1970s – 1980s Protecting Farmland
In the 1970s and 1980s Roger worked as the land reform organizer in the Midwest for the National Coalition for Land Reform. He promoted the preservation of good agricultural land—including the benefits and importance of protecting urban-edge farmland for fresh food production and national security.
Chapter 5. Farming on the Urban Fringe Roger J. Blobaum Efforts to preserve agricultural land on the urban fringe put little emphasis on making farms more profitable. Public programs designed to slow farmland losses focus, for the most part, on tax relief. Although this helps, its primary benefit is a modest reduction in production costs. It does little to assure the level of earnings needed to keep these farms economically viable. The steady loss of farmland to urban development strongly suggests that traditional grain and livestock operations, which require substantial amounts of land, are not the best choice for urban fringe farming. It may make more sense to encourage farmers
Read More...Roger Blobaum, Agricultural Consultant 1976 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. The Palmer House, Chicago, Illinois, September 2-5, 1976 Land exploitation and abuse, ranging from ravaged virgin forests to plowed prairie lands that set the stage for terrible dust storms in the 1930s, were almost a way of life in the United States during its first 100 years. The supply of land seemed endless and Congress paid little attention to resource use while the county was being settled. One of its first conservation acts was an 1891 law setting land aside for national parks and forests. Ten years later the Reclamation Act established a pattern for land development in the West.
Read More...Energy Efficient Small Family Farms: MAKING FARMING PROFITABLE ON THE URBAN FRINGE By Roger Blobaum, Roger Blobaum & Associates West Des Moines, Iowa Energy Efficient Small Family Farms—Making Farming Profitable on the Urban Fringe” is an intriguing title for a presentation on farmland preservation. There is little in the literature to suggest there is any connection between small farm viability and farmland preservation or that anyone has given it much thought.
Read More...THE LOSS OF AGRICULTURAL LAND By Roger Blobaum, 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006 1974 Article excerpt: “The terms “urban,” “suburban,” and “rural” seemed to denote separate worlds where dependence upon each other was obviously acknowledged but not consciously intertwined.” R. Blobaum
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