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Farmland is being lost in Ohio, what now?

An Ohio State University professor says several multi-year studies across the Midwest have shown that farmland is being lost to urban development.

Ani Katchova says her study showed that Ohio has lost 930,000 acres since 2002.

“Not surprisingly, most of the agricultural land that was converted to development is around the city of Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati,” she says. “Columbus far outpaced the other two cities as far as conversion of agricultural land.”

She tells Brownfield they continue to study the impacts of urban sprawl to production agriculture.

“There’s a lot of efforts on farmland preservation in Ohio,” she says. “One thing that is clear from the research is that any policy will need to differ on if the farmland is close to metropolitan areas versus not.”

A study published earlier this year from the University of Illinois and Ohio State University showed that 1.6 million total acres of farmland has been lost since 2001.

AUDIO: Ani Katchova, Ohio State University