Preserving Farmland Could Help the Climate, Advocate Says

Climate

In many parts of the U.S., family farms are disappearing and being replaced by suburban sprawl.


“Our estimates are that farmland loss is occurring at an alarming 175 acres per hour,” says Jennifer Moore Kucera of the American Farmland Trust.

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But Kucera says when farmland is lost to development, it significantly reduces the potential to sequester carbon in the soil.

“And it also then increases the pressures that are put on the remaining lands to support and produce the food that we need for society,” she says. “We might need more resources, more inputs, water use is going to become more critical, and that just increases the stress on the land.”

So Kucera says protecting farmland and promoting denser urban growth can help the climate.

Reposted with permission from Yale Climate Connections.

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