Unsustainable Pattern- Loss of Farmland

America, once breadbasket of the world is now a net food importer. Not only is the quality of the food questionable but its a great strain on the environment (shipping lettuce from other countries when it can be grown here) and makes America dependent on foreign sources for food...not an enviable position to be in. If the current pattern continues - more immigration, explosive population growth, sprawl, removal of farmland, we could be in a genuine crisis should there ever be a serious interruption of world trade. From NumbersUSA

Economic, cultural, demographic and political forces between 1982 and 1997 converted approximately 39,000 square miles (or 25 million acres) of rural land into subdivisions, malls, workplaces, roads, parking lots, resorts, and the like.

The rural area lost to development between 1982 and 1997 is about equal to the entire land mass of Maine and New Hampshire combined.

The rate of rural land lost to development in the 1990s was about 2.2 million acres per year. If this rate continues to the year 2050 – when today’s toddlers are middle-aged – the United States will have lost an additional 110 million acres of rural countryside. That’s about equal to the combined areas of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia.