|
|
Ohio losing farmland to development (complete article from source)
Source: STLtoday.com, by Julie Carr Smyth
June 12, 2007
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- On paper, Ohio's farmland preservation program is a success. In the seven years since the state began paying farmers not to sell to developers, nearly 27,000 farm acres have been saved. In a state that lost 6.9 million acres of farmland between 1950 and 2000, stemming the tide - even modestly - is viewed as a significant accomplishment. But state farmland has continued to disappear despite voter approval in 2000 of a bond initiative aimed at preserving green spaces, including farms.
An Associated Press analysis of land, tax, farm and geologic data confirmed the trend.
According to the analysis, much of the farmland is going to residential development, perplexing some observers because Ohio's population is stagnant and predicted to remain so for decades.
The state ranks eighth in the nation in the number of farms but only 21st in the amount of farmland, behind big ranch states including Texas and Montana. Its $79 billion food and agriculture industry dominates the state economy.
The Clean Ohio campaign, co-chaired by then-Gov. Bob Taft and space hero and former Sen. John Glenn, was pitched to voters as a boon for the environment. It would provide money to clean up blighted urban property, build recreational trails and preserve wildlife habitat and farms.
Voters overwhelmingly agreed to allow the state to borrow $400 million to fund it. Half the money went toward cleaning up contaminated urban industrial sites. The other $200 million was set aside for preserving green spaces, including $25 million for farmland.
The Sierra Club, which initially opposed the bond package, has been rethinking its position, said conservation program manager Ellen Hawkey Carmichael. Success stories on both the natural and agricultural fronts appear to be widespread, she said.
"A lot of people are really happy to see the positive effects the projects have had in their communities," she said. "If we've had a net loss of (undeveloped) land, my question would be what would the situation be like if there wasn't a Clean Ohio Fund?"
Ohio Department of Agriculture spokeswoman LeeAnne Mizer said evidence suggests the state's push to preserve farmland is ready to take off.
She said the state's farmland preservation office receives many more applications each year for conservation easements - land rights deals with the state - than it can accept. Only about a tenth of the land submitted for preservation since 2002 through the state's agricultural easement program - 20,385 of 217,982 acres - has been preserved. That's 98 of 1,368 interested farms.
Between 2005 and 2006, Ohio lost three times that many farms overall, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Ohio's agricultural preservation programs combined have saved 139 farms totaling 26,752 acres since the first grant was awarded in 1999, Mizer said.
"We're behind in that aspect," she said. "We haven't preserved as much as a lot of other states have, and it's something we would like to do more of."
By contrast, preservation efforts in Pennsylvania have saved 318,350 acres - 11 times what Ohio has, according to data collected by the American Farmland Trust. Maryland, Colorado, New Jersey and Vermont are among others that have saved five to 10 times the acreage that Ohio has, though in some cases their programs have been around longer.
---
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) - New research funded in part by industry sources concludes coal-bed methane development in the Powder River Basin is not harming crop yields in southeastern Montana.
Some farmers in the area fear the high-sodium water that is pumped from the ground during methane production could kill their crops or ruin their soil when used for irrigation. The research released Wednesday - commissioned by the Montana Oil and Gas Conservation Board - found no evidence of substantial crop losses or significant water quality changes due to coal-bed methane activity.
The research focused on the Tongue River Basin, where coal-bed methane exploration has been on the rise in recent years.
The first three years of the study were paid for by Fidelity Resources, one of the region's largest producers of coal-bed methane, or natural gas. Costs for 2006 were covered by the state through the Oil and Gas Conservation Board.
Tongue River irrigator Roger Muggli, a member of the Northern Plains Resource Council and critic of the coal-bed methane industry, said the research had "lots of holes in it" because some of the fields analyzed grew different crops over the course of the study. He said soil problems on his own fields refute the new research.
"I'm sitting here watching our fields collapse," he said, adding that he blames his soil problems on coal-bed methane wells upstream in Wyoming and Montana. "Just dumping it out in the rivers makes no logical sense because of the damage you can do to the crops."
Click here for complete article from STLtoday.com
|
|
