Currently metropolitan areas have taken about 51.7 percent of prime farmland in the United States since the 1970’s, resulting in an average loss of 390,000 to 760,000 acres of land (Coughlin 33). As the population gets bigger, cities are starting to expand, trying to fine new areas to fit all these people. They are expanding outward, slowly destroying what is left of “rural” areas. The demand for bigger cities is overshadowing the need to maintain for agriculture. The destruction of these farmlands hinder the loves of the farmers and their families.

When it comes to the farmer and his family, the increase in urbanization is affecting them greatly. The need for land development has resulted in increased property tax value on the land (Coughlin 34). This results in two main problems for the farmer. First: these farmers are no longer able to afford to keep the land in which they currently own, which results in them having to sell their land over to the government to likely be used for urban development. Second: these farmers, and prospective farmers as well, are then not able to afford to purchase land in order to start another farm.

When it comes to the average American, urbanized cities taking over the rural areas also has an impact. The expansion results in there being little to no room between the urban development and the farm. This can cause a disturbance in living, “Farming activities that are deemed nuisances by new suburban residents of the area may be legislated against” (Berry 3). This can affect how a farmer does his job. According to David Berry in “Effects of Urbanization on Agriculture Activities,” suburban residents can place a complaint on their rural residents and the legislature will accommodate the suburban resident due to the nature of urbanization. Rules can be placed on the farmer, such as what fertilizers they can and can’t use due to the odor, or even being restricted on what farm machinery they can and can’t drive on the roads. These rules and regulations set in place by complaints of urban residents can damage the operations of the farms that have been there for years.

Urbanization focuses on how agriculture can change to better shape the needs of our current lives, but our society rarely changes itself in order to better help the agriculture industry grow. Urbanization is a movement that is great for our nation, but in order to maintain agriculture we need to intertwine the two of these together in order to live in a society that has both booming cities and fields of agriculture. Two ways we can do this are through the establishment of Green Belt policies in order to protect land and implementing inner city gardens in already developed urbanized cities.

Green Belts are areas of contiguous open land that are often located near cities or villages (Daniels 258). Green Belt policies are mostly associated with countries such as Canada. Many political individuals in the agriculture industry have been looking into implementing these Green Belt policies in the United States in order to conserve land. Green Belts protect the land through “government ownership, zoning regulations, or acquisition of developmental rights to privately-owned land” (Daniels 258). This zoning policy would most benefit more urbanized areas such as places in New York, California, and Florida. According to Daniels in “The Use of Green Belts to Control Sprawl in the United States,” small metropolitan areas have experimented with their own short of “Green Belt Policies”. So far, they have been successful. These single policies by these small areas aim to restrict the land for either farming, forestry, or to simply leave as an open space until further agriculture development, if so chosen to do so. If these Green Belt like policies function well for a small area of land, imagine how beneficially they will be for larger areas in the United States.

While Green Belt polices work to prevent further urbanization, the use of inner city gardens aims to put agriculture back into the cities. These gardens are growing in popularity in areas such as New York and California. Stephen Ritz, a South Bronx public school teacher, has established a vertical aeroponic system called “Tower Garden” (What’s Working 7). With this, he established a program called “Green Bronx Machine.” With this program, he educates his students on agriculture and nutrition, while providing food and jobs for the community. The Green Bronx Machine has grown “more than 30,000 pounds of produce” and created “2,200 youth jobs” (What’s Working 7-8). In areas like this, these inner city gardens have multiple benefits for the communities. Implementing these in large scale cities would help to produce food, create jobs, and overall inform the public on the agriculture industry.