HD19 - Report of the Subcommittee Studying Agricultural Land Preservation

  • Published: 1981
  • Author: Subcomittee Studying Agricultural Land Preservation
  • Enabling Authority: House Joint Resolution 40 (Regular Session, 1980)

Executive Summary:

Despite its wane in this century, farming is still important to the nation and to the state of Virginia. The United States is the world's largest food producer and the dependence of other countries on food from this country will increase. Even now, our agricultural exports prevent us from having a large deficit in our balance of trade. Agriculture is Virginia's largest industry. The Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services estimates that farming and directly related activities contribute about $4.6 billion to the state's economy annually. It is imperative that any factor adversely effecting agriculture be assessed most carefully.

The land is basic to farming. This may seem like a truism, but so much attention is paid to technological developments in agriculture, such as new machinery, new fertilizers and pesticides, new growing techniques, and new seeds, that we tend to take the land for granted until it is no longer there. And it is disappearing.

Agricultural land is lost in a number of ways. A significant amount either blows or washes away through erosion. Another large portion is lost because it is converted to non-farm uses. It is this latter type of loss with which this report is concerned.

Because this problem has only recently become one of concern, we are not sure exactly how much farmland is disappearing. A national study sponsored by the federal government estimates that the country experienced an annual conversion of 3 million acres of agricultural land between 1967 and 1977. About one-third of that land was prime agricultural land before it was converted. That same study estimated that in the same time period Virginia lost 140,000 acres per year to other uses. If the present loss trend continues, Virginia will lose, by the year 2000, an additional 1 million acres of farmland, a third of which will be prime land. Because of difficulties in gathering data and in defining agricultural land, the figures are only estimates and will vary with the source. The exact figures are not that important however. What is important and is agreed upon, is that prime farmland is being lost from production at an alarming rate.

The concern over this problem has been widespread enough that the national government has formed the interdepartmental National Agricultural Lands Study, due to report in early 1981. The states have taken the lead, however, and several have enacted a variety of programs designed to preserve farmland.

In 1980, the General Assembly of Virginia directed the Agriculture Committee of the House of Delegates and the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources to investigate the status of farm preservation programs in the state. (Included in the appendix is House Joint Resolution No. 40, commissioning this study.) This subcommittee was appointed to carry out this request. In addition to a number of meetings and a public hearing in Leesburg, the members of the subcommittee attended a seminar on agricultural land preservation sponsored by the Frances Lewis Law Center of Washington and Lee University for the benefit of the subcommittee. The seminar was one of the best of its kind that we have ever attended in our roles as legislators. The information and perspectives we gained there added immeasurably to our deliberations in the course of this study. We are most grateful to Washington and Lee University and its law center for sponsoring this activity.