If history were a person, originality would not be a descriptive word for it.
George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Well, history doesn’t repeat itself precisely, but it tends to circle back to the same old stories, and man, being man, is simply on replay. Like it or not, it’s what we do. We are human, and to be human is to repeat the past’s mistakes, always thinking the outcome will be different.
This year, the United States will lose 1.5 million acres, or 175 acres an hour of farm and ranch land to suburban sprawl. Fifty percent of that land is listed as “prime farmland,” meaning it has rich soil that requires few fertilizers to grow crops or support livestock.
For those who think visually, we develop about the same acreage annually as the state of Delaware. Between 2001 and 2016, we developed 11 million acres of farm and ranch land. Since then, a conservative estimate suggests we have lost another 11 to 12 million acres. This means we have developed an area about the size of Maine or South Carolina since 2001.
Now for a bit of history, but first: the U.S. imports about 15% of its yearly food use, a number expected to keep inching upwards. The expected numbers are 55% to 59% of fresh fruits, 32% to 35% of fresh vegetables and 80% to 94% of seafood by 2036. We are a big nation, and even though we are casually bulldozing 175 acres of good farmland an hour, it will take us quite a while to reach the 70% of imported food Britain imported during the two World Wars.