Despite popular fears that urban and suburban growth is paving over American, the cities and suburbs in the nation's 450 urbanized areas of 50,000 people or more cover just 2.4 percent of the contiguous 48 states. When all smaller towns and unincorporated concentrations of people are included, the total is still well below 4 percent. Urbanization does not threaten rural open space. Nor does it threaten the nation's farms or forests. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that we have over a billion acres of agricultural lands, but we use only about 375 million acres to grow crops. The number of acres in crop production has recently declined because per-acre yields have grown faster than our population. In mountain towns like Missoula there is a lot of Nimbys masquerading as environmentalists and protectors of open space and farmland in order to inhibit growth by using restrictive zoning which only raises the cost of housing for working folks.

Hey Mickey: Does it make any sense to you for inhabitants of the "Garden City" to eat food and vegetables trucked in thousands of miles from California, Florida or Mexico? How does this affect the planet? Food security? Energy use? Transportation? The list could go on and on. Wouldn't it make more sense to produce as much food locally as possible?

Mickey,
It would be interesting to see where you got your figures as they do not fit with contemporary knowledge of urban landscapes. Also you make the common error of confusing the roughly billion acres of ag land with crop land. Ag land includes land used for siviculture, grazing and range land, not all of which is suitable for crop production.

Although the locavore movement is all the rage right now. Its not really new. There have been and still are plenty of farmers markets selling local produce in cities, towns and villages since the beginning of the republic. However contrary to conventional wisdom urbanization is not significantly threatening national farmland or agricultural productivity. Research shows that 26 percent of the decline in cropland can be attributed to urbanization. Structural changes in the agricultural industry, including declining profitability and shifting demand for ag products, accounts for the remainder. Cropland,land used to produce food, has remained stable even as the amount of land in farms has declined. U.S. Agricultural productivity is close to an all time high, exporting more than a third of our domestically produced rice, wheat and soybeans. Most farmland conversion is to nonurban uses such as forests, pasture, range land, and recreational uses. According to the 1997 Natural Resource Inventory, Montana occupies over 145 thousand square miles, of which 0.9 percent is developed and 0.4 percent is urban. The 2000 census shows similar results. Vanishing Farmland is a myth, perpetrated by Nimbys who want to shut the gate and lock everyone else out. Thanks to automobiles and trucks which will become drastically less polluting in the near future we have more acres of forestlands today than a hundred years ago. Millions of acres of horse pastures returned to forests once autos and tractors replaced horses as a major source of travel and farm power. Can you grow oranges, lemons, limes, Bananas,Pineapples, Mangoes,coffee, or chocolate close to Missoula? Is it more or less ethical to spend some of your food money to sustain poor folks in third world countries?

Well said Mickey, The real issue on this topic isnt total food production in Missoula, Montana or the United States, I believe I'm still subsidizing farmers not to grow food. I'm more concerned about the local tax revenue to support services to these growing areas, ie. Police, fire and emergency services.

Basically new growth should be made to pay for itself, understanding that the people occupying the new homes will become local government taxpayers, which is not the same thing as attempting to obstruct growth by concocting phony environmental reasons. This simply drives up the cost of housing beyond the reach of all but the very wealthy. The developer is usually required to put in roads, sewer lines, community amenities etc. and adequate hook up fees should be charged. If a planned community is developed distant from town, sprawl, so called, a pejorative term concocted by Nimbys and Planning dweebs, then the developer needs to form a local service taxing district so that county taxpayers don't have to pay for the new subdivision's services. And of course there should be some kind of affordable housing component required for new development.

If Jean and Bill aren't prepared to use the clause on agricultural land to protect the environment in which we live, they should change the planning code. And explain to us why.