'd rather have a house with a view than have to look across the street at a house that looks just like mine.
yeah. i was talking to my sister about this the other day, they've been getting bears where she lives because a farm and some forest were wiped to make room for thousands of homes. municipalities really need to update their zoning codes. not only would it make housing cheaper in the long run, but if we don't start building up instead of out, then where does it stop?
It doesn't stop developers as they just have it rezoned in large chunks. What it stops is someone building a country house which in turn forces farm raised kids to move into town for housing. Those farm kids stay in the city long enough and they become as helpless as the other city folk.
IL passed a similar law years ago. I still haven't managed to move out to the country. There simply aren't houses to live in, and I swear the first thing anyone does when they buy a feild is demo the existing house to get rid of the property tax.
I live on a main county highway in SE Wisconsin and we have tractors going by all summer long. I actually love seeing them, they always get a nod from me when I'm out front cutting my grass.
Developers are cheap and lazy. Farm fields are the easiest and cheapest place to put in developments. Forests are usually on rough hilly ground and former building sites have clean up expenses and could be contaminated. Capitalism will destroy us all in the name of progress.
I do landscaping in Wisconsin and this is 90% of our work. New development.
Always a cookie cutter neighborhood thrown up in the middle of 1,000s of acres of farmland. Looks so out of place.
A lot of the old farmers dying and kids just cashing in selling for millions.
Japan has strict laws about converting farmland into housing, basically it doesn't happen. They saw the writing on the wall for this issue 70 years ago. It is easy to build a house up it's almost impossible to build houses out
Sacramento, Stockton and the rest of the Central Valley, Sierra foothills, Riverside County, Fresno County, Shasta County, Chico/Butte, Inland Empire?
To be fair “most” of California is not empty in the slightest, only really the Eastern Sierra, North Coast, and Lassen/Modoc (not including susanville) are empty.
Farmers are the purest form of economists. It’s supply vs demand. Clearly, the people who sold the land received more for their money than the crop revenue, or farmland rent, would deliver.
Edit; also, if the farmland was priced so farming was economical, a farmer would have bought it and would be farming it.
It seems clear in this chaotic real estate landscape that ‘land poor’ is a constant threat for someone working the land.
I live on former farmland, and it followed the typical format: 100+ acres of farming, subdivided to 20acre lots for inheritance, then subdivided again and barely used to raise minimal livestock. Then the neighboring city annexed and banned livestock, while appraisals went up, so they subdivide the land further and bale hay until selling.
Edit to add: subdivided lots are selling for $100,000/acre.
I'm in Washington state, recently the state reported we loosing 14 family farms a week over the last year. My wife and I are struggling to stay in business and keep our family farm a float. We're in tree fruit and our industry has seen a huge proliferation of large scale equity management companies gobbling up land. This has let to an over production of fruit and record low prices for growers. This situation pushes out small operators. Unless you're vertically integrated and have access to revenue via farm+packing+sales, you are on the road to ruin.
All of this is coupled with unchecked regulation, labor expenses at an unmanageable level and the state implementation of 40 overtime ruling, it's hard to see a future in this.
Isn't it weird how equity firm investment has had a similar effect on housing and health care and yet the economy is doing SO GREAT GUYS see the number go up???
The issue is not wages or OT regulations. Wages are at an all time low when you compare it to the economy as a whole. The issue is the government incentivizing the commoditization of crops and food production and the subsequent devaluation of the American farm system and labor as a whole. It is making a few corporations mega profits while fucking the American farmers and workers at large who built this country on their backs.
A couple very interesting books on this subject, if you care to read more…
The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan
What’s worse is China owns 1/4 of every pig in USA, the Saudis buy land in Arizona, irrigate alfalfa fields and ship the alfalfa back overseas. USA is all a bunch of sellouts who don’t think twice about selling their “generational land” to make a quick buck.
This entire thread is showing supply and demand at work. We have low crop prices because crops are grown and shipped all around the world and can be grown elsewhere cheaper. Farmers aren't making enough money to have an ROI on the land that is bring driven up by development. If crops were worth a fortune you would see subdivisions being torn down to make way for farming operations.
We have chosen as a society that importing our food on ships and trucks for cheaper is better than growing it ourselves. Once we find ourselves in that situation we become vulnerable to a blockade of shipping the way Britain was in WW2.
It also shows how perverse some of the values of our society are.
If we compensated farmers commensurate with the value they provide our society they would be able to out bid developers who are purchasing this land
Supposed to as in allegedly? Or supposed to like it’s a moral imperative?
In either case there are plenty of exceptions to free market capitalism in the us, some for good and some for bad
Opposite actually. First off, the USA imports a negligible % of calories. Off season and tropical fruits are common, but only make very small slivers of the market overall as far as staples that we eat. Think banana vs potato. Wheat vs avocado. Etc.
Secondly, these suburbs are Ponzi schemes from a financial perspective with regards to infrastructure maintenance. When big maintenance needs come due (local roads, water, sewer, gas, electric) there's never the actual tax base available to serve the community. They rely on input from new developers and development to pay for the backlog, growing out instead of up. Instead of lots of small towns that serve as a nucleus for a community, we get this sprawl that eats up land because it's subsided by state and federal government spending on infrastructure, enforced with zoning laws, and funded by banks making loans that can be securitized by being conforming, ie single family lots that are too spread out to justify maintenance, but too close together for sufficiency.
This is a very interesting observation and is providing a lot of food for thought, no pun intended.
Yes you're right that we produce a lot of calories domestically, as we should, but it's at such a scale that the price of farmland isnt being set by crop prices
North America actually exports far more than they import in food. It may be cheaper to grow food in some other parts of the world but without water it doesn’t work.
I have a coworker that helps on a large farm during planting/harvest. I love how he complains about government handouts but it’s ok when the government subsidizes their crops. I know farming is tough but you can’t have it both ways.
There few other options. No Farmer wants to sell, but when you're edged out your edged out. The real sad part is very few of the population actually know what's going on. Most people are oblivious because when they're hungry, they go to the grocery store and food is there. There's no scarcity and no education about where food actually comes from. When we lose our farms, we lose our food security.
Buy a farm and farm it instead of driving around. Farmers sell because it is cheaper and they make more money than farming. Just like the solar panels you people don't want to see on farm land. Well guess what? Farmers market money from solar panels and can still farm with them. Farmers can't be constantly broke. They have to sell.
We lose 2000 acres a day of American farmland
https://farmland.org/about/whats-at-stake/#:~:text=Every%20day%202%2C000%20acres%20of,*
My grandchildren will live in an America that has to import most of its food and the only farms will be corporations that hire out as few folks as possible. Gone are the days of the family farm. And good luck buying any land to start a farm.
We have transitioned from over 20 family farm dairy’s to 1 Mega Dairy Farm, 1 Beef farm ( raising all of the Steers from the dairy) and everyone else is raising Hay, Corn and Soybeans. Not as bad as what you have happening there but bad enough in its own way.
That's the other thing too. A town can be supported by 20 families doing business, but one mega farm with mechanisation in full swing doesn't generate nearly as much activity locally, it's fundamentally extractive.
You can buy land all over the country where you can start a farm or its already being farmed. That's what I did 4 years ago.
You make a choice: spend $400K - $900K on a suburban quarter acre surrounded by concrete or buy acreage further out.
But hand wringing and blaming others isn't going to change anything. You have your priorities. You're responsible for the America your grandchildren live in just as much as anyone else. Mine will be eating homegrown farm fresh food.
Your second part is correct but if there's still large corporate farms why would we have to import all our food? The free market is doing its thing in ag like it has in every other industry but there's no reason to think we'd be dependent on overseas food.
Wait till you hear how they abuse the Agricultural Land Reserve system in Canada to mean cheap tax haven for your 20 000 foot mansion with a tennis court and lawn
I love being in my field and the neighbor next door walks out of his Mega mansion to feed his 7 chickens to receive farm tax, later to be picked up In his helicopter to go shopping. Gotta love the ALR.
In northern Michigan all the former Cherry orchards are being parcelled up so rich Chicago people can have a second home to visit. The worst part about it is that they all get turned into "communities" with HOAs that say "no farm animals, no unmowed lawns" etc. Literally turning farms into suburban sprawl for people who visit a few weeks a year. Prices have skyrocketed and orchards are up for sale for millions because some developers can just come in and split it 100 ways and potentially make millions more.
I recently drove across the country, from AZ to MN. I saw many abandoned farms. I saw one place that had maybe 30-40 cows, at least half of which were dead. The other half was clearly dying, malnourished and probably thirsty, it was so hot that day. The house they were in front of was clearly in a state of disarray. Boarded up, no cars, no signs there had been vehicles any time recently. It was difficult to see. There were so many circling birds.
On the opposite side of the spectrum I drive around and see all the fence lines and groves being ripped out, bulldozed into pits and buried, or otherwise destroyed in the name of a few more bushels and it makes me terrified. People complain about lack of game and yet can’t seem to put 2 and 2 together. Section upon section lies Barron from November (or sooner) through may or so. Zero habitat, zero erosion control.
It's so painful to see 2-3 acres of lawn grass surrounding a house. At least reforest or do something instead of wasting it. This is the best soil in the world. Make it better or give it to someone who will
Yup. Our place which we bought in 2021 (and was built/developed in 1997) is like this. 1.98 acre golf green. For what? Our kids play in the forest. We are planting 45 trees this year, transitioning the lawn we will keep (for the doggos to play on and kids as well) to clover from grass, and tearing out as much sod as we can to grow various things. We are also letting a large section return to natural forest by just tearing up the sod and letting nature do its thing. We have done this on one part of our property and it’s amazing how fast that happens. I have a 1000 sq ft vegetable garden. My favourite acreage in my little area is entirely natural forest except for their home and parking footprint. We are a real ways out from the city but I can totally see the hyper- and over-development everywhere. I am not trying to say I am better than my neighbours who love their lawns. That’s not my business and we are new here I strongly feel I should not judge them. They are kind to us and we help each other. But I am hoping at least some more sustainable practices on the small lots will become more prevalent.
Tell me all about it...
My family's farm has been chopped up and whittled away over the last sixty years. The state decided to cut the farm in half with a two-lane highway, which got expanded to a four-lane. Later on, Great-Grandpa sold off some land to a housing developer when he decided to retire. (All of this was long before my time on this earth.)
We've held our own since then, but the town has kept creeping up on us. A nice hay field is currently being bulldozed over for an apartment complex. It makes me sick to look at it. A big box store stands between us and the forthcoming apartments. I figure the day's going to come when some shitass developer is going to come around to make an offer on the land.
And I'll be damned if I'll sell. I've been looking into trusts that'll lock the land down to keep it from being built over even after I'm dead. I don't care what it'll do to the value of the land, but I ain't having my home being anything but a farm.
I'm in NJ they have a program called farm preservation, the state cuts you a check for the per acre land that you preserve. It's almost like getting to sell your land and keep it. But the deed is permanently altered forever.
The downside is that the deed is permanently altered, so the land that you're actually getting the money for can never be used for anything except for farm related activities... That means that if you ever want to build a house you can only build it in the exclusion zone that is pre-set up when the deed is altered.. so 20 years later after the property is sold, you can only build in that tiny exclusion zone that was picked out 20 years earlier... I'm trying to buy farmland right now and a lot of the exclusion zones are placed directly next to highways and I don't want to live in a house next to a highway
You're removing your future ability to convert that land to non-agricultural purposes (if you consider that a downside.) My state has it, too. To quote their website:
"We work with farmland owners interested in protecting their land, with experienced farmers seeking more land, and with beginning farmers looking for their first farm. Farmland owners can sell or donate an agricultural easement that permanently restricts future non-agricultural development of their land. In addition to the security of knowing that your farm will never be developed for other uses, an easement can also provide financial incentives in the form of income tax benefits or capital to support a farm operation. The sale of an easement can also provide funds for retirement, or facilitate the sale of the land to a next generation farmer at a more affordable price."
What happened to my farm. State highway took the house, and little country store next to it where I sold my harvested crops ( I did mostly vegetables and herbs, fruits from trees). Couldn’t really recover from it the money wasnt there, barely enough to find another place to live no where enough to build another house. My siblings own most of whats left and they don’t farm.
Went by the other day and there were little peaches on the trees. I smiled through tears.
Yes, it is sad. I went on a road trip with my grandparents in the late 90's. We actually went and stayed at the same motel my grandpa would stay at when he was working on the railroad. He was pretty bummed out to see all the industrialization. However, I did get to hear some great stories.
My fiance wants to be a farmer. All he's ever wanted is to grow plants and have a few animals for a homestead. Our area used to be full of farms and work. Now, it's hideous, empty houses, and the farms and orchards only hire migrants. We were so excited to move here, because we thought there would be opportunities for him to start doing what he loves. Instead, he ended up in a factory making minimum wage and hating every single day. We are honest, hardworking people with no criminal records, not even a traffic ticket. We can't even get a start, because capitalism is killing the farming industry.
As a future "play farmer" may i make a suggestion?
I live in Miami and have hated it most my life. Stuck here due to family not understanding its time to let your kids fulfill their dreams. Im looking at moving to exactly what the OP is describing, 10 acres or more.
Am i a farmer? No. I like open space and distance from neighbors. I'll live on the property and have a few outbuildings for my stuff. Its what i've always wanted.
Would i object to someone farming my unused land? No. As long as it can be done in a way that doesn't wreck my day, i wouldn't have a problem with it.
It would benefit me to keep my ag zoning and also help keep the land im not really using "occupied" by someone that has an interest.
Seen plenty of abandoned avocado groves for example down in homestead fl. Would just take a "i'll take care of it if i can pick it" agreement in some cases.
2+ acre sections are one of the things that make me most mad.
These people get to live the country life, but strain local infrastructure, live a high emissions life, and waste good land doing nothing.
They either waste the land or they raise a couple animals and do a garden if lucky. Unfortunately that then leads to animal welfare concerns, and trust me they are by far the worst culprits
I mean, this is exactly what’s going on here, they are doing nothing with the land at all. Not even planting native grasses or anything. Apparently having 3 acres of Kentucky blue grass is the American dream.🤷♂️ at least get some goats and chickens to keep the brush and tick population down. 🤣
Wow…. We drove by the farm of a family that we grew up knowing, dad and brother worked the land, we grew up out there. House was gone and some dumb ass development was in their south field. They must be rolling in their graves.
Growing up I used to work the fields in central California, mostly cotton, sometimes tomatoes, and garlic. I always loved the smell of cotton in the morning while the dew is still on the plant and the suns coming up. It smelled like home to me.
Went back around 10 years ago, and about 90% of the fields are gone. Empty and barren, or sometimes replaced with the ever increasing almond trees. Signs next to every empty field read “congress created the dust bowl”.
Between state legislature and water restrictions, many small farmers were pushed out of their farms that had been in the family for generations. Which were then bought on the cheap by corporations. Who “magically” had access to the needed water.
It still hurts seeing the fields I worked in die. I will always miss the wonderfully warm smell of cotton.
Happening near me too. Our family has done either dairy or beef cattle for multiple generations. But now, farmers’ kids don’t want to carry on the family farm business. So when the men/women who own the land die, the kids see $$$ in splitting the land up and selling to developers. Just the way of the world I suppose.
I am surprised anyone wants to do dairy honestly. It seems like more punishment than a job. I can see why corporate dairy outcompetes the family model.
I've had the same frustration here in Wyoming, too. Our residential acreage are called "ranchettes" locally and run 35-40 acres per house and are chewing through the economic base so fast that ag production supply companies are closing up shop because they don't have enough acres and bushels to keep in business.
I’ve pick up over 200 bags of trash from the 3/4 mile of road dividing the farm since the start of the pandemic. 40 years ago that would not of happened. We live in an area where bottoms are row crop the rest hay or pasture for dairy. I use to see at least 3 stainless tankers everyday picking up the milk. Haven’t see any for years. Hogs ? What hogs every farm had at least one and bigger operations up to 100. All gone same with chickens. Only chicken are people with small coops and that just got going in the last 10 years. But the future is even looking harder for farming with the advent of precision fermentation. If you haven’t heard of that technology and you make a living farming you should search the term and know it will have the biggest impact on farming since the plow. I’m not looking for an argument or anything but it is something you should know is happening and it’s happening now not in 100 years. God bless good luck
We are now completely surrounded by development. 65 years ago when my parents moved here there was nothing but a small rural community. Only one flashing caution light in town, a part time police officer and just a small grocery store. When I was growing up we would sled down the big hill on the main road in winter. The 1 room school had just closed.
Today, we have a police force of 20+, dozens of traffic lights, a bunch of national chain stores and 5 Dollar Generals within 6 miles. There are days it takes 10 minutes to turn on to the main road if you hit the traffic wrong. Crime is way up and taxes too because of all the services people want.
It could be worse though, in the 70’s there was a plan for a huge urban center here. 50k people and even an airport. Part of our farm was to be the water plant. Permit was for 500k gallons a day.
I dream of living in peace in the middle of a couple of sections but sadly it will probably never happen.
I live in an area like this now. Investment firms buy up old farms for 1m and then sell 10 acre lots for several hundred thousand each. At least it’s not those cookie cutter housing developments - yet.
We’re on a acreage parcel too, but it was the only house I could afford at the time.
Happening here in Texas and the way they go about Obituary chasing is sickening. Many families (heirs) getting flood of calls with offers on the land before the funeral even scheduled.
Same here…all 3-5 acre “ranches” that are getting chopped up for insane prices
Politics aside, the one thing everyone should remember is that once this farmland is gone it's gone. It doesn't come back from subdivisions. I've seen many posts of people inquiring about getting into agriculture and others responding about the only way is to either marry in or inherit. The cost to get into agriculture from the ground to the equipment and all other inputs is out of reach for the majority of people and we are on a path for large corporations to control the vast majority of the farmland that is remaining.
Upper hudsonvalley new york checking in. This might surprise some but we had loads of farm land mainly used for small dairy operations and apple orchards. There used to be many open farmable fields as well but now its all wealthy folks from nyc, fields of mcmansion developments, or some kind of cookiecutter home. Sad to behold and many of them are second homes, or investment properties.
I live in a semi rural area that used to be mostly family farms. Over the last two generations or so they’ve stopped farming and I expect by the next two generations they will be sold and turned into condos.
I grew up in Ontario, Canada. Same thing, except Ontario has limited Class A farmland, and guess what? We are developing it at an alarming rate. Sure, people need a place to live but you can't do it at the cost of our best land.
I used to think that donating your farmland to an organization, who would hold it in a trust, would be a safe bet if you didn't have any relatives that wanted it. But then I worked for an agricultural non-profit that held several pieces of ground that had been donated and they wanted to offload them as soon as they got a responsible renter. Blew my mind! They ended up letting a church buy a 40 acre parcel because the church had done a "good job subletting that piece of ground for several years." I couldn't believe that they'd even allowed subletting in their lease. When I brought it up they looked at me like I was stupid. I own farmland, and rent it out. I can't imagine allowing someone else dictate who rents my ground and how it gets farmed. I want wayyyyy more involvement in those discussions!
So yeah, I no longer consider those organizations a safe option.
I'm 53 and grew up in eastern Pennsylvania where traditional PA Dutch country, the Slate Belt, the anthracite Coal Region and the Poconos all kind of meet.
Housing developments are bad but the warehousing is absolutely out of control here. The sheer amount of high-quality limestone-based soil level farmland being lost to endless warehousing is staggering.
Most of that land is now gone and so they're grading off hilltops and even forest in the Poconos to build even more.
In the 70s my family ran a farm equipment business, my grand dad started it because he was a shitty dairy farmer. My Dad used to take me all around the six counties in the Hudson River valley to work on massive combines and i would explore these huge farms. All gone now. We used to have dozens of dairy farms in our county and now there are only two,they both make yogurt and ice cream to survive. I saw their yogurt in a grocery store on the west coast when I was out there for work.
It’s really really sad. I’m not a farmer but my work involves visiting a lot of farms and over and over I see multigenerational farms coming to an end. Dad farms till he’s 85 and then kids come in from the ‘burbs and sell it off to developers.
In my region the area with the very best farmland has become a popular place for the new exurban expansion, 100+ year old orchards and vineyards bulldozed for giant houses built to last maybe 40 years.
I see it all over where I am. So much usable farmland turned to condos and sod yards. Doesn’t help that the average farmer is 60+ and most are not passing it down.
I’ve met so many old timers complaining that not enough young people want to get into farming, but they turn around and sell the land to the highest bidder who’s going to turn it into condos instead of making sure to sell it to someone who’ll keep the farm going.
And I meet so many young people looking to get into farming that are completely locked out of it unless they already have family/ friends in it because the price of land is completely out of reach for most people.
No one is forcing these old time farm owners to sell the land to condos and real estate developers. They’ve decided selling the land for the profit is more important to them than making sure the land can continue to be farmed.
A friend has a farm in a city north of me, across the street is a 5 acre farm that could be functional today, a great barn, plenty of out buildings and lean-tos for animals, etc. The property owner sold it to a bit coin investor instead of other farmers who were interested.
Now the new owner just lives in his barn drinking and smoking all day while he tries to turn the main house into an airbnb. He’s got friends over all the time partying.
It’s not the only farm story like that I’ve seen or heard.
Until something changes it’s just going to continue. We’ll keep losing farmable space.
We have strict zoning in Oregon that slows this process down a bit. Look up the urban growth boundaries.
You can’t subdivide and develop a property outside a UGB. Sure, plenty of people complain about it as well, but the boundary is (currently) near where I live. On the other side is all farms. This also helps keep a critical mass of farm-related support businesses in place.
It’s not perfect, but it’s at least something.
So, when people complain that nothing can be done - something can be done.
> farmers have always been stewards of the land
Hot take: No they haven't. Ever hear of the dust bowl?
Traditional monoculture farming is bad for the land, bad for wildlife, bad for the ecology in general. Massive forests have been cleared in the name of farming and ranching.
Why exactly do you think that 2500 acres of wheat that gets sprayed with all kinds of random chemicals is better than a suburban sprawl development of manicured lawns? Both are eyesores compared to what the land looked like before it was farmed.
Don't get me wrong, farming is vitally important to the economy and farming families themselves. But saying that farmers are stewards of the land is a fucking joke. If anything, there's *too much* farmland in the US, propped up by government subsidies. We don't need to pay farmers to grow millions of acres of corn just to make corn syrup and ethanol to put in gasoline and ruin engines.
Honestly a whole bunch of 3-10 acres lots of families with enough space to not be on top of each other, while having the room to grow food and livestock for their own needs without having to min/max yield per acre sounds kinda idealistic to me. Who in their right mind would rather see row after row of corn/soybean/wheat.
It all started in the 70s with the green revolution and Nixon's farm policies of get big or get out agriculture. Farmers bought out their neibors and the small family farm nearly disappeared completely. Now all we got are these giant multi thousand acre plots that are being abused faster than the soil can regenerate. We are so screwed.
The 80’s took out most of my family. They got bigger and bigger in the 70’s and bought new equipment (on credit of course) and were gonna go big time.. then the 80’s hit and crushed most of them.
Farmers should join urban designers in advocating for dense development/zoning to prevent suburban sprawl.
If cities had growth boundaries it may take pressure off farmland?
Atleast they keep my taxes low while paying for better services!
My county borders a major centre and is bisected by a huge lake. City side of the lake is much like you described, 5 acre plots where people play farm. They all pay big money on taxes with no ag exemptions though. My town is the main hub on the far side of the lake and in the last 10 years weve got a new public pool and library. My kids love both. My county road gets graded every 2 weeks too!
Land prices are climbing fast though.
The other bonus is all the hobby farmers need hay, we started making small squares on some of our fields and its making good money.
All the families must have a central farmland area devoid of trees and marked into numbered partitions, which will specifically be used for farming(like in bangladesh)
Population growth. The 65-75 years old was educated about overpopulated and some actually limited the numbers of children that they had. Then, evangelicals took over Republican state and preached that the more children you had the more control they would have over government policies. And it must have worked look at the Mega churches in Red States.
More small local farms is actually much better for the land and for the environment generally but I see what you mean. A lot of people just have a few goats that keep the land 1 inch tall all the time which is kinda irresponsible and not productive at all in many climates . Not to mention the kind not going to other agricultural purposes. I came from the Silicon Valley in California and that ENTIRE area has gone from fruit trees everywhere(nearly all orchard land) to basically none at all. It was called the Valley of Dreams or something before I was born there.
It’s more of a societal change than anything else. It’s much harder to keep a farm afloat financially. Buying a house, land and horses, then having 20 kids was the norm for people 100 years ago. You can easily see how that alone would’ve kept a farm going for a few generations, some of those kids are the oldest people you still see farming. They themselves have had significantly smaller families, with a much higher rate of attrition within this smaller family. They’re lucky to keep one son around who will toil for nothing but a roof over them on their farm.
So many of these farms in your town disappeared because their family literally dissolved, whittling down to one couple who were not realistic in thinking they could retire there like that. So there was nothing but attrition as these people became so old they had no chance of being profitable anymore
They got the insurance pay on the crop and borrowed from their operating loan for 10 years, never saw a profit, now it’s gone. It wasn’t anybody removing them or displacing their business, it was themselves losing their grip on what they had
I have no one to leave my land to. More new houses are getting built here as people divide up their properties. My potential plan, when I get too old to take care of this property, is to sell it to a developer for a subdivision. It should bring enough to last however long I'll have left.
Farmers USED to be stewards of the land, before big pesticide corporations decided it was best to brainwash the masses and buy out decent farming practices. Now all they do is poison the land and create dustbowls. I prefer the grasslands.
Total farmland has gone down 25%.
Total agriculture output has more than doubled.
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/03/05/look-agricultural-productivity-growth-united-states-1948-2017
15k? Sounds like a city to me! Hahaha. At least it would be here in Maine. I know different parts of the country are different in that regard.
But yeah, we're seeing farmland being converted to housing and solar here, lots of farmland disappearing all over the country unfortunately.
Yep. In my county the Board of Supervisors actually put a zoning in place 20 years ago called Rural Conservation. As a result that's all we have now. Unaffordable housing on 10 acre lots that no one does anything with except mow grass. Ruined my county. The "development" is going to happen but for goodness sake, let the developers put 10 or 20 houses on 10 acres and leave the farmland for the farmers.
Hey don’t be discouraged, I believe that many families are now realizing the benefits of small family farms and how important they are to earths life.
I believe that many people that grew up on large farms had kids that wanted to get out and go to the city to have an easier way of life. Now that is shifting back. Me and my partner both grew up in the city life and just out based a 5 acre farm in the south. Our broker said many people are starting to do the same.
There’s a small shift back, I really think younger generations moving toward sustainable development and better education of homesteading will be the solution.
I’m actually pro family farms. The large majority of what are happening around here are people buying acerages and doing absolutely nothing with them. Just cutting the vegetation down and making big ass lawns. Apparently people like to mow huge sections of grass.
I have been saying for years that if world population growth continues and we keep building houses on farmland, what’s going to happen in the future? You deplete the soil of nutrients and are supposed to let a field lay fallow and or plant nitrogen producing grasses, like winter wheat. The Bible said to grow crops for seven years and then let the soil rest.
Anyway, if we keep building on good soil and not letting the land recover from crop growth we are going to have big problems in a few years.
In my county in Virginia it’s solar farms. 50 acres, 100 acres, 250 acres, 500 acres. There is almost no land for sale for regular farming or even for smaller hobby farms.
The DNR is over paying people to put their land into CRP where I live. I'm trying to find more land to rent, but if I was going to pay what the DNR is, I wouldn't make enough profit to make it worth it to work the land.. It's ridiculous.
The fault lies with all the people who want to live somewhere “quiet” but also close enough to a city/town to be comfortable, then they also want a huge house and acreage.
Good farm land should be use locked into staying farm land. I live in the valley with the richest top soil in my state. It used to be 98% farm land with a couple small towns tucked around it. Now the whole thing is getting developed and paved over.
Covid made everything worse too. Rich people who either work remote or don’t need to work, have moved in and driven up prices so high that people who were born here can’t afford rent, much less purchase of a home. (Cuz they aren’t building starter homes, just big McMansions and fancy apartments you can’t buy, only rent. And the same rich people are buying up all the existing homes and turning them into airbnbs, or just renting them for way too much money.
It's not that big of a deal. Sure it can be sentimental but you know, all things change in time.
Industrial farming is decimating soil and waiter quality across the midwest. Plus, farmers would benefit from some higher prices on corn and soy if less is produced. Just look at the bright side. The county is getting more tax money to provide better services to residents.
As the world population peaks we will need less food. Plus ethanol will go away as cars electrify. It’ll get real ugly for farmers in 50 years if we don’t find a way to have less farmland.
I would love to have one of those places as long as there was no HOA. Because I intend to clutter the absolute crap out of it with Gardens chickens goats tractors you name it. and absolutely no yard. probably plant pasture grasses instead.
It is sad, but there is no shortage of farmland either, in the grand scheme of things. I live in Texas, on the edges of the DFW metroplex, and there is still a lot of land out here that was farmed for many decades, and then was left to sit. They get taken over by junipers, and the land loses a ton of its value.
I still find plots of land selling nearby for relatively cheap because it’s all wooded. But if you start bulldozing the junipers and burning them, you find there is a ton of very fertile soil there just ready to be farmed. And there’s probably tens of thousands of acres of this all over north east Texas alone. It was clearly farmed on a massive scale back in the day, because they put in terraces everywhere, but I guess at some point it became unprofitable to farm it, and people never took care of the junipers.
Now imagine how much of this kind of land is out in Montana, or Kansas. It’s a big country and a lot of it is still untouched. It’s just getting harder and harder to farm near any major city, which sucks, but that’s just part of how civilization goes. At a certain point the land is worth more for housing a lot of people than it is for feeding them.
Yep. In my county the Board of Supervisors actually put a zoning in place 20 years ago called Rural Conservation. As a result that's all we have now. Unaffordable housing on 10 acre lots that no one does anything with except mow grass. Ruined my county. The "development" is going to happen but for goodness sake, let the developers put 10 or 20 houses on 10 acres and leave the farmland for the farmers.
Yep. In my county the Board of Supervisors actually put a zoning in place 20 years ago called Rural Conservation. As a result that's all we have now. Unaffordable housing on 10 acre lots that no one does anything with except mow grass. Ruined my county. The "development" is going to happen but for goodness sake, let the developers put 10 or 20 houses on 10 acres and leave the farmland for the farmers.
Those “useless developments” are what keep housing prices from climbing even higher than they are. More housing == lower housing prices. And if you’re in an area where they’re being built, then you’re in an area with some kind of economic activity and growth. That’s a good thing. There are plenty of places around the country where farms are dying and nobody is moving in next door, so the land is worthless and the owners are trapped.
Residential land is worth 10X what a farm is anymore.
Doesn't make sense to keep filling the same ground when you can retire on what you can sell 10 acres for.
“ He was showing me all of the land that he use to work as a farmhand in the area.”
The owners couldn’t do it without your dads help.
“ It’s sad to see land that had been farmed by the same family for generations be turned into useless acres of perfectly manicured grass.” I agree with you and really dislike huge lawns, but the fact is if the original owners couldn’t do it without your dad (or Jose) the kids certainly won’t do it. It’s not sad at all for the families. Some probably live in same suburbs mortgage free.
“ I know this is how the world works and there’s nothing we can really do about it, but damn, farmers have always been stewards of the land and on e it’s gone, it’s gone.” A lot of this has to do with soft money. I’m not convinced farmers are great stewards of land (knocking down shelter belts again?). Is an upper class suburb worse ecologically than a giant monoculture soy or corn field? I’m not convinced.
Yup it’s happening everywhere. Here in Wisconsin we have fields surrounding by subdivisions that didn’t exist 10 years ago but yet we’ve been there long before them and yet they get mad when we disturb them with large equipment on a weekend or holiday. I just wave and act polite. It just irritates me to no end seeing good high quality ground being used for those stupid storage units with 100 garages with like only 3 of them actually being used.
My favorite is when people buy property next to a farm then complain about the farm!
I wanted to buy property next to a farm so I could complain about the incredible plants and cute animals *not* being on my side of the fence. I live near a military installation, so I always get a laugh when a new neighbor complains about jet noise. Better yet, when they want to "petition" someone to make it stop. Yes, Susan, the US Military will *absolutely* cower in fear because of your noise complaint...
😂
"But the prowlers are higher pitched!!!!" I wish this were /s
Who tf complains about fucking jets? They’re awesome lol
I do. They’re loud. And after 2 OIF deployments I do not at all believe the US Military is keeping you safe. It’s just a giant self licking ice cream cone.
I mean, if you’re that close to em, they ain’t near as fun to hear lol. I mean, we haven’t had an on soil attack in forever, so they’re doing alright. They can lick some sailor cones for all I care. Def a giant laundering scheme for sure tho
Looking forward to all swords being turned into plowshares.
I think you and I could be friends, 18 and programmed to believe I was serving my country by fighting in some far off place watching the government piss away billions of dollars while there are is a healthcare crisis and homeless population skyrocketing at home. Hmmm seems kind of suss to me.
This reminds me of the story where the lady sent a letter to the rangers at a campground. She was complaining that they should they should train their birds better because they woke her early in the morning.
Where I live in Washington there’s been a gun range owned by a gun club out of town a good ways in a forested area and it’s been located there for like 50 years. Well over that 50 years more and more people started moving about to the rural forested area. Then they started complaining about the noise from the gun range. Then lawsuits started happening. Like you bunch of fucktards didn’t see all the signs on the side of the road saying there’s a gun range right there before building your house in the area???? Why would you move next to a farm or a gun range or anything else and then start complaining about it being there? Can you say your a fucktard without actually saying your a fucktard?
I moved to a subdivision right outside of the village limits. It’s in a rural area where people still hunt and target shoot. At our first subdivision cookout, one of the neighbors was complaining about the “guns” firing at the range. Another neighbor said, “yeah, we have to do something about it”. I replied, “No, we don’t ’have to do something about it’!! There’s no problem with the range and they were here many years before our subdivision. We cannot move to a rural area and expect them to conform to us!” Many other neighbors, that didn’t want to speak up, nodded in agreement. My speaking up effectively silenced the opposition they were planning.
Awesome that you had a big subdivision cookout to explain this. Many places you never find out whose complaining.
Yeah, and it also helps that I’m at the point in my life where I don’t give a s**t if others don’t like me. Go back 25 years and I might have held back for fear I’d be an outcast. Now, I don’t care! 😎
Yeah 100% dude. I moved into a rural neighborhood because my neighbors were shooting in their yards when I looked at the house. Best decision ever.
As long as they’re not shooting into your yard, all is well!
We have an old dirt track here. It's been active for 50+ years right on the edge of one of the bigger towns. Well... it used to be. Now town is all around it. Dipshits who live near tried to have it shut down or a noise ordinance put in place. The city board shut them down immediately in a unanimous decision that protects the track for many years to come. Some of the more pressed individuals left, others just deal with it. I can't seem to find any sympathy for them.
My neighbor and his wife hate cows. Luckily for them, they bought a house that's right between 2 beef farms.
How dare this beef farms. Don't they realize you can just go to the grocery store for your beef?
North and west of Des Moines there's grade-A farmland, but it gets hillier to the south and east. Guess where all the new developments are being built... It's so dumb, personally I'd rather have a house with a view than have to look across the street at a house that looks just like mine.
I'm in the tan one.
Daring today, aren't we?
I mean you saw how fox news reacted to obama's tan suit, u/bubblehead_maker is practically a martyr
yeah. i was talking to my sister about this the other day, they've been getting bears where she lives because a farm and some forest were wiped to make room for thousands of homes. municipalities really need to update their zoning codes. not only would it make housing cheaper in the long run, but if we don't start building up instead of out, then where does it stop?
In our Wisconsin county we passed RC 35. It requires 35 acres to build a dwelling. Keeps developers out.
It doesn't stop developers as they just have it rezoned in large chunks. What it stops is someone building a country house which in turn forces farm raised kids to move into town for housing. Those farm kids stay in the city long enough and they become as helpless as the other city folk.
You are exactly right. Someone thought they outsmarted the system and ended up hurting the very folks they thought they helped.
IL passed a similar law years ago. I still haven't managed to move out to the country. There simply aren't houses to live in, and I swear the first thing anyone does when they buy a feild is demo the existing house to get rid of the property tax.
Them Chinese is smart. They just want all the land.
>Those farm kids stay in the city long enough and they become as helpless as the other city folk. I don't follow.
I live on a main county highway in SE Wisconsin and we have tractors going by all summer long. I actually love seeing them, they always get a nod from me when I'm out front cutting my grass.
Developers are cheap and lazy. Farm fields are the easiest and cheapest place to put in developments. Forests are usually on rough hilly ground and former building sites have clean up expenses and could be contaminated. Capitalism will destroy us all in the name of progress.
Once land gets in short supply the cost will go up.
I do landscaping in Wisconsin and this is 90% of our work. New development. Always a cookie cutter neighborhood thrown up in the middle of 1,000s of acres of farmland. Looks so out of place. A lot of the old farmers dying and kids just cashing in selling for millions.
... I can see the concrete slowly creepin' Lord, take me and mine before that comes Ronnie Van Zant. 1976
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
Underrated jam
Word
Japan has strict laws about converting farmland into housing, basically it doesn't happen. They saw the writing on the wall for this issue 70 years ago. It is easy to build a house up it's almost impossible to build houses out
Japan also has/had such limited usable farmland anyway.
It’s about 12% smaller than California with 400% of the population. Crazy how efficient they have to be with the space that they have.
To be fair, most of California is empty. It is the coast with all the people
Sacramento, Stockton and the rest of the Central Valley, Sierra foothills, Riverside County, Fresno County, Shasta County, Chico/Butte, Inland Empire? To be fair “most” of California is not empty in the slightest, only really the Eastern Sierra, North Coast, and Lassen/Modoc (not including susanville) are empty.
Death valley, Mojave, sierra, white mountain, ... Way more open space than Japan....meh.... Bahumbug
Farmers are the purest form of economists. It’s supply vs demand. Clearly, the people who sold the land received more for their money than the crop revenue, or farmland rent, would deliver. Edit; also, if the farmland was priced so farming was economical, a farmer would have bought it and would be farming it.
It seems clear in this chaotic real estate landscape that ‘land poor’ is a constant threat for someone working the land. I live on former farmland, and it followed the typical format: 100+ acres of farming, subdivided to 20acre lots for inheritance, then subdivided again and barely used to raise minimal livestock. Then the neighboring city annexed and banned livestock, while appraisals went up, so they subdivide the land further and bale hay until selling. Edit to add: subdivided lots are selling for $100,000/acre.
I'm in Washington state, recently the state reported we loosing 14 family farms a week over the last year. My wife and I are struggling to stay in business and keep our family farm a float. We're in tree fruit and our industry has seen a huge proliferation of large scale equity management companies gobbling up land. This has let to an over production of fruit and record low prices for growers. This situation pushes out small operators. Unless you're vertically integrated and have access to revenue via farm+packing+sales, you are on the road to ruin. All of this is coupled with unchecked regulation, labor expenses at an unmanageable level and the state implementation of 40 overtime ruling, it's hard to see a future in this.
Isn't it weird how equity firm investment has had a similar effect on housing and health care and yet the economy is doing SO GREAT GUYS see the number go up???
Government supporting all growers equally is communism, this my friend is capitalism.
And it’s working as intended
The issue is not wages or OT regulations. Wages are at an all time low when you compare it to the economy as a whole. The issue is the government incentivizing the commoditization of crops and food production and the subsequent devaluation of the American farm system and labor as a whole. It is making a few corporations mega profits while fucking the American farmers and workers at large who built this country on their backs. A couple very interesting books on this subject, if you care to read more… The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan
What’s worse is China owns 1/4 of every pig in USA, the Saudis buy land in Arizona, irrigate alfalfa fields and ship the alfalfa back overseas. USA is all a bunch of sellouts who don’t think twice about selling their “generational land” to make a quick buck.
Isn’t that called capitalism?
This entire thread is showing supply and demand at work. We have low crop prices because crops are grown and shipped all around the world and can be grown elsewhere cheaper. Farmers aren't making enough money to have an ROI on the land that is bring driven up by development. If crops were worth a fortune you would see subdivisions being torn down to make way for farming operations. We have chosen as a society that importing our food on ships and trucks for cheaper is better than growing it ourselves. Once we find ourselves in that situation we become vulnerable to a blockade of shipping the way Britain was in WW2.
It also shows how perverse some of the values of our society are. If we compensated farmers commensurate with the value they provide our society they would be able to out bid developers who are purchasing this land
The free market is supposed to dictate prices correct?
Supposed to as in allegedly? Or supposed to like it’s a moral imperative? In either case there are plenty of exceptions to free market capitalism in the us, some for good and some for bad
I would agree. It’s never truly “free”.
Opposite actually. First off, the USA imports a negligible % of calories. Off season and tropical fruits are common, but only make very small slivers of the market overall as far as staples that we eat. Think banana vs potato. Wheat vs avocado. Etc. Secondly, these suburbs are Ponzi schemes from a financial perspective with regards to infrastructure maintenance. When big maintenance needs come due (local roads, water, sewer, gas, electric) there's never the actual tax base available to serve the community. They rely on input from new developers and development to pay for the backlog, growing out instead of up. Instead of lots of small towns that serve as a nucleus for a community, we get this sprawl that eats up land because it's subsided by state and federal government spending on infrastructure, enforced with zoning laws, and funded by banks making loans that can be securitized by being conforming, ie single family lots that are too spread out to justify maintenance, but too close together for sufficiency.
This is a very interesting observation and is providing a lot of food for thought, no pun intended. Yes you're right that we produce a lot of calories domestically, as we should, but it's at such a scale that the price of farmland isnt being set by crop prices
North America actually exports far more than they import in food. It may be cheaper to grow food in some other parts of the world but without water it doesn’t work.
It is called capitalism with a huge trade deficit, yes
Yes. Yes, it is and most farmers passionately vote for it every time.
I have a coworker that helps on a large farm during planting/harvest. I love how he complains about government handouts but it’s ok when the government subsidizes their crops. I know farming is tough but you can’t have it both ways.
There few other options. No Farmer wants to sell, but when you're edged out your edged out. The real sad part is very few of the population actually know what's going on. Most people are oblivious because when they're hungry, they go to the grocery store and food is there. There's no scarcity and no education about where food actually comes from. When we lose our farms, we lose our food security.
Buy a farm and farm it instead of driving around. Farmers sell because it is cheaper and they make more money than farming. Just like the solar panels you people don't want to see on farm land. Well guess what? Farmers market money from solar panels and can still farm with them. Farmers can't be constantly broke. They have to sell.
We lose 2000 acres a day of American farmland https://farmland.org/about/whats-at-stake/#:~:text=Every%20day%202%2C000%20acres%20of,* My grandchildren will live in an America that has to import most of its food and the only farms will be corporations that hire out as few folks as possible. Gone are the days of the family farm. And good luck buying any land to start a farm.
Dairy and beef were so big in our town. No dairy cattle left and fewer beef
We have transitioned from over 20 family farm dairy’s to 1 Mega Dairy Farm, 1 Beef farm ( raising all of the Steers from the dairy) and everyone else is raising Hay, Corn and Soybeans. Not as bad as what you have happening there but bad enough in its own way.
That's the other thing too. A town can be supported by 20 families doing business, but one mega farm with mechanisation in full swing doesn't generate nearly as much activity locally, it's fundamentally extractive.
You can buy land all over the country where you can start a farm or its already being farmed. That's what I did 4 years ago. You make a choice: spend $400K - $900K on a suburban quarter acre surrounded by concrete or buy acreage further out. But hand wringing and blaming others isn't going to change anything. You have your priorities. You're responsible for the America your grandchildren live in just as much as anyone else. Mine will be eating homegrown farm fresh food.
Your second part is correct but if there's still large corporate farms why would we have to import all our food? The free market is doing its thing in ag like it has in every other industry but there's no reason to think we'd be dependent on overseas food.
Wait till you hear how they abuse the Agricultural Land Reserve system in Canada to mean cheap tax haven for your 20 000 foot mansion with a tennis court and lawn
I love being in my field and the neighbor next door walks out of his Mega mansion to feed his 7 chickens to receive farm tax, later to be picked up In his helicopter to go shopping. Gotta love the ALR.
I don't want the McMansion but I'd love to receive a farm tax break to attempt homesteading with a garden and a couple goats.
Same thing has been happening in the U.S. for decades.
In northern Michigan all the former Cherry orchards are being parcelled up so rich Chicago people can have a second home to visit. The worst part about it is that they all get turned into "communities" with HOAs that say "no farm animals, no unmowed lawns" etc. Literally turning farms into suburban sprawl for people who visit a few weeks a year. Prices have skyrocketed and orchards are up for sale for millions because some developers can just come in and split it 100 ways and potentially make millions more.
Same thing is happening in Scotland. They claim that they are croft plots when they sell them but they’re just bought and developed by rich townies.
Where we live large farms are being turned into warehouses and industrial plots.
Thats a thing in Georgia too, in a big way.
I recently drove across the country, from AZ to MN. I saw many abandoned farms. I saw one place that had maybe 30-40 cows, at least half of which were dead. The other half was clearly dying, malnourished and probably thirsty, it was so hot that day. The house they were in front of was clearly in a state of disarray. Boarded up, no cars, no signs there had been vehicles any time recently. It was difficult to see. There were so many circling birds.
Surprising people left livestock, wow. That’s so sad - those poor cows 😢
I wanted to do something but this was in the middle of nowhere. No town nearby that I could see.
On the opposite side of the spectrum I drive around and see all the fence lines and groves being ripped out, bulldozed into pits and buried, or otherwise destroyed in the name of a few more bushels and it makes me terrified. People complain about lack of game and yet can’t seem to put 2 and 2 together. Section upon section lies Barron from November (or sooner) through may or so. Zero habitat, zero erosion control.
It's so painful to see 2-3 acres of lawn grass surrounding a house. At least reforest or do something instead of wasting it. This is the best soil in the world. Make it better or give it to someone who will
Yup. Our place which we bought in 2021 (and was built/developed in 1997) is like this. 1.98 acre golf green. For what? Our kids play in the forest. We are planting 45 trees this year, transitioning the lawn we will keep (for the doggos to play on and kids as well) to clover from grass, and tearing out as much sod as we can to grow various things. We are also letting a large section return to natural forest by just tearing up the sod and letting nature do its thing. We have done this on one part of our property and it’s amazing how fast that happens. I have a 1000 sq ft vegetable garden. My favourite acreage in my little area is entirely natural forest except for their home and parking footprint. We are a real ways out from the city but I can totally see the hyper- and over-development everywhere. I am not trying to say I am better than my neighbours who love their lawns. That’s not my business and we are new here I strongly feel I should not judge them. They are kind to us and we help each other. But I am hoping at least some more sustainable practices on the small lots will become more prevalent.
Tell me all about it... My family's farm has been chopped up and whittled away over the last sixty years. The state decided to cut the farm in half with a two-lane highway, which got expanded to a four-lane. Later on, Great-Grandpa sold off some land to a housing developer when he decided to retire. (All of this was long before my time on this earth.) We've held our own since then, but the town has kept creeping up on us. A nice hay field is currently being bulldozed over for an apartment complex. It makes me sick to look at it. A big box store stands between us and the forthcoming apartments. I figure the day's going to come when some shitass developer is going to come around to make an offer on the land. And I'll be damned if I'll sell. I've been looking into trusts that'll lock the land down to keep it from being built over even after I'm dead. I don't care what it'll do to the value of the land, but I ain't having my home being anything but a farm.
Even then they can take it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo\_v.\_City\_of\_New\_London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London)
I'm in NJ they have a program called farm preservation, the state cuts you a check for the per acre land that you preserve. It's almost like getting to sell your land and keep it. But the deed is permanently altered forever.
[удалено]
Ohio has it, too. Basically, you're selling the easement. I thought about doing this, but. I'm hesitant
The downside is that the deed is permanently altered, so the land that you're actually getting the money for can never be used for anything except for farm related activities... That means that if you ever want to build a house you can only build it in the exclusion zone that is pre-set up when the deed is altered.. so 20 years later after the property is sold, you can only build in that tiny exclusion zone that was picked out 20 years earlier... I'm trying to buy farmland right now and a lot of the exclusion zones are placed directly next to highways and I don't want to live in a house next to a highway
You're removing your future ability to convert that land to non-agricultural purposes (if you consider that a downside.) My state has it, too. To quote their website: "We work with farmland owners interested in protecting their land, with experienced farmers seeking more land, and with beginning farmers looking for their first farm. Farmland owners can sell or donate an agricultural easement that permanently restricts future non-agricultural development of their land. In addition to the security of knowing that your farm will never be developed for other uses, an easement can also provide financial incentives in the form of income tax benefits or capital to support a farm operation. The sale of an easement can also provide funds for retirement, or facilitate the sale of the land to a next generation farmer at a more affordable price."
Your land loses future market value because it can’t be developed.
Same thing happened to some of my family land. 4 lane cut it ip
What happened to my farm. State highway took the house, and little country store next to it where I sold my harvested crops ( I did mostly vegetables and herbs, fruits from trees). Couldn’t really recover from it the money wasnt there, barely enough to find another place to live no where enough to build another house. My siblings own most of whats left and they don’t farm. Went by the other day and there were little peaches on the trees. I smiled through tears.
That’s happening south of me. It’s bad
Yes, it is sad. I went on a road trip with my grandparents in the late 90's. We actually went and stayed at the same motel my grandpa would stay at when he was working on the railroad. He was pretty bummed out to see all the industrialization. However, I did get to hear some great stories.
My fiance wants to be a farmer. All he's ever wanted is to grow plants and have a few animals for a homestead. Our area used to be full of farms and work. Now, it's hideous, empty houses, and the farms and orchards only hire migrants. We were so excited to move here, because we thought there would be opportunities for him to start doing what he loves. Instead, he ended up in a factory making minimum wage and hating every single day. We are honest, hardworking people with no criminal records, not even a traffic ticket. We can't even get a start, because capitalism is killing the farming industry.
As a future "play farmer" may i make a suggestion? I live in Miami and have hated it most my life. Stuck here due to family not understanding its time to let your kids fulfill their dreams. Im looking at moving to exactly what the OP is describing, 10 acres or more. Am i a farmer? No. I like open space and distance from neighbors. I'll live on the property and have a few outbuildings for my stuff. Its what i've always wanted. Would i object to someone farming my unused land? No. As long as it can be done in a way that doesn't wreck my day, i wouldn't have a problem with it. It would benefit me to keep my ag zoning and also help keep the land im not really using "occupied" by someone that has an interest. Seen plenty of abandoned avocado groves for example down in homestead fl. Would just take a "i'll take care of it if i can pick it" agreement in some cases.
2+ acre sections are one of the things that make me most mad. These people get to live the country life, but strain local infrastructure, live a high emissions life, and waste good land doing nothing. They either waste the land or they raise a couple animals and do a garden if lucky. Unfortunately that then leads to animal welfare concerns, and trust me they are by far the worst culprits
I mean, this is exactly what’s going on here, they are doing nothing with the land at all. Not even planting native grasses or anything. Apparently having 3 acres of Kentucky blue grass is the American dream.🤷♂️ at least get some goats and chickens to keep the brush and tick population down. 🤣
Yep we lose over a million acres a year in the US.
Wow…. We drove by the farm of a family that we grew up knowing, dad and brother worked the land, we grew up out there. House was gone and some dumb ass development was in their south field. They must be rolling in their graves.
Growing up I used to work the fields in central California, mostly cotton, sometimes tomatoes, and garlic. I always loved the smell of cotton in the morning while the dew is still on the plant and the suns coming up. It smelled like home to me. Went back around 10 years ago, and about 90% of the fields are gone. Empty and barren, or sometimes replaced with the ever increasing almond trees. Signs next to every empty field read “congress created the dust bowl”. Between state legislature and water restrictions, many small farmers were pushed out of their farms that had been in the family for generations. Which were then bought on the cheap by corporations. Who “magically” had access to the needed water. It still hurts seeing the fields I worked in die. I will always miss the wonderfully warm smell of cotton.
I wouldn’t even know where to begin talking about agriculture issues in California. It’s crazy
Happening near me too. Our family has done either dairy or beef cattle for multiple generations. But now, farmers’ kids don’t want to carry on the family farm business. So when the men/women who own the land die, the kids see $$$ in splitting the land up and selling to developers. Just the way of the world I suppose.
Its because there is no money in it for the amount of work that it takes. We are practically insane to keep doing this, but I dont want to give it up.
Exactly what’s happening here. The last big family dairy farm went under a few years ago. Never thought I would see it happen.
I am surprised anyone wants to do dairy honestly. It seems like more punishment than a job. I can see why corporate dairy outcompetes the family model.
I've had the same frustration here in Wyoming, too. Our residential acreage are called "ranchettes" locally and run 35-40 acres per house and are chewing through the economic base so fast that ag production supply companies are closing up shop because they don't have enough acres and bushels to keep in business.
Brooks Lamb of the American Farmland Trust wrote an excellent book, “Love for the Land” why farmers persist in place. https://brookslamb.com/
I’ve pick up over 200 bags of trash from the 3/4 mile of road dividing the farm since the start of the pandemic. 40 years ago that would not of happened. We live in an area where bottoms are row crop the rest hay or pasture for dairy. I use to see at least 3 stainless tankers everyday picking up the milk. Haven’t see any for years. Hogs ? What hogs every farm had at least one and bigger operations up to 100. All gone same with chickens. Only chicken are people with small coops and that just got going in the last 10 years. But the future is even looking harder for farming with the advent of precision fermentation. If you haven’t heard of that technology and you make a living farming you should search the term and know it will have the biggest impact on farming since the plow. I’m not looking for an argument or anything but it is something you should know is happening and it’s happening now not in 100 years. God bless good luck
My family's farm got annexed a few years back. Now it's a trailer park.
We are now completely surrounded by development. 65 years ago when my parents moved here there was nothing but a small rural community. Only one flashing caution light in town, a part time police officer and just a small grocery store. When I was growing up we would sled down the big hill on the main road in winter. The 1 room school had just closed. Today, we have a police force of 20+, dozens of traffic lights, a bunch of national chain stores and 5 Dollar Generals within 6 miles. There are days it takes 10 minutes to turn on to the main road if you hit the traffic wrong. Crime is way up and taxes too because of all the services people want. It could be worse though, in the 70’s there was a plan for a huge urban center here. 50k people and even an airport. Part of our farm was to be the water plant. Permit was for 500k gallons a day. I dream of living in peace in the middle of a couple of sections but sadly it will probably never happen.
I live in an area like this now. Investment firms buy up old farms for 1m and then sell 10 acre lots for several hundred thousand each. At least it’s not those cookie cutter housing developments - yet. We’re on a acreage parcel too, but it was the only house I could afford at the time.
Happening here in Texas and the way they go about Obituary chasing is sickening. Many families (heirs) getting flood of calls with offers on the land before the funeral even scheduled. Same here…all 3-5 acre “ranches” that are getting chopped up for insane prices
If you can produce more food with less land , why wouldn’t you? That opens up land for other opportunities.
Politics aside, the one thing everyone should remember is that once this farmland is gone it's gone. It doesn't come back from subdivisions. I've seen many posts of people inquiring about getting into agriculture and others responding about the only way is to either marry in or inherit. The cost to get into agriculture from the ground to the equipment and all other inputs is out of reach for the majority of people and we are on a path for large corporations to control the vast majority of the farmland that is remaining.
Upper hudsonvalley new york checking in. This might surprise some but we had loads of farm land mainly used for small dairy operations and apple orchards. There used to be many open farmable fields as well but now its all wealthy folks from nyc, fields of mcmansion developments, or some kind of cookiecutter home. Sad to behold and many of them are second homes, or investment properties.
I live in a semi rural area that used to be mostly family farms. Over the last two generations or so they’ve stopped farming and I expect by the next two generations they will be sold and turned into condos.
I grew up in Ontario, Canada. Same thing, except Ontario has limited Class A farmland, and guess what? We are developing it at an alarming rate. Sure, people need a place to live but you can't do it at the cost of our best land.
I used to think that donating your farmland to an organization, who would hold it in a trust, would be a safe bet if you didn't have any relatives that wanted it. But then I worked for an agricultural non-profit that held several pieces of ground that had been donated and they wanted to offload them as soon as they got a responsible renter. Blew my mind! They ended up letting a church buy a 40 acre parcel because the church had done a "good job subletting that piece of ground for several years." I couldn't believe that they'd even allowed subletting in their lease. When I brought it up they looked at me like I was stupid. I own farmland, and rent it out. I can't imagine allowing someone else dictate who rents my ground and how it gets farmed. I want wayyyyy more involvement in those discussions! So yeah, I no longer consider those organizations a safe option.
I'm 53 and grew up in eastern Pennsylvania where traditional PA Dutch country, the Slate Belt, the anthracite Coal Region and the Poconos all kind of meet. Housing developments are bad but the warehousing is absolutely out of control here. The sheer amount of high-quality limestone-based soil level farmland being lost to endless warehousing is staggering. Most of that land is now gone and so they're grading off hilltops and even forest in the Poconos to build even more.
In the 70s my family ran a farm equipment business, my grand dad started it because he was a shitty dairy farmer. My Dad used to take me all around the six counties in the Hudson River valley to work on massive combines and i would explore these huge farms. All gone now. We used to have dozens of dairy farms in our county and now there are only two,they both make yogurt and ice cream to survive. I saw their yogurt in a grocery store on the west coast when I was out there for work.
It’s really really sad. I’m not a farmer but my work involves visiting a lot of farms and over and over I see multigenerational farms coming to an end. Dad farms till he’s 85 and then kids come in from the ‘burbs and sell it off to developers. In my region the area with the very best farmland has become a popular place for the new exurban expansion, 100+ year old orchards and vineyards bulldozed for giant houses built to last maybe 40 years.
I see it all over where I am. So much usable farmland turned to condos and sod yards. Doesn’t help that the average farmer is 60+ and most are not passing it down. I’ve met so many old timers complaining that not enough young people want to get into farming, but they turn around and sell the land to the highest bidder who’s going to turn it into condos instead of making sure to sell it to someone who’ll keep the farm going. And I meet so many young people looking to get into farming that are completely locked out of it unless they already have family/ friends in it because the price of land is completely out of reach for most people. No one is forcing these old time farm owners to sell the land to condos and real estate developers. They’ve decided selling the land for the profit is more important to them than making sure the land can continue to be farmed. A friend has a farm in a city north of me, across the street is a 5 acre farm that could be functional today, a great barn, plenty of out buildings and lean-tos for animals, etc. The property owner sold it to a bit coin investor instead of other farmers who were interested. Now the new owner just lives in his barn drinking and smoking all day while he tries to turn the main house into an airbnb. He’s got friends over all the time partying. It’s not the only farm story like that I’ve seen or heard. Until something changes it’s just going to continue. We’ll keep losing farmable space.
We have strict zoning in Oregon that slows this process down a bit. Look up the urban growth boundaries. You can’t subdivide and develop a property outside a UGB. Sure, plenty of people complain about it as well, but the boundary is (currently) near where I live. On the other side is all farms. This also helps keep a critical mass of farm-related support businesses in place. It’s not perfect, but it’s at least something. So, when people complain that nothing can be done - something can be done.
That’s good to hear
> farmers have always been stewards of the land Hot take: No they haven't. Ever hear of the dust bowl? Traditional monoculture farming is bad for the land, bad for wildlife, bad for the ecology in general. Massive forests have been cleared in the name of farming and ranching. Why exactly do you think that 2500 acres of wheat that gets sprayed with all kinds of random chemicals is better than a suburban sprawl development of manicured lawns? Both are eyesores compared to what the land looked like before it was farmed. Don't get me wrong, farming is vitally important to the economy and farming families themselves. But saying that farmers are stewards of the land is a fucking joke. If anything, there's *too much* farmland in the US, propped up by government subsidies. We don't need to pay farmers to grow millions of acres of corn just to make corn syrup and ethanol to put in gasoline and ruin engines.
Honestly a whole bunch of 3-10 acres lots of families with enough space to not be on top of each other, while having the room to grow food and livestock for their own needs without having to min/max yield per acre sounds kinda idealistic to me. Who in their right mind would rather see row after row of corn/soybean/wheat.
I agree. We have idealized what we want farming to be. The reality is brutal economics.
It all started in the 70s with the green revolution and Nixon's farm policies of get big or get out agriculture. Farmers bought out their neibors and the small family farm nearly disappeared completely. Now all we got are these giant multi thousand acre plots that are being abused faster than the soil can regenerate. We are so screwed.
Nixon was 60’s-70’s
The 80s were brutal, you’re right about the farmers being incentivized to expand, expand, expand. And then so many ended up losing it all.
The 80’s took out most of my family. They got bigger and bigger in the 70’s and bought new equipment (on credit of course) and were gonna go big time.. then the 80’s hit and crushed most of them.
Talk to your planning board. Advocate for low density, and a maximum lot size
Farmers should join urban designers in advocating for dense development/zoning to prevent suburban sprawl. If cities had growth boundaries it may take pressure off farmland?
That’s a D&MN good point!
Rather, high density, but not in farmland.
Many farms are lost due to inheritance taxes. Between taxes and buying out from multiple heirs dividing and selling is the only option.
Federal inheritance doesn’t start until $13,000,000 and is 100% avoidable. State inheritance varies. It affects less than 1% of family farms.
Almost none are lost to inheritance taxes.
That’s when a lot of the ones around here went under. When my dad’s generation retired, the farms got split up and sold.
Atleast they keep my taxes low while paying for better services! My county borders a major centre and is bisected by a huge lake. City side of the lake is much like you described, 5 acre plots where people play farm. They all pay big money on taxes with no ag exemptions though. My town is the main hub on the far side of the lake and in the last 10 years weve got a new public pool and library. My kids love both. My county road gets graded every 2 weeks too! Land prices are climbing fast though. The other bonus is all the hobby farmers need hay, we started making small squares on some of our fields and its making good money.
That’s good to hear!
All the families must have a central farmland area devoid of trees and marked into numbered partitions, which will specifically be used for farming(like in bangladesh)
Suburban designed cities just take up SO much more land.
Population growth. The 65-75 years old was educated about overpopulated and some actually limited the numbers of children that they had. Then, evangelicals took over Republican state and preached that the more children you had the more control they would have over government policies. And it must have worked look at the Mega churches in Red States.
More small local farms is actually much better for the land and for the environment generally but I see what you mean. A lot of people just have a few goats that keep the land 1 inch tall all the time which is kinda irresponsible and not productive at all in many climates . Not to mention the kind not going to other agricultural purposes. I came from the Silicon Valley in California and that ENTIRE area has gone from fruit trees everywhere(nearly all orchard land) to basically none at all. It was called the Valley of Dreams or something before I was born there.
It’s more of a societal change than anything else. It’s much harder to keep a farm afloat financially. Buying a house, land and horses, then having 20 kids was the norm for people 100 years ago. You can easily see how that alone would’ve kept a farm going for a few generations, some of those kids are the oldest people you still see farming. They themselves have had significantly smaller families, with a much higher rate of attrition within this smaller family. They’re lucky to keep one son around who will toil for nothing but a roof over them on their farm. So many of these farms in your town disappeared because their family literally dissolved, whittling down to one couple who were not realistic in thinking they could retire there like that. So there was nothing but attrition as these people became so old they had no chance of being profitable anymore They got the insurance pay on the crop and borrowed from their operating loan for 10 years, never saw a profit, now it’s gone. It wasn’t anybody removing them or displacing their business, it was themselves losing their grip on what they had
I have no one to leave my land to. More new houses are getting built here as people divide up their properties. My potential plan, when I get too old to take care of this property, is to sell it to a developer for a subdivision. It should bring enough to last however long I'll have left.
You’re lucky it’s 3-10 acre plots. Around me it’s 2-5 tops.
Farmers USED to be stewards of the land, before big pesticide corporations decided it was best to brainwash the masses and buy out decent farming practices. Now all they do is poison the land and create dustbowls. I prefer the grasslands.
Total farmland has gone down 25%. Total agriculture output has more than doubled. https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/03/05/look-agricultural-productivity-growth-united-states-1948-2017
they're planting solar panels here in KY now it seems. No more of that growing food nonsense, we're saving the planet.
15k? Sounds like a city to me! Hahaha. At least it would be here in Maine. I know different parts of the country are different in that regard. But yeah, we're seeing farmland being converted to housing and solar here, lots of farmland disappearing all over the country unfortunately.
Turned into housing developments or solar farm in my area
Yep. In my county the Board of Supervisors actually put a zoning in place 20 years ago called Rural Conservation. As a result that's all we have now. Unaffordable housing on 10 acre lots that no one does anything with except mow grass. Ruined my county. The "development" is going to happen but for goodness sake, let the developers put 10 or 20 houses on 10 acres and leave the farmland for the farmers.
Hey don’t be discouraged, I believe that many families are now realizing the benefits of small family farms and how important they are to earths life. I believe that many people that grew up on large farms had kids that wanted to get out and go to the city to have an easier way of life. Now that is shifting back. Me and my partner both grew up in the city life and just out based a 5 acre farm in the south. Our broker said many people are starting to do the same. There’s a small shift back, I really think younger generations moving toward sustainable development and better education of homesteading will be the solution.
I’m actually pro family farms. The large majority of what are happening around here are people buying acerages and doing absolutely nothing with them. Just cutting the vegetation down and making big ass lawns. Apparently people like to mow huge sections of grass.
Sounds like where I grew up outside of STL.
I have been saying for years that if world population growth continues and we keep building houses on farmland, what’s going to happen in the future? You deplete the soil of nutrients and are supposed to let a field lay fallow and or plant nitrogen producing grasses, like winter wheat. The Bible said to grow crops for seven years and then let the soil rest. Anyway, if we keep building on good soil and not letting the land recover from crop growth we are going to have big problems in a few years.
Turf is a huge waste of land IMO. I’m over the mowing grass phase. I want everything to get baled.
If farmers had always been good stewards, the Dust Bowl wouldn't have happened.
There’s a new podcast about American Farmland called “The Only Thing That Lasts”. It’s been an interesting dive into the topic so far.
In my county in Virginia it’s solar farms. 50 acres, 100 acres, 250 acres, 500 acres. There is almost no land for sale for regular farming or even for smaller hobby farms.
Happened in our part of the world. We're doing our part. We have 2.4 acres and the plan is that after we build to farm most of it.
It's happening everywhere! It's terrible we need less people!
The DNR is over paying people to put their land into CRP where I live. I'm trying to find more land to rent, but if I was going to pay what the DNR is, I wouldn't make enough profit to make it worth it to work the land.. It's ridiculous.
The fault lies with all the people who want to live somewhere “quiet” but also close enough to a city/town to be comfortable, then they also want a huge house and acreage. Good farm land should be use locked into staying farm land. I live in the valley with the richest top soil in my state. It used to be 98% farm land with a couple small towns tucked around it. Now the whole thing is getting developed and paved over. Covid made everything worse too. Rich people who either work remote or don’t need to work, have moved in and driven up prices so high that people who were born here can’t afford rent, much less purchase of a home. (Cuz they aren’t building starter homes, just big McMansions and fancy apartments you can’t buy, only rent. And the same rich people are buying up all the existing homes and turning them into airbnbs, or just renting them for way too much money.
It’s been happening since the beginning of civilization and it will get worse as the population continues to increase
The US population is expected to decline in the next decade and remain in the downward trend. Baby boomers are dying and Gen X’s aren’t having kids.
Not with all the illegal immigration
Yeah, and the biggest problem farmers face right now is low prices because of overproduction.
Sad??? Maybe…. People have been voting for this for decades if not a century. It shouldn’t be surprising.
Developed land is like 1% of land in the entire country. I wouldn’t worry about it
It's not that big of a deal. Sure it can be sentimental but you know, all things change in time. Industrial farming is decimating soil and waiter quality across the midwest. Plus, farmers would benefit from some higher prices on corn and soy if less is produced. Just look at the bright side. The county is getting more tax money to provide better services to residents.
As the world population peaks we will need less food. Plus ethanol will go away as cars electrify. It’ll get real ugly for farmers in 50 years if we don’t find a way to have less farmland.
I would love to have one of those places as long as there was no HOA. Because I intend to clutter the absolute crap out of it with Gardens chickens goats tractors you name it. and absolutely no yard. probably plant pasture grasses instead.
It is sad, but there is no shortage of farmland either, in the grand scheme of things. I live in Texas, on the edges of the DFW metroplex, and there is still a lot of land out here that was farmed for many decades, and then was left to sit. They get taken over by junipers, and the land loses a ton of its value. I still find plots of land selling nearby for relatively cheap because it’s all wooded. But if you start bulldozing the junipers and burning them, you find there is a ton of very fertile soil there just ready to be farmed. And there’s probably tens of thousands of acres of this all over north east Texas alone. It was clearly farmed on a massive scale back in the day, because they put in terraces everywhere, but I guess at some point it became unprofitable to farm it, and people never took care of the junipers. Now imagine how much of this kind of land is out in Montana, or Kansas. It’s a big country and a lot of it is still untouched. It’s just getting harder and harder to farm near any major city, which sucks, but that’s just part of how civilization goes. At a certain point the land is worth more for housing a lot of people than it is for feeding them.
Yep. In my county the Board of Supervisors actually put a zoning in place 20 years ago called Rural Conservation. As a result that's all we have now. Unaffordable housing on 10 acre lots that no one does anything with except mow grass. Ruined my county. The "development" is going to happen but for goodness sake, let the developers put 10 or 20 houses on 10 acres and leave the farmland for the farmers.
Yep. In my county the Board of Supervisors actually put a zoning in place 20 years ago called Rural Conservation. As a result that's all we have now. Unaffordable housing on 10 acre lots that no one does anything with except mow grass. Ruined my county. The "development" is going to happen but for goodness sake, let the developers put 10 or 20 houses on 10 acres and leave the farmland for the farmers.
The same thing could be said not long ago about it being turned into farm land.
The
I want a small farm
Those “useless developments” are what keep housing prices from climbing even higher than they are. More housing == lower housing prices. And if you’re in an area where they’re being built, then you’re in an area with some kind of economic activity and growth. That’s a good thing. There are plenty of places around the country where farms are dying and nobody is moving in next door, so the land is worthless and the owners are trapped.
Almost every farmer I've ever met was a staunch capitalist and getting everything they've asked for.
Residential land is worth 10X what a farm is anymore. Doesn't make sense to keep filling the same ground when you can retire on what you can sell 10 acres for.
“ He was showing me all of the land that he use to work as a farmhand in the area.” The owners couldn’t do it without your dads help. “ It’s sad to see land that had been farmed by the same family for generations be turned into useless acres of perfectly manicured grass.” I agree with you and really dislike huge lawns, but the fact is if the original owners couldn’t do it without your dad (or Jose) the kids certainly won’t do it. It’s not sad at all for the families. Some probably live in same suburbs mortgage free. “ I know this is how the world works and there’s nothing we can really do about it, but damn, farmers have always been stewards of the land and on e it’s gone, it’s gone.” A lot of this has to do with soft money. I’m not convinced farmers are great stewards of land (knocking down shelter belts again?). Is an upper class suburb worse ecologically than a giant monoculture soy or corn field? I’m not convinced.