The Cattle Business Weekly
The Cattle Business Weekly
What's Reshaping America's Agricultural Land Base?
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Farmland pressure is often discussed as a national acreage-loss problem, but for farmers and ranchers the more immediate challenge is land access. Land can remain technically “agricultural” while becoming harder to rent, buy or keep in production. At the same time, acres converted to development, energy infrastructure or other built uses often do not return to farmland or ranchland. The U.S. is not facing a sudden farmland cliff, but agricultural land is being reshaped by two concurrent forces: physical land-use change and ownership transition. Some acres are shifting among cropland, pasture and the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), while others...