Develop or Preserve?
Earlier this summer, the Indiana State Department of Agriculture released a new report on the loss of farmland across the State from 2010 to 2022. The report was a response to the Indiana General Assembly's 2023 request for an estimate of the losses.
News organizations across the State called attention to the loss of 350,000 acres of farmland, or about 2% of the total inventory. The report contained very few surprises. Though large industrial projects have garnered the most attention and have been suspected of playing a leading role in the loss of farmland, the principal loss was instead due to residential development.
The issue has received considerable attention in St. Joseph County in recent years, especially because of the GM/Samsung, AWS, and Microsoft projects. These large projects have proposed developing large tracts of land that most recently contained agricultural uses. Each project sparks the debate of development vs. farmland preservation.
Farmland preservation has also been a hot topic of discussion in the development of the St. Joseph County Comprehensive Plan. It is included as a pillar in the recently released draft. Considering the focus, I think it is essential to understand the agricultural landscape in St. Joseph County.
St. Joseph County is the fifth-most populous County in the State and includes over 293,000 acres, making it the seventeenth largest county in terms of land area. St. Joseph County has about 150,000 acres of farms or about 1% of all farm acreage in Indiana. Fifty-five Indiana counties have more farm acreage than St. Joseph County.
Indiana is ranked 8th in the country for agricultural-producing states but has the 4th largest percentage of land devoted to agriculture. Farmland makes up 51% of St. Joseph County's total acres, and 46% of that land is cropland.
St. Joseph County does not rank in the top ten of Indiana counties in terms of agriculture products (Corn, Soybeans, Wheat, Cattle—beef, and Milk). It is 36th in Corn, 47th in Soybeans, 17th in popcorn, 57th in beef cows, 23rd in milk cows, 33rd in hogs, 53rd in sheep, and 33rd in turkeys.
Less than 3% of all people working in the County work in agriculture. Agriculture represents about 1% of the County’s GDP. (Gross domestic product is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time. GDP is often used to measure the economic health of a country or region.)
Over the past 12 years, St. Joseph County has lost 11,485 agricultural acres, or about 4% of its total acreage. Of those losses, 1,090 acres went to Industrial uses, 720 to commercial uses, and 9,673 acres to residential uses. Should we be concerned?
Indiana’s quest for population growth and its desire to grow the tax base could continue to negatively impact property classified as agricultural. To accommodate the growth, more agricultural property will have to move to residential. Indiana is, by and large, not urban; people want to live in houses. COVID pushed people out of cities into more suburbs, creating less density.
Critics often advocate for brownfield development instead of greenfield development. Unfortunately, significant acreage isn’t available without great risk to advance some of these large projects.
St. Joseph County must continue to advance development opportunities. We’re an urban county, and utilities will limit development opportunities away from the cities. We’re not in danger of losing all our farmland. While the total acreage may shrink, advances in technology mean we’ll grow more products than ever before with fewer acres. The new jobs and increasing population are critical to a county that has seen little development by comparison over the past 70 years.
