Feb 22, 2011Farmland acreage drops
A land mass the size of Indiana. That’s how much farmland has been lost to development in the 25 years between 1982 and 2007 in the United States. According to the American Farmland Trust (AFT) more than 23 million acres of agricultural land was converted to development nationwide, an area equal is size to the state of Indiana.
Texas, California, Florida, Arizona and North California experienced the largest losses of farmland among the 48 contiguous states.
The data comes from the National Resources Inventory. The NRI is a survey of the nation’s non-federal lands conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service in cooperation with Iowa State University.
For more information visit www.farmlandinfo.org or call 800-370-4879.
