We don’t need farms. We can buy our food at supermarkets now.
How big were these farms that stopped farming?
Where’s John “Cougar” Mellencamp when we need him?
"The challenges faced by farms of all sizes has raised calls for a robust and comprehensive farm bill..." If you want to REDUCE farm efficiency, get the government more involved.
USDA defines a farm as an operation that produced and sold, or normally would have sold...
Are we talking about farmland that had been sitting dormant for years collecting govt subsidies? The ostensible reasons are for: prevent farmers from growing too much food (don't let food prices get too low), or Conservation Reserve Program (fight erosion and such), or now to fight warmageddon?
To get those subsidies you had to "prove" that you would grow food even if you weren't going to really. It may be that some of the farmland "lost" is people making money with it other ways like building houses and such. In other words, I want to know how much of farm land was lost of land that was really used for farming.
The bread basket of the world will soon be a bread-line for handouts - a third world country.
As a school kid I was taught the US had the capacity and knowledge to feed the world. And it was true. Then we let socialist politicians take over to over regulate and control the farmer. - national suicide!!!!
Have we had to import more food or are we still able to feed ourselves?
These are getting turned into Solar farms in our area. Good farmland...it’s a crime. God gave us gifts. We think we’re smarter than God...that’s all this Climate Change fiasco is all about. And of course.....MONEY and POWER.
What about all the Property Tax Avoiders that sell a few stacks of “specialty” over priced Firewood (fruit tree trimmings) to claim Farm exemptions?
Lots of 3-5 acre AWFLs and their broods have been doing that for quite some time.
Certainly that’s lots of new unproductive farm land to go along with Gates and the other Land Hoarders.
As a chart in the report showed, the decline in the number of farms was precipitous from 1950 to 1978. The rate of decline since 1978 has been continuous but slower with slight upticks from 1992 to 1994 and agsin from 2006 to 2008. It all makes the headline numbers - from lost from 2017 to 2023 - not a precipitous change but part of the many decades trend.
Many poignant comments here, including converting prime farmland into solar industrial parks (I refuse to call them farms), farmers selling out to developers, which includes solar developers, not only if they have no one to take over but because they will get paid far more per acre than what will be realized through the hard work required to cultivate and sell, and in MA, the price of land is prohibitive to farming. I just counted 5 properties on the market in a 15 mile radius listed at 1 -2.7 million. These are anywhere from 15 to 160 acres, the most expensive has a development restriction on it and must remain in “state approved farming”. The economics don’t work in these scenarios.
$1,000 in gross sales is a hobby, not a farm for income purposes. Given low profit margins, $100,000 in gross sales as a lower limit for a ‘farm’ might be too low.
Never fear. All the rockers will put on a farm aid concert.
In my area we see mostly MORE land being cleared to go into production. I’m not sure what the dynamic is — we do grow lots of corn, and perhaps some of that increase goes into ethanol.
how many of these farms do you think gates bought ?Farms around me are being converted into subdivisions at a rapid rate around here. I used to live way out of town. Now I am in town and I haven’t moved.
Had no idea that it was this many farms gone in such a short period of time. Shocking!
One good thing Connecticut does is buying up the development rights to the farms. It helps out the farmers and the farm can stay a farm. Tulmeadow Farm is a nice farm and the ice cream is delicious.