by Susan Stewart

Every minute of every day, America loses two acres of agricultural land to urban, commercial or residential development.1 In California, roughly 50,000 acres of farmland is developed every year.2 If patterns continue, another 2 million acres of California land will be paved over by 2050.3 As farmers are increasingly pressured to convert fertile land into non-farm developments, the lyrical warning from 1970 – that we will “pave paradise to put up a parking lot” – is now an all too imminent threat. Will our desire to raise our children in a pristine rural setting, be suddenly unattainable? Will we one day wake up to find that our dreams of peaceful country living have just slipped out of reach?