An Infinite Supply of Finite Resources 7 While unmitigated intensive farming practices degrade the land, com-
mercial development removes farmland completely from any consider-
ation of future food production. Beginning early in America’s history,
the richest farmland with access to fresh water corresponded with the
places where populations chose to live and subsequently develop.
Such trends have not changed. Developers are eager to snap up
farmland near populated areas. Municipalities are after higher prop-
erty tax revenue, invoking legal tools such as eminent domain if need
be. In just two decades, 99 – 0 , some thirty-one million acres of
farmland were lost to development, on par with losing the entire state
of New York or most of Iowa. At nearly three acres per minute, the
equivalent of , 00 football fields each day are being lost to nonagricul-
tural uses.
Seeing America’s prime farmland as a national heritage formed over
millions of years and worth protecting to ensure food availability has
never been part of the national psyche. Land is foremost about acquir-
ing wealth, controlled by those willing to pay the most, irrespective of
its connection to food.
When my father chose to sell prime farmland, he did not set out to
validate how society regards farmland. Yet that was what happened. A
country possessing some of the world’s most prized soil made it easy to
overlook land as an irreplaceable resource for sustaining life.
Every so often when I visit family, I am reminded how once-
productive farmland became an elite subdivision. Within it are homes
exceeding a million dollars in value. When “developed” in this way,
the soil that once grew food now holds zero value. In the minds of the
developers and buyers, there is little difference between dirt and soil.
vWe never know the worth of water till the well is dry.
— Thomas Fuller
In 99 , over a period of a hundred days, a mass genocide killed more
than 00,000 people in Rwanda. Its heinous brutality shocked the
world. Years later, an international criminal tribunal was convened in