(Neal Peirce is a syndicated columnist who writes about local government issues. His columns do not reflect the opinions of County News or the National Association of Counties.)
Every hour of every day, America loses 45.6 acres of its highest-quality farmlands to subdivision shopping centers, strip malls, roadways - 400,000 acres a year succumbing to development. Between 1982 and 1992, an area roughly the size of Vermont was lost.
Do we care? Should we?
The American Farmland Trust (AFT), timing its release with the start of spring, reports we're squandering - suffering irreplaceable loss of - some of the world's finest soils.
In 50 years, the AFT notes the United States could well have added 50 percent to its population, reaching 390 million. Yet if land keeps being lost, farmers and ranchers may have to make do with 13 percent fewer acres of high-quality farmland.
In a worst case scenario, the United States - today a potent global producer and exporter of foods and fibers - could become a net importer within 60 years.
Of course we've heard dire warnings before. We've shrugged them off because the North American landmass is so vast, because technology keeps increasing the potential crops from each acre of land cultivated.
But a new map by the Farmland Trust drives home a critical point. The imperiled lands aren't just anywhere. They're clustered around our major cities. Our ancestors typically started their settlements near rivers, and amid the continent's most fertile areas.
With blobs of red sprinkled from New England to Florida to Texas to the Pacific Northwest, the AFT map shows where, across America, concentrations of prime or unique farmland coincide with the most rapidly developing areas. And the red spots, not surprisingly, fall in the orbit of our great cities.
Indeed, 70 percent of the 181 geographic regions used in the study showed prime farmland under development pressure. And the greatest quality farmland loss occurred in 20 areas representing just seven percent of the nation's land.
Another set of statistics, gathered by Scott Bernstein of Chicago's Center for Neighborhood Technology and others, shows why. Between 1970 and 1990, the Chicago region grew four percent in population, but 46 percent in land area occupied. The respective figures for New York were eight percent and 65 percent, for Philadelphia four percent and 32 percent, for Seattle 36 percent and 87 percent.
St. Louis, between 1950 and 1990, gained 35 percent in population, but occupied 355 percent more land.
We Americans, in short, have a remarkably land-consumptive lifestyle. As we've depopulated many of our inner cities, we've created - as the AFT notes - "colorless subdivisions with names such as Orchard Hills or Blackhawk Ranch, desperately trying to retain the image of places destroyed."
But the problems go beyond image and taste. Increasingly, as erstwhile city and suburban residents occupy new rural home sites, ranchettes and farmettes, they create an "edge effect" - increased taxes, escalating land prices, disputes over farm sounds and smells - that complicates farming on the land still available.
Plus, development subtracts from farmlands' positive attributes. The Illinois Department of Agriculture has listed several - groundwater recharge and flood storage, wildlife habitats and feeding areas for migratory birds, and the absorption of pollutants.
Next, we need to think expansively about our 21st century trade opportunities. As nation's like China urbanize and increase their standard of living, they will demand kinds and varieties of foods that few places on the face of the globe produce in abundance.
The magazine AgriFinance caught the idea with a cover story focused on Illinois and other states of what the AFT calls the "Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois Drift Plain" - the 11,020-square-mile area from Chicago to Milwaukee and beyond. The headline: "America's Breadbasket: Will It Feed China or House Suburbia?"
Visit with business and civic leaders in such Illinois counties as Winnebago, Will, Boone and DeKalb - on the very outer edge of Chicago regional expansion - and you discover that not every farmer is anxious for a quick and profitable sell-off of his land.
Instead, leaders in those counties want to preserve the integrity of their towns and communities. Their top priority is preserving the existing economy of an 11-county area that Bradley Lubben of the University of Illinois' Cooperative Extension Service describes as "an agricultural powerhouse, raising near $1 billion worth of farm products from grain, livestock and horticultural enterprises."
The story of the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys of Central California - America's top agricultural resource with $13 billion in yearly farm production - is even more arresting.
Seventy-seven percent of the Central Valley is red on AFT's charts. Population is projected to triple between now and 2040. Low-density sprawl will devour more than one million acres of farmland by 2040, costing taxpayers $29 billion more than the cost of more compact, efficient development. The AFT report couldn't be more timely. Can we - before it's too late - come to our senses?
(c) 1997, Washington Post Writers Group