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CLERK’S OFFr~E
More Factors to Consider in Making Land—use Decisions
STATE OF IWNOIS
Pollution Control Board
In my paper of 8/3/98 to the Planning and Zoning Committee on ‘The
Real L.Jorth of DeKalb County Farmland”, I focused on farmland’s critical
economic role in the local, state, and national economy. lhis paper will
focus on the in—county economic benefits of farmland, the ballooning menace
of urban sprawl; the water dynamics of our country and region; a second
look at socio—economic factors affecting our quality of life; and a
critical look at alternative land uses..
~eKalb County farmers buy most of their farming needs (machinery,
fuel, fertilizer, seed, herbicide, insecticide) right here in our county.
National retail stores like Walmart, Target, and Walgreen do not.
Farmers spend at least part of their profits in our county. National
chains send their profits to their home offipe in other parts of the
country.
The farmers’ purchases have spa~neda lot of small agribusinesses in
the county and provided the foundation of one big one. The DeKaib county
soil survey report, released in May of 1978, included this statement:
“Many small industries are in DeKalb County, but most people are in
businesses that serve farms..” Simply stated, agriculture is the backbone
that built our county through its infancy and growth for the 140 years
included in this report.
Next let’s look at urban sprawl. In 1950 the Chicago Metropolitan
Area included 6 counties all located in Illinois. By 1995 it had ballooned
to 13 counties sprawled over Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. During
those 45 years the population growth around Chicago increased 48
—
but the
land development to accomodate these people increased 165, or nearly 3 1/2
times as fast. Thus urban sprawl during the last 45 years has been 3
1/2
C...
\,
)
(~‘
A
times as distructive of farmland per person as it was before 1950.
Water resources are another victim of urban sprawl. A study of 100
cities spread across the U.S. showed an average water usage of 150 gallons
per person per day. Average domestic water usage is 75 gallons per person
per day. The Chicago area in 1900 had drinkable water in places within 30
feet of the surface. But the water table dropped about 10 feet per year
and by 1970 was around 700 feet. The near suburbs showed similar drops.
Before long it became too expensive to pump water from such great depths,
and Chicago switched to Lake Michigan for its water supply. Today some of
the suburbs also found pumping water too expensive, and are buying their
water from Chicago.
In the U.S. as a whole, groundwater is being used 25 faster than the
recharge rate. This deficit i~accelerated in
~
kind of development
because of greater water usage and the decrease in the area of
infiltration. By way of contrast, our county’s farmland has minimum water
usage and maximum area for water infiltration.
1’~~Some important aspects of development deserve scrutiny. DeKalb City’s
own staff reports are illuminating.. According to those reports 1) the city
makes no money on new housing developments;
2)
the city school board loses
money on such developments; and 3) half of the people who live in Dekaib
\work elsewhere, while half of the people who woriç in DeKalb live elsewhere.
In recent annexations, particularly the 173 acres annexed this summer
on the west side of town, there was no mention of either a housing shortage
in DeKaib nor any demonstrated need for more housing. If farmers
deliberately and meditatively used their land to guarantee that they’d lose
money, they’d have gone bankrupt long ago. Fortunately for all of us,
farmers have a mindset that utilizes our most precious resource in a manner
for which it was intended.
.
Commercial development doesn’t have the stability nor longevity of
agriculture. Buildings get vacated, abandoned, or torn down when the
profit margin dries up or new stores come in. Downtown DeKaib was severely
crippled when new stores were built on Sycamore Road, some with generous
subsidies from the city government. The movement of Walmart from one
location to another added more business casualities. Walmart itself, as
featured on “60 minutes” in 1997, has a track record of killing the
downto~nbusiness sections of some cities when they moved in
—
and in some
cases killing the whole town when they’ moved out. National chain stores
aren’t anchored to the land like farmers are and generally rent the
buildings: hence they can move out whenever their profits don’t satisfy
them.
I~closing, it seems appropriate to review the socio—economic benefits
of agr.iculture compared to other uses when making land use decisions
Agriculture produces~
. . ‘ ~‘
.1
,::less water runoff
‘
. ‘
less flooding
‘
,‘
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‘less destruction of property in low—lying areas
faster recharge of aquifers for human and other uses
filtration by the soil of the recharge water
cover and food for many species of wildlife
aesthetic value of open space for everyone t~o enjoy
~.essair polution
much less traffic congestion
All of these factors add to the quality of life for everyone, and some
of these factors also affect your pocketbook. Countless millions of tax
dollars are spent for flood relief every year, the huge majority going to
developments. Only a small fraction goes to farmersj and they received
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little
or nothing in DeKalb County in the 1996 floods.
The most important point to remember is this~ every person needs food
and water ever’ day. Land produces more than 9O~ of all our food and
fiber
while also protecting our precious freshwater resources.
Development destroys our soils while depleting our freshwater supplies..
You can see results in a one hour drive toward Chicago.
The rest of the
world has learned that food and water are our most precious resources.
When are ~ going to start learning?
4
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The Real Worth of DeKaib County Farmland
I’ve spent my life working with agriculture. I’m a Soil and Plant
Scientist by trade, receiving my Ph.D. in Agriculture from the University
o:E Maryland. I’ve watched DeKaib County destroying it’s heritage for years
and I reel I can no longer be quiet.
Let’s look at some historical information regarding the role of
agriculture. About 4,000 years ago a number of mighty Bronze’ Age Cultures
crumbled (there’s an excellent article about this in Discover Magazine,
•March 1998, Pp. 94-99). These city-states included the early Minoan in
Crete, the old Kingdom in Egypt that built all the pyramids, the cities
Mahenjo—Dare and Harappa, the Akkadian Empire in Mesapotamia, and the early
Bronze ~ge cities in Palestine. The cities stretched from the Mediteranean
Sea to the Arabian Sea, a distance of about 2,500 miles. These
sophisticated and well-organized city-states with their grain reserves were
•considered to be invincible, totally beyond any dependence on weather or
nature. But they all collapsed about the same time and we didn’t know
why
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we just’knew that they did.
Recently, scientific evidence from dust cores and the Greenland Ice
Sheet Project 2 have explained the debacle. Three centuries of drought
simultaneously destroyed the agriculture that supported these mighty
dynasties. Quoting the author, “the economies of these earlier
civilizations
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complex and progressive though they may have been
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were
still fundamentally dependent on agricultural production. In fact, one
hallmark of any civilization is that it requires a life-support system of
farming communities toiling away in the fields and turning over the fruits
of their labor to a central authority.” There it was weather that did in
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the farmland and their associated cities. Here the farmland is being done
in by urban sprawl. Why?
We just don’t understand the value of farmland here in the United
States. Every developed country in the world
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except the United States
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is giving top priority to agriculture. Land produces over 90 of the food
and fiber of the world. Those materials, like factory products, have
intrinsic value. They have value in themselves. In contrast, all forms otE
service income are extrinsic, having no internal value in themselves.
After considering all factors, every other developed country has recognized
the importance of preserving the farmland to continue producing food and
fiber indefinitely.
In the United States we began with about 600 million acres of land
suitable for Agriculture. By 1970 we were down to 500 million acres. We
are continuing to lose 1 to 1 1/2 million acres of farmland each year, most
of it to urban sprawl and much of that on our best soils. At this rate of’
loss we would run out of farm land in 4 or 5 centuries while older
civilizations like China (4,000 years) and northern Europe (2,000 years)
are still going strong. Unlike Northern Europe, the U.S. could be a net
importer of food in as little as 60 years. Then we would complain loudly
about the high cost of food.
DeKaib County is particularly critical to the preservation of farm
• land because we have the best combination of soils, topography and climate
in the world.. Drummer silty clay loam, soil type ff152, is the most
productive soil in the world after it is tile-drained. There are 117,000
acres of Drummer in the county, a whopping 29 of its total area. Drummer
is a major component of Soil Associaations #1 through #3, which make up 87
2
or 7/8 of our county. And although Drummer is our best soil for
agriculture, in housing developments it is often relegated to being a
collector for runoff water. What a desecration of the world’s best soil!
Only 2 of our population are farmers in the U.S.; the other 98 of
our people have little notion of what farmland is really worth to them. If
you travel in other countries and compare the price of food there with
here, you’ll get the point.
Some years ago the Bureau of Agricultural Economics of the USDA made
extensive studies of farm-to-market prices. They found that for every
dollar of products sold from the farm, it generated another $7.00 in the
nation’s economy. Thus a 150 bushel per acre corn crop selling at $2.50
per bushel is worth not only $375
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but it actually pumps $3,000 per acre
into our total economy. At this rate our superb farmland soils, that took
about 10,000 years to form, would pump $30,000 into our national economy
every 10 years; $300,000 per acre every 100 years; and $3,000,000 per acre
every 1,000 years. That is not very long compared to China’s 4,000 years.
The ratio of 7 to 1 used above is a conservative figure. Prices
received by farmers have gone up much less than the price of goods made
from farm products.
Here are four examples of products made from the three major grain
crops of the corn belt and the great plains. They were all purchased a few
days ago at a supermarket in DeKaib. Table 1 gives the basic farm prices
for the grains used
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the money the farmer gets for his product. Table 2
shows what the consumer pays at the retail market; and the ratio of the
farmer’s share to what is pumped into the national economy. Averaging the
four ratios for these popular foods, each dollar the farmer receives is
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magnified 40 times in the National economy. If all the corn off one acre
was converted into corn flakes, the worth of that one acre corn crop would
be $375 x 55 or a staggering $20,625 each year. Do you still think
farmland isn’t important to all of us?
4
(~AA2~
/fl~
FARM-GENERATED INPUT INTO OUR NATIONAL
ECONOMY
TABLE 1 BASIC
FARM
PRICES
•
FARMER’S
CROP FARMER’S PRICE PER BUSHEL POUNDS PER BUSHEL PRICE PER POUND
SOYBEANS
$6.32
60
$0.10
CORN
$2.50
56
$0.045
WHEAT
$3.60
60
$0.06
TABLE 2.
RETAIL PRICES OF FOODS MADE FROM FARM PRODUCTS
STORE
PRICE
FARMERS
FARMER TO CONSUMER
PRODUCT
STORE PRICE/WEIGHT
PER POUND
SHARE
RATIO
SOY FLOUR
$2.75/22
oz
$2.00
$0.10
1:20
100 WHOLE
WHEAT
BREAD $2.59/20 oz
$2.07
$0.06
1:34
100 SHREDDED
WHEAT CEREAL $2.79/iS oZ
$2.98
$0.06
1:50
CORN FLAKES
CEREAL
$2.79/lB oz
$2.48
$0.045
1:55
I have dealt only with some important economics of farmland’s critica~
role in the local, state, and National economy. Other economic factors
would further enhance farmland’s importance, along with the many benefits
to quality of life for all of us that farmers and farmland provide compared
to other land uses: less runnoff, less flooding, more recharge of our
underground aquifers, filtration by the soil of this recharge water,
wildlife cover and food for many species of wildlife, aesthetic value of
open space, less air pollution, and much less traffic congestion. All of
these should be considered in making land use decisions. My presentation
has focussed on the economic importance of agriculture only because that is
the least understood aspect of farmland.
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•
6
Clifford H. Simonson, Ph.D.
Background in terrain investigations, analysis, and land use planning.
1. Prepared strategic military intelligence maps and reports on terrain
and its role in military operations on about 7,000,000 square miles in
13 countries in Europe and Asia.
2.
Carried out the world’s only helicopter soil survey, covering the
coastal plain of Guyana, South America (about 5,000 square miles of
fresh water marshes and swamps). This 17 sheet map and 608 page report
are serving as the landuse plan for the country’s populated area. They
are also in the National Library of Guyana and the United States
Library of Congress.
3. Mapped soils on detailed soil surveys in British Guiana, Maryland and
Illinois, including some of the soil series occurring in DeKaib County.
4. Charter member of the Greenbelt, Maryland Advisory Planning Board.
5. Chairman of Committee One, the standing committee that handled all
rezoning petitions for industrial, commercial, and residential
development in Greenbelt and the surrounding area.
6. This committee also formulated a new master Plan for Greenbelt and the
surrounding area that was eventually adopted by the Prince Georges
Board of County Commissioners.
7. Later served on the Greenbelt City Council.
8. Served on the Board of Directors of Greenbelt Homes, Inc., the CO-OP
t’hat bought the 1820 housing units from the federal government in 1953.
9. Currently a member of the DeKaib County Board, its Planning and
Regulations Committee, and its Forest Preserve committee.
10. Earned Ph.D. in Soil and Plant Science, with minors in Chemistry and
Geography.
11.
At Northern Illinois University I taught six courses in Earth Science:
A 4
hour lab course in Basic Soil Science; Recent Advances in Soil
Science
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Field Studies; Recent Advances in Soil Science
—
Laboratory
Studies; World Soil Geography (a 500 level graduate course); Physical
Geography; and Conservation of Natural Resources.