Growing More With Less Cropland
Ruben
Lubowski
Despite long-term declines in crop
prices and widespread concerns over urban encroachment
on farmlands, cropland area has dipped only slightly
since the 1940s while technological advances have
boosted agricultural output. Between 1997 and 2002,
U.S. total cropland area declined about 3 percent
to 442 million acres, the lowest level since USDA
began compiling this statistic in 1945. Although
this decline marks a milestone in terms of land
use, it does not mean a reduction in agricultural
production. In fact, the opposite is true: Increasing
productivity is allowing U.S. farmers to produce
more crops with less land.
The value of U.S. crop output
in 2002, measured in real (inflation-adjusted) terms,
was 2.6 times higher than in 1948, although the
value of aggregate input use declined over this
period. Thus, farmers are extracting more output—and
greater dollar value—out of fewer resources.
Greater use of nonland capital and materials like
energy and agricultural chemicals has substituted
for land and labor. Increases in yields, due to
improved seeds and other technological changes,
have also raised output. From 1945 to 2002, average
corn yields quadrupled while real prices received
for grains fell by 80 percent. As a result of rising
productivity, despite a smaller land area devoted
to crops, U.S. agricultural output continues to
grow and consumers continue to pay lower real prices.
Total cropland includes land planted
for crops, land used for pasture as part of a crop
rotation, and cropland idled under government programs,
such as USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program,
which pays farmers to voluntarily retire environmentally
sensitive cropland under 10- to 15-year contracts.
Since World War II, total cropland area has ranged
between 442 and 478 million acres and only decreased
by 9 million acres (2 percent) between 1945 and
2002. The decline in total cropland from 1945 was
due to a 23-million-acre (6 percent) reduction in
the area planted for crops, which was offset by
an increase in cropland pasture. Cropland used for
crops peaked at 387 million acres in 1949, reached
a 57-year low of 327 million acres in 1988, and
has since held steady at around 340 million acres.
The long-term changes in national
cropland acreage mask greater land-use redistribution
occurring at regional and State levels. From 1945
to 2002, total cropland in the Southeast, Northeast,
Appalachia, Lakes States, Delta States, and Far
West declined by about 37 million acres (24 percent),
but increased by 28 million acres (10 percent) in
the remaining regions. This further concentrated
acreage of cropland in the major crop-producing
regions.
This
finding is drawn from . . . |
| Major
Uses of Land in the United States, 2002,
by Ruben N. Lubowski, Marlow Vesterby, Shawn
Bucholtz, Alba Baez, and Michael Roberts,
EIB-14, USDA, Economic Research Service, May
2006.
The ERS Major
Land Uses data set
The ERS
Agricultural Productivity in the United States
data set |
|
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