Vanishing Farmland
We’ve heard a lot in the news about efforts to keep America’s farm ground out of foreign hands. Iowa was ahead of the curve on this, but there are efforts to strengthen Iowa’s laws, to keep the Chinese and others from buying up farm ground and ultimately controlling our food supply.
I’m not a fan of government telling a property owner who they can and cannot sell their ground to, but there are national security implications that make sense as an exception to the general rule.
But increasingly, I’m more concerned about the amount of priceless Iowa farm ground being taken out of production and sold for commercial development, in the name of so-called progress.
For months, every morning as I drive to work and every evening as I drive home, I’ve lamented the acres of productive farm ground on the north side of Waterloo that was ruined last year and is being turned into a multi-unit apartment complex, complete with the commercial amenities one would expect. Similarly, near my rural home, fields that yielded fine crops now being turned into an unneeded housing development on a cul-de-sac. Yesterday, while driving into Waverly from the south, another area being clear cut, flattened out, and set for this so-called “improvement”.
Sure, it’s growth and that’s supposedly progress. But what happens when we take so much of this best-in-the-world farm ground and pave over it, that we don’t have enough left to feed ourselves?
Again, I have no answer. I just see lots of vacant areas that have already been “developed” and wonder why our first response is to devour more of it.
It’s a conversation worth having, while we still can.
