City Newspaper Archives - 7/2008
DEVELOPMENT: Preserve farms, preserve food
Published on Jul 15, 2008
I would like to discuss a side issue related to your article, "Farms are key to open-space preservation" (July 2). As someone who grew up in a rural area, I have spent years watching farmland disappear to make way for someone's dream home. As I watch these sometimes ridiculously large structures spring up where the year before there was corn or wheat, I have to wonder whether people consider that when they buy land from a farmer to build a home, they are reducing our total food supply.
An acre or two of land may seem minuscule when you see fields stretching from Route 383 to the river, but every piece of grain that is destroyed to make way for a new home is the last that will grow on that property in the foreseeable future. The world's population is increasing at a staggering rate, and although the trend of throwing up new homes has declined due to the current economic downturn, there is plenty of perfectly usable, empty housing both in the city and the suburbs.
Before you decide to build that dream home in the country, stop and think about how many loaves of bread will never be made and how many pieces of fresh corn on the cob will never be eaten. Without farms we can't eat.
JOSEPH P. MAURICI III, SCOTTSVILLE
