Urban sprawl is no threat to Ohio's farmland
The debate over urban sprawl is reaching fever pitch. Some in Ohio have identified it as a "crisis."[1] Last January, interim Gov. Nancy Hollister signed a bill creating a state fund to help local governments keep farm land undeveloped.[2] The law also authorized local governments to increase property and sales taxes by public vote to purchase development rights to farmland and open space.[3]Before clamping down on development, however, policymakers should have a clearer understanding of the forces driving farmland trends and the agricultural industry.
In 1997, Ohio’s farmland-preservation task force claimed the state was losing 77 acres of farmland a day (or 3 acres an hour) to urbanization and warned that urbanization might compromise agricultural productivity in Ohio.[4]
The report failed to mention that farmland-loss rates have been falling for decades. In the 1950s, Ohio lost 11.9 percent of its farmland.[5] In the 1960s and 1970s, farmland loss rates fell to 8.3 percent and 8.0 percent per decade.[6] Loss rates moderated even further to just 3.7 percent during the 1980s despite "rampant" sprawl.[7] While these trends reversed slightly in the 1990s, the rate for the decade is still about half that of the 1970s.[8]
Urbanization explains only a small percentage of the decline in cropland. Ohio State University agricultural economist Luther Tweeten estimates that just 26 percent of the nation’s decline in cropland from 1949 to 1992 was attributed to conversion to urban uses.[9] Urbanization’s effect on cropland loss in Ohio was just 4%.[10] The remainder can be attributed to economic and demographic factors.
The amount of cropland has remained relatively stable as Ohio’s urban areas have spread out. Harvested cropland for Ohio’s five major crops—corn, soybeans, winter wheat, hay, and oats—declined only 5.4 percent overall since 1980.[11] Yet, harvested cropland increased 4.7 percent from 1990 to 1997.[12]
Ohio’s agricultural production is also stable and has, in some cases, increased. In 1997, the Ohio Department of Agriculture reports total crop production was 15% higher than in 1990.[13] Total livestock and livestock products—meat, milk, wool, etc.—remain below 1990-92 levels, but chicken and poultry products were 53% higher.[14]
These data show that agriculture is changing significantly. As agriculture becomes more productive, less land is needed to produce food and other products. In fact, land is generally becoming less important in agricultural production.[15] Thus, agricultural productivity is freeing up land for other uses.
In addition, many farms are not financially independent. More than half of Ohio’s farms are small, under 100 acres.[16] Three quarters of Ohio’s farms earn less than $50,000 per year from the products they grow and send to market.[17] Even more telling, 54.8% of farmers do it part-time, and 43.4% work more than 200 days at other jobs.[18] While some of these part-time farmers may want to become full-time, others are "hobby" farmers—people that choose farming for lifestyle rather than commercial purposes.[19]
Ironically, Gov. Bob Taft visited a Greene County goat farm (near Dayton) last March to highlight support for farmland protection. The goat farm occupies a former cornfield. Traditional farming couldn’t compete with other uses on the urban fringe, so the property owners focused on products that produced high value per acre: goat farming. The goat farm is a product of market forces, not farmland preservation efforts. Other high value agricultural products common in metropolitan areas include nurseries, cultivated flowers, and even Christmas trees.
Development is not the unordered chaos that detractors depict. Farmland conversion reflects the evolving nature of Ohio’s communities and the economic realities of the agricultural industry. State and local policy should neither encourage nor discourage these changes.
Notes
[1] Remarks by Michael H. Cochran, executive director, Ohio Township Association, March/April 1997. (http://www.senate.state.oh.us/horn/farm05.htm)
[2] S.B. 223 was signed into law on January 4, 1999 in Columbus and became effective on April 5, 1999. The bill creates the fund, but revenues have not been allocated to the fund yet. The fund was created in part to take advantage of federal funds that will become available for farmland-preservation efforts on a matching basis.
[3] Ohio Revised Code, Sections 901.21 and 901.22. Any increase in property taxes requires voter approval. The law also allows county commissioners to increase the county sales tax to fund farmland preservation initiatives, also subject to voter approval.
[4] Ohio Farmland Preservation Task Force: Findings and Recommendations, Report to Governor George V. Voinovich, June 1997. The task force’s mission was not to evaluate farmland’s role in Ohio’s economy or in agriculture. Rather, its mission was to "provide recommendations to the Governor of the State of Ohio for the protection of our state’s agricultural land and future economic development."
[5] National Agricultural Statistics Service, Washington, D.C., September 1998, cited in Samuel R. Staley, "The Sprawling of America: In Defense of the Dynamic City," Policy Study No. 251 (Los Angeles, Cal.: Reason Public Policy Institute, January 1999), Appendices B and C, pp. 70-72.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid. Based on year-to-year trends from 1990 through 1997, the farmland loss rate for the decade should be about 4.6 percent.
[9] Luther Tweeten, "Competing for Scarce Land: Food Security and Farm Preservation," paper presented to the American Agricultural Law Association at Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 17, 1997.
[10] Ibid.
[11] 1997 Ohio Department of Agricultural Annual Report and Statistics, Columbus, Ohio, 1998, Table 1. (http://www.state.oh.us/agr/97annlrpt/table01.htm)
[12] Ibid. This increase in harvested cropland was primarily the result of a 29.0 percent increase in soybeans. Soybeans’ share of total cropland in these five primary crops increased from 35.1 percent to 43.2 percent. Harvested cropland for corn remained stable since 1990 and accounted for 33.2 percent of the acreage for these crops. In fact, harvested cropland varies significantly from year to year, irrespective of larger trends in urbanization. See the discussion of U.S. Department of Agriculture data in Staley, The Sprawling of America, p. 23.
[13] 1997 Annual Report of the Ohio Department of Agriculture, Table 4. Production dipped to 1% below 1990-92 levels in 1995 and 12% below 1990-92 levels in 1996 before rebounding. (http://www.state.oh.us/agr/97annlrpt/table04.htm)
[14] Ibid.
[15] Two-thirds of agriculture’s productivity is attributed to capital, technology, and equipment. Less than 20 percent is attributed to land, and the importance of land is declining. See Luther Tweeten, Farm Policy Analysis (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989), Table 1.4, p. 9
[16] 1997 Census of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture. (http://www.econ.ag.gov/epubs/other/usfact/oh.htm)
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid. Table 6.
[19] The impact of hobby farming on land-use policy has been significant. In Oregon, for example, hobby farmers have emerged as one of the more influential antigrowth interest groups. See Gerrit Knaap and Arthur C. Nelson, The Regulated Landscape: Lessons on State Land Use Planning from Oregon (Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 1992), pp. 145-153.
Samuel R. Staley, Ph.D. is a senior fellow at the Buckeye Institute and director of Urban and Land Use Policy at Reason Foundation in Los Angeles. An Ohio native and resident, he is co-author of the forthcoming book Mobility First: A New Vision for Transportation in a Globally Competitive Twenty-first Century (Rowman & Littlefield) and co-author of The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, and What We Can Do About It (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
