Excerpt
MANY people are concerned that the United States is losing agricultural land to urban development at an unprecedented and unacceptable rate. The issues relative to agricultural land retention are complex; they range from “crisis” to “no problem.”
Realistically, it appears the issue is not so much one of losing land generally as one of losing agricultural land adjacent to urban areas. The 1981 agricultural land availability survey concluded that “the United States has a sufficient supply of agricultural land … through the end of the century” (2). The survey noted, however, that land availability for high-value specialty crops is becoming a greater problem (2). Speciality-crop agriculture often requires unique environmental conditions and proximity to supporting agricultural services. In many cases such lands are located directly in the path of expanding urban areas.
The issue of protecting land in urbanizing areas for specialty agriculture is not limply one of debating the merits of agricultural land retention over development or vice versa. More important is determining how a multiplicity of uses and interest groups can be compatibly accommodated.
When the problem is viewed as a land use conflict model (see conflict model illustration), with …
Footnotes
Robert J. Southerland is an assistant professor of landscape architecture and Thomas J. Nieman is a professor of landscape architecture, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, University of Kentucky, Lexington, 40546.
- Copyright 1985 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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