Giving Thanks For Farmland

On a wall in my office hangs a map of the prime fruit-growing counties in the U.S. It’s kind of interesting for a couple of reasons. One, it shows just how few fruit growers there are in the parts of this country where most Americans think farmers live. For example, the states of Nebraska and Iowa, the nation’s breadbasket, are completely blank. Not one of the counties in those two states ranks among the nation’s tops in terms of fruit acreage.

California, on the other hand, is almost completely colored in. But if you asked most people, they’d say Iowa is a top farm state, and California is not. Of course, if you added together the farmgate receipts of Texas and Iowa, the second- and third-ranked states in terms of farming income, they wouldn’t equal that of California’s. But that’s a story for another day.

The other reason I find the fruit-growing map so interesting is that if you just glanced at it briefly, you might think it was weighted in terms of population, not fruit growing. California also has an awful lot of people, after all, as do huge swaths of some of the other top fruit production states, such as Texas and Florida.

It’s only when you get up close that you spot the differences. For example, the part of Washington state that has all the people is along the coast, not on the other side of the Cascades, where the apples, pears, cherries, and winegrapes are grown. But you get the point. For the most part, the best places to grow fruit are also the best places to live.
Why? Well, they are generally warmer. And even in areas that aren’t, such as in Michigan, nearly all the fruit growing areas are adjacent to the Great Lakes, which moderate the climate. Large bodies of water tend to smooth out temperatures, and both people and fruit generally find life a little easier if they don’t face extremes.

Think Positive

It’s probably no wonder, then, that we are losing farmland. In a study I saw recently from the American Farmland Trust, between 2002 and 2007 we were losing farmland at the rate of an acre a minute. That’s really something when you think about it: Just over 4 million acres of farmland, an area nearly the size of Massachusetts, were converted to developed uses. But it’s nothing new. Between 1982 and 2007, more than 41 million acres were developed, an area akin to the size of Illinois and New Jersey combined.

No part of the country is immune, as every state lost prime farmland. That “progress” is to be expected, but I was surprised to see that states such as Ohio (796,000) and North Carolina (766,000) lost more prime acreage than did California (616,000). Texas lost the most prime farmland during that quarter-century, 1.5 million acres.

The authors of the study conclude that our food is in the path of development, because 91% of our fruit and 78% of our vegetables are produced in urban-influenced areas. It’s a concern, all right, but if you think about it, it’s also a reason for you fruit growers to give thanks. Because you folks live in some of the most desirable parts of what I would argue is the best country on Earth. Not only that, but you work at an occupation which is so enthralling that many of you refer to it not as just a job, but a way of life. Happy Thanksgiving.