(Editor’s Note: The Amer­i­can Farm­land Trust (AFT), a non-prof­it found­ed in 1980 to pro­tect U.S. farm­land and water sup­plies from encroach­ing devel­op­ment, has just released Farms Under Threat: The State of America’s Farm­land—the first in a series of reports that will track past, present and future threats to agri­cul­tur­al resources nation­wide. This first report finds that, between 1992 and 2012, over 30 mil­lion acres of farm­land — an area rough­ly equiv­a­lent to the land­mass of New York State — were irre­versibly lost to devel­op­ment. Fur­ther­more, accord­ing to the orga­ni­za­tion’s research, near­ly 11 mil­lion acres of the con­vert­ed farm­land were among the ​“best land for inten­sive food and crop pro­duc­tion.” Below is AFT’s intro­duc­tion and a link to the full report.)

The Unit­ed States is blessed with a remark­ably pro­duc­tive agri­cul­tur­al land­scape. Crop­land, pas­ture­land, range­land, and wood­land sup­port a region­al­ly diverse food and farm­ing sys­tem capa­ble of ensur­ing domes­tic food secu­ri­ty. Agri­cul­tur­al land con­tributes to state and local economies, sup­plies lucra­tive export mar­kets, and bol­sters the nation’s bal­ance of trade. These excep­tion­al nat­ur­al resources sus­tain valu­able wildlife habi­tat, pro­vide flood con­trol and fire sup­pres­sion, scenic views, and resources for hunt­ing and fish­ing. This land also acts as an enor­mous car­bon sink, draw­ing down car­bon from the atmos­phere, which helps com­bat cli­mate change. By 2050, the demands on agri­cul­ture to pro­vide suf­fi­cient food, fiber, and ener­gy are expect­ed to be 50 to 70 per­cent high­er than they are now. Giv­en a lim­it­ed land area in the Unit­ed States and the need to feed and house an increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple, it is more impor­tant than ever to pro­tect the agri­cul­tur­al land and nat­ur­al resources need­ed for long-term sustainability.

This call for action is doc­u­ment­ed and rein­forced by the find­ings of Farms Under Threat: The State of America’s Farm­land by Amer­i­can Farm­land Trust. The report’s research shows that between 1992 and 2012, almost 31 mil­lion acres of agri­cul­tur­al land were irre­versibly lost to devel­op­ment. That is near­ly dou­ble the amount of con­ver­sion pre­vi­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ed and is equiv­a­lent to los­ing most of Iowa or New York. As alarm­ing, this loss includ­ed almost 11 mil­lion acres of the best land for inten­sive food and crop pro­duc­tion. This is land where the soils, micro-cli­mates, grow­ing sea­sons and water avail­abil­i­ty com­bine to allow inten­sive pro­duc­tion with the fewest envi­ron­men­tal impacts. These pre­cious and irre­place­able resources com­prise less than 17 per­cent of the total land area in the con­ti­nen­tal Unit­ed States. Their con­ver­sion was equiv­a­lent to los­ing most of California’s Cen­tral Val­ley, an agri­cul­tur­al powerhouse.