PrintWhen the Farming Business Is Good, Why Conserve Land?
With all the chatter about sustainable agriculture even making it to the front page of the New York Times, it's easy to forget that the whole notion of sustainability is all about farmers making short and long-term economic decisions. Given the fragility of the income stream of most non agribusiness farms, it's no wonder that some farmers are willing to trade in the price supports they receive to conserve land for the greater upside potential of planting viable crops on that same acreage during a time of rising food prices.
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3 Comments:
Farmland IS a natural resource and we need to conserve it. We should applaud the farmers who embrace conservation. The land that farmers are given the option to conserve is farmland that is fragile and should probably not be farmed in the first place.
Unfortunately much of the country's most productive farmland lies in the path of urbanization. These urban fringe agricultural areas should be maintained as farmland. Instead of considering farming marginal lands, we should do everything we can to protect the most productive agricultural areas for future generations.
lakeloverhh at 3:12PM on 04/09/08
I agree. Your well-articulated argument is what is at the heart of the sustainable agriculture movement. The idea is that the land will be sustained for generations to come.
Ed Levine at 3:14PM on 04/09/08
While conservation is important, and farming far from profitable, it's more important to allow farmers to take profit where they can get it than to hold them down for the sake of environmentalism. Government subsidies do help in desperate times, but in reality the money given to conserve land barely folds. Also, properly farmed land IS conservable. There needs to be more focus on preserving land through farming naturally, not abandoning production.
embolini9 at 11:26AM on 04/11/08