BAY JOURNAL
When the American Farmland Trust recently assessed threats to farmland in Pennsylvania, it was surprised to find that urban sprawl and anemic profit margins for milk and crops didn’t top the list.
The biggest problem? The growth of large-lot subdivisions leapfrogging urban areas and popping up in farm country.
In its nationwide study, “Farms Under Threat: The State of the States,” the trust found that Pennsylvania ranked eighth in the nation for the rate of conversion from agricultural land to low-density housing. In fact, 70% of the 347,000 acres of farmland lost in the state between 2001 and 2016 was because of such pop-up neighborhoods.
Fragmenting of the agrarian landscape and the disruption of agricultural economies often leads to a slow but inexorable domino effect. While being amid new neighborhoods may benefit some farmers in the near term with direct-market sales, it’s more likely that over time the critical mass needed for a viable farm community is lost.
Farmers have trouble moving equipment between their fields, and new residents complain about odors. Grain and equipment retailers that farmers depend on move out and land prices go up, making it harder for farmers to buy property.
Low-density residential development is 23 times more likely to make surrounding ag land urbanized than other agricultural land, according to the report, which the trust bills as “the most comprehensive assessment ever undertaken of U.S. agricultural land use.”
“While urban sprawl is still a threat to farmland, low-density residential land use is as much of a threat to farmland as urbanization,” said Jamie Mierau, American Farmland Trust’s mid-Atlantic regional director. “Unlike urban highly developed development, conversion to low-density residential is not closely tied to population growth.”
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