Agriculture Summit Highlights Pressures On Industry, From Farmland Loss To Rising Costs
A new agricultural summit made its debut Thursday, bringing farmers, academics and industry leaders together to examine how best to promote an industry that remains foundational to Idaho’s identity while facing increasing pressures from demographic shifts and urban development in the state.
The industry-wide event, named the Governor’s Summit on Agricultural Viability in Idaho, was opened by Idaho Gov. Brad Little in the Lincoln Auditorium of the Idaho State Capitol and is the product of a collaboration between the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation, the Idaho Farm & Ranch Center and American Farmland Trust.
“Incredibly rapid growth that has taken place is running headlong into traditionally what we’ve always done in agriculture,” Little said.
Little said this growth is a direct result of conditions in Idaho facilitated by the agriculture industry: open spaces, thriving rural communities and a strong work ethic within business communities — all of which have been enabled by the state’s agrarian character.
Though these contributions are still integral to the state’s character, they persist in spite of economic difficulties faced by the industry in recent years.
ECONOMIC HURDLES
Chanel Tewalt, director of the Idaho State Department of Agriculture, remarked that despite this fundamental character in the state, the industry is nonetheless facing “massive headwinds.” Looking at the agriculture market specifically, the industry is observing some of the highest food inflation observed in 50 years, but farmers aren’t taking home more profit, she said.
According to a report from the American Farm Bureau Federation, this is the result of differing price movements in the cost of farm services and crops: while expenditures like feed, fertilizer and machinery have increased dramatically in recent years, crops have either not kept pace or, in some cases, dropped in price. Soybeans in particular have seen significant declines, dropping to below $10 per bushel after being priced at $15 per bushel three years ago, according to the Farm Bureau.
“At the same time we have these domestic headwinds, China is building an industry that everybody should be looking at,” Tewalt said. “We heard it in the potato side — they are directly building an industry to outcompete American agriculture.”
This comes alongside a trend of farm expenses being higher than the prices received for crops grown, conditions that have characterized the industry for the past five years.
Tewalt said that while her department’s ability to influence some of these price trends is limited, there is progress that can be made in the area of “pernicious” regulations and pointed to pesticide licenses as a key issue in this area, describing the current process as a “draconian” one that can be addressed through reducing the number of interactions needed with federal government to get licensed as a pesticide applicator.
SHRINKING FARMLAND
The summit highlighted a particular threat to Idaho’s agriculture industry: the loss of farmland in the state.
“The thought pattern that I’m challenging here this morning is that our agricultural lands are not just sitting in wait to be cashed out for development,” David Anderson, president of American Farmland Trust (AFT), said.
Citing a report from the American Farmland Trust, Anderson said Idaho was forecasted to either pave over, fragment or compromise 113,100 acres of farmland and ranch land in the state between 2016-2040, or about seven square miles lost a year. Additionally, if current trends hold, this number will be far higher. From 2016 to 2023, Idaho paved over or fragmented over 64,000 acres of farmland, a rate equivalent to 14 square miles in agricultural land lost per year, Anderson said.
In the case of fragmented farmland, Anderson explained that this doesn’t mean that the land has been lost to agriculture use. In some cases farmers will sell off a portion or several portions of their land that is used for large lot housing or scattered subdivisions. Even though this development begins on a limited basis, once it is present it often paves the way for denser, urbanized conversions.
In an examination of 2016 farmland, the AFT report further found that low-density development on agriculture land was 102 times more likely to be converted to urban and highly developed land compared with agricultural land without this fragmentation. In short, development feeds itself, Anderson said, adding bluntly that “unfettered fragmentation of our working lands is cancer to our agricultural economies.”
CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS
This development does not happen without there being demand, however. As Jaap Vos, a professor of planning and natural resources at the University of Idaho, would point out, this development and fragmentation trend is in many ways emblematic of observed demographic shifts in the state. Between 2010 and 2020, Idaho’s population grew by 271,000 despite 295,000 residents leaving the state.
This meant Idaho gained about half a million residents from out of state over this period, or one in four people in the state were not here 10 years ago, a significant shift in the demographic background, Vos said.
This changed from 2021 to 2024, when the state observed a sharp decline in people moving out of Idaho — due to COVID-19, increased housing costs and other factors — meaning that the population has started growing at a faster rate. That has brought more demand for development, demand that is expected to be particularly felt in the Treasure Valley.
Jodi Brandt, an associate professor of human-environment systems at Boise State University, said current projections indicate that by 2100 (in the absence of policy or behavioral changes), the valley will have lost 64% of its farmland. Significant industry changes are expected to be felt by 2050, when livestock crop production has been forecasted to decline by 28.8%, Brandt said.
For many cities and counties, a reversal of these trends will lie in the ability to effectively pursue solutions through planning and zoning bodies. Julia Freedgood, an America Farmland Trust senior fellow, said the issue of growth and agriculture was not an either-or problem — growth can be balanced with a sustained agriculture industry.
For many communities, this will require a reexamination of comprehensive plans, which serve to establish a vision for future growth and outline land use priorities.
This could require setting aside districts where agriculture is a preferred land use, bringing “right to farm” privileges and protections from eminent domain (shielding city government from taking private property for public use). It could also mean providing direction for development by drawing explicit boundaries for urban growth and incentivizing developers to prioritize denser housing projects over large lot, single-family homes.
Using Fayette County, Kentucky, as an example of a region that Idaho could learn from, Freedgood said the county has used an urban service boundary since 1958 as an attempt to both control sprawl and limit the cost of residential services. The result, now decades later, is that 97% of the county’s approximately 329,000 residents remain within this established boundary.
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