Some States Still Value Their Farmland Despite Financial Hard Times--NPR Reports

With the recent reports coming out on the *predicted coming food shortages we think this is a very prudent idea whose time has come to be seriously considered and placed higher on the priority list than hard rock mining is in real benefits to many. Not just the uber rich mining corporations and road builders.

* (This one FOX got right, no pun intended, but they are very late out of the gate.)

With limestone mining in particular, we lose hundred of thousands of acres of prime farmland every year and the promises of reclamation never seem to effectively materialize. You cannot replace prime farmland with a suitable substitute for agriculture once it has been rendered devoid of what made it so fertile to begin with--the underlying minerals.
From a recent NPR report:

Despite tough financial times following the worst recession in decades, some states continue to spend millions of dollars to preserve American farmland and stem its rapid loss to development and suburban sprawl.

Advocates say the preservation efforts are needed to ensure food is available locally if the national distribution system is ever disrupted. They also say it helps maintain a way of life important to many Americans.

Twenty-five states have farmland preservation programs, and nearly half of them are in the densely populated Northeast, where the loss of fields to housing developments and shopping malls has been rapid and pressing. After losing 21 percent of its farmland in less than two decades, Connecticut increased spending on preservation efforts.

In the northeast, they're on the right path and may be ahead of the curve if the food shortages become widespread. At least we hope they will, and are not squeezed out by Big Ag with the recent passage of SB 510 that basically handed over control of the food supplies to Monsanto and ConAg among others.

In our opinion, there could not have been worse timing for that bill with the dire reports of globalists warning of "food riots" and skyrocketing wholesale food prices.

From the Telegraph UK:

The cause of such alarm? On Wednesday, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported that global food prices had hit a record high and were likely to go on rising, entering what Abdolreza Abbassian, its senior grains economist, called “danger territory”.

Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, warns that the rising prices are “a threat to global growth and social stability”, and Nicolas Sarkozy has identified them as a priority for the G20, which he chairs this year.

That is bad enough for Britain, adding to the inflationary pressures from the soaring cost of oil and other commodities, not to mention the VAT increase. But for the world’s poor, who have to spend 80 per cent of their income on food, it could be catastrophic.

Are we coming to a crossroads of sorts where we need to re-examine what's more important right now? Mining or farmland? We believe it's worthy of discussion since most of the materials extracted from the US wind up in foreign markets, and what we give up to support those markets might be the very thing we really need in the near future to sustain us here at home.

*Another side issue of how perilous it is to be a black farmer in Georgia.

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