City and Environment

3. Feeding Cities That Consume Farmland

3 Feeding Cities That Consume Farmland URBAN SPRAWL is derided by critics as wasteful. Low-density suburban development generally leads to an inefficient use of resources. Services such as water and sewers are more expensive because longer lines serve fewer people than in densely settled cities. Public transit is inefficient for the same reasons—traveling longer distances through lower-density markets means higher costs and fewer passengers, all of which requires a high subsidy from taxpayers or from transit fare payers in the city. Curvilinear street patterns with few intersections, typical of suburban developments, are also not amenable to public transit. For rail transit, building straight lines is easier and less expensive than building curved ones. Long distances between intersections and natural pick-up and drop-off points make all forms of transit less efficient in suburban areas. And because suburban developments often create large residential developments, distances to destinations—such as shopping or work—tend to be longer than in downtown cores. All of these factors encourage the use of private vehicles, which consume vast amounts of energy and move people very inefficiently. In short, suburbs consume high amounts of energy (Khisty and Ayvalik 2003). Increased reliance on the automobile and inefficient use of energy and municipal services are not the main factors that capture the public’s attention when it comes to urban sprawl. Encroachment onto farmland, however, tends to raise concern. The conversion of pastures into parking lots or forests into subdivisions while central city properties lie vacant or underused is an all-too-familiar situation for many municipalities . The American Farmland Trust estimates that every year in the United States, 1.2 million acres of productive farmland are converted to developed land uses (American Farmland Trust n.d.). While the number appears large, cities occupy surprisingly little territory . In the United States, for example, urban areas occupy only about 3 percent of the nation’s land. The pressing issue is not the quantity of land being converted to urban use but the amount of good-quality farmland. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that in the United States, prime farmland is being converted to development at two to four times the rate of less productive farmland (USDA 2002a). Another study of farmland loss shows that the overall quantity of cropland in the United States has remained fairly constant over the past two decades, but this is largely the result of converting rangeland in the semiarid west into cropland, which is often irrigated. Such a shift can enhance plant productivity and profit, but many question the sustainability of irrigated agriculture compared to the rain-fed agriculture in the humid East that it is replacing (Greene and Stager 2001). It is no accident that urban areas sit on top of some of the best farmland in the world. The richness of the soil is what brought people to these areas in the first place. Even in wealthy countries where relatively few people are engaged directly in farming, major cities are often found, and growing, in areas with good soil. Although the wealth of modern cities is no longer dependent solely on the bounty of agricultural hinterlands , the early advantages to cities of rich soil for farmers’ markets has kept many of the cities in the forefront of their urban hierarchies (Pred 1980). When we understand that most cities began as farmers’ markets, we can begin to comprehend the paradox that cities consume the farms that feed them. AGRICULTURAL ORIGINS: CITIES AS FARMER’S MARKETS The first cities, like those today, were gathering places for specific human purposes. Some ancient cities were planned and constructed for religious reasons, or as centers of kingdoms for control and regulation of their domains. Other cities emerged organically as unplanned centers of trade. Whether planned or unplanned, cities depended on the surplus production of food. People could live in cities only if others grew food for them, a fact that is as true today as it was ten thousand years ago. Surplus food was produced in regions of agricultural bounty, areas with abundant sunshine, soil nutrients, and water. It was in these fertile areas that farmers were able to trade their surpluses at temporary, and later permanent, markets for other food and eventually other goods and services. The first permanent urban dwellers facilitated the trade of food or offered other products, such as clothing, in exchange for food. Again, little has changed for urban dwellers today, who...