2% of our farmland across the country was lost from 2017-2022; in Ohio it was 313,000 acres
I do my best to look through several of the farm periodicals that come out each month and subscribe to one of the better-known newspapers. I find enough interesting articles to pass along to a good friend who spent his career teaching ag-related courses at a major university.
One of these publications recently printed an article that grabbed my full attention as opposed to the all to often passing glance. It was based on the United States Department of Agriculture census of agriculture for 2022. The census of agriculture in the U.S. has been conducted every five years since 1840. Its purpose is to reflect changes in farms and agriculture in general. What stunned me in reading about the 2022 census was the record of farmland lost across the country.
The report stated there was a 2% loss in farmland nationwide from 2017 to 2022. This may not sound like much, but it comes to 20 million acres or more than all of the land in the state of Maine. To bring this closer to home, Ohio has lost 313,000 acres from 2017 to 2022, equivalent to half the size of Rhode Island.
Thomas Jefferson and George Washington believed agriculture and the ability to feed ourselves as a nation through our own agricultural production was vital to national security and to the success of the nation. Fortunately, the U.S. has always produced more food than needed to feed our country. A nation that does not produce enough food to feed itself becomes dependent on the political whims and changes in leadership in the countries that provide enough extra food for others to import.
In the early days of our country, there was always more land beyond the river, more land beyond the horizon. Those days are long gone. We have run out of new land to use for food. I fear as a nation, we have become complacent, assuming food will always be plentiful. I believe there is a general lack of understanding of land, crops and agriculture.
People look at a harvested field of soybeans or corn and assume it is a piece of land underused and available for offices or housing, not realizing the fields have to be prepared for the next plantings. That is like saying production should be shutdown and a factory abandoned for other use because it needs to close temporarily for cleaning or updating.
We must remain vigilant that enough land is left for food production for ourselves and those that follow. Land taken out of production for development purposes will likely not produce again. We must make a dedicated effort to conserve our production land and never have to be dependent on others for our food supply.
Chuck Bell is a former 4-H Extension Educator for Muskingum County.
This article originally appeared on Zanesville Times Recorder: Protection of farmland is vitally important to U.S.
