Although the number of farms and the amount of farm acreage are in decline, agriculture remains important.
Although farm acreage and the number of farms and farmers have decreased, roughly half of Ohio is still farmland.
Nevertheless, technological advances have meant that, despite drops in total farm acreage and number of farms, production has increased.
Though New Jersey has 9,600 farms, "acreage continues to shrink every year," said Ron Good, a marketing specialist with the state Department of Agriculture.
Sweden, one of several European countries that subsidize farmers in switching to organic methods, has set a goal of converting 20percentt of its farm acreage to organic farming by 2005.
Governor Whitman signed bills last week authorizing the preservation of farmland in five counties that should bring the total farm acreage to about 81,000 acres locked away as open space.
On the other hand, new markets are opening elsewhere to cater to GM-wary populations: one country's trade loss is another's golden opportunity.Far from taking over world agriculture, GM crops represent less than 5% of world farm acreage.
If, on the other hand, third world agriculture is not industrialized, then the effort to enrich developing countries by means of exports from labor-intensive farms will inspire a vast expansion of peasant farm acreage -- at the expense of the environment.
Under that scenario, experts say, irrigated farm acreage would plunge...
There are community-based tourism models in Tanzania and elsewhere in the world in which locals retain land rights so that they can negotiate whatever matters most to them, be it grazing rights or farming acreage or fishing access.
