Our ability as a nation to
produce our own food is
important for our future.
We have to eat or we die.
We are quickly losing our
ability to produce food here
in the United States because
many farmers cannot make
a living from their farms.
Cheap, imported food and
high housing and land prices
are forcing farmers off the farm
and preventing new farmers
from producing food, even
in Agricultural Reserves.
We can have the best military
and all the fuel we need,
but if something happens
and we can't import food,
we will be in trouble!
From 1982 to 2006 the United States
lost around 28,000,000 acres
of prime farmland to development.
Statistics from American Farmland Trust
The last crop that a farm grows is houses!
Protecting farmland from
development is not enough.
Farmers have to be able to make a living.
Farmers have to have a house
to live in, and today,
for most farmers, food production
does not pay enough for housing.
Only 10% of Maryland farmers today
rely on their farm for all
of their income. USDA statistics
Our national security is only
as strong as our weakest link.
Our domestic food supply is one
link of national security that
is becoming weaker with each
passing year.
The Maryland license plate
depicts the sun setting on
our farms as our farms enter
the twilight zone.
What will you do if something happens
that we can't import food?
Important steps
of action
Note from the farm family:
In our search for a farm, one of the things that stood out to us
is that despite the current political push to preserve farmland,
there is not the same effort made in keeping food producing farms.
American Farmland Trust, a national organization focused on
protecting farmland from development, does not have a list of farms
that are available to farm, nor did they return phone calls. We had to
stop at their office in Washington DC to get any information. There is also
a national program called Farmlink that is administered by each state
which has a database of farms available. Maryland is no longer in
that program, and Virginia only has ten "farms" available. Of those
ten "farms", only one has a house and that is for sale separately.
Many do not seem to make the connection that to truly save farms,
the farmer has to be able to make a profit from the farm and afford
to live in a house. It also seems some don't realize that the "saved"
farmland needs a house for the farmer to live in. It is important that
we not only save farmland from development, but that we also save
real food producing farms with the house, barn, and infrastructure
needed to produce food. We have found that there is a lot of unused
farmland all over the place, but there is not a house and a barn to go
with it. Today a farmer cannot buy a farm and make enough money
from producing food to make the payments.
The Horst Family