“Farmland of national significance is in your backyard and is in danger of being lost forever.”

~Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy

  ~ The Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Ralph E. Heimlich and William D. Anderson

    Near Pinckney in Livingston County, general crop farmer Art Rentz farmed all his life operating the farm his father established that now contains 300-plus sheep. Rentz's son, William and wife, Kathy, help maintain the prime real estate in the picturesque Livingston County. “We’re trying to hold on to the land as long as we can,” says Kathy Rentz, farm-businesswoman and shepherd. In their weathered-basement barn, she sits in her corner office holding two orphaned baby lambs, and talking over the farm with her father-in-law. “It’s been building up all over this area for sometime. We turn away real estate people all the time.” While Kathy is talking an SUV raced down the dirt road in front of their farm. “We can’t believe how many people are moving in this township,” says, 71-year old Rentz. Another concern for the Rentz’s are escalating taxes, “My taxes are so high I can’t afford to pay them. So, I went to the township, but they said they couldn’t do anything about them. How can anyone farm with when taxes are so high?” Lawmakers are agreeing and supporting farmers, including a state-governmental task force called, Michigan Land Use Leadership Council, comprised of business and civic leaders, as well as President of the Michigan Farm Bureau, Wayne Wood. According to The Great Lakes Bulletin News Service, the council members are working very hard to hold back urban sprawl and to “curb Michigan’s wasteful patterns of development.”

    The population in southeast Michigan is projected to grow 6% in the next few years, and development is expected to grow taking with it an estimated 40% of farmland. Statistics show that there is not an increase of population, but that the population is moving around the state. What this means for Michigan is the loss of not only our farmsacres, but diminishes our state’s agricultural identity being the second largest ag-producer in the nation. Experts say the snowball effect will produce a mountain of debt for future generations for the development taking place today. According to the American Farmland Trust the years spanning 1992-1997,  the high-density areas created by urban sprawl depleting prime farmland was near Traverse City, and in western and southwestern Michigan counties. Michigan ranks ninth of twenty states listed as the most endangered of lost farmland in the whole United States.