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How This Project Started

American Farmland Trust (AFT) participated in an agricultural protection discussion with the Magic Valley Land Trust (MVLT) in September 2023.  The MVLT Board of Directors is forming its overall conservation strategy for their six-county service area and invited AFT to share our Farms Under Threat 2040: Choosing an Abundant Future (FUT 2040) model projections for those counties. AFT also presented the results of the recently completed Agricultural Economic Impact Analysis (AEIA) for Canyon County, which was a data-driven analysis to accurately estimate the value of agricultural production of Canyon County and the impact of conversion to non-agricultural land uses.


MVLT invited AFT to partner on a Land Trust Alliance Innovation Grant in November 2023 to conduct an AEIA as part of a working landowner stakeholder education and outreach project. The grant was awarded in December 2023 and the AEIA project started in February 2024.


Project Objectives

AFT partnered with University of Idaho Assistant Professor of Agricultural Economics Patrick Hatzenbuehler to design an innovative analysis that would rely on publicly available information with the understanding that such an analysis would provide a conservative and useful baseline estimate.


The AEIA is a simple mathematical spreadsheet analysis using:

  • Predicted land conversion rates for both “Business As Usual” and “Building Better Cities” for Cassia, Gooding, Jerome, Lincoln, Minidoka, and Twin Falls Counties from FUT 2040;

  • Areas of City Impact (AOCI) shapefiles from county GIS staff, which designates the planning boundary for future growth around a city or town;

  • Total acres of the top ten crops grown in these counties, based on total acres grown and crop value, and extracted from the USDA CropScape – Cropland Data Layer (CDL), supported by the Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems at George Mason University. This dataset provides annual crop-specific land cover data layers created for the contiguous United States using the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) data, moderate resolution satellite imagery, and extensive agricultural ground truthing (see Figure 1 – Magic Valley CDL); and

  • Crop values from the Idaho Annual Statistical Bulletin, which is a summary of the most recent data collected by the USDA NASS (2022 data).


Figure 1 – Magic Valley Cropscape Data Layer 

 

Assumptions

The analysis assumes the estimated land conversion from the FUT 2040 model will occur exclusively within areas currently designated for future development and subdivision in the county Land Use Plans:

  • Scenario 1 - The AEIA assumes that all working land conversion occurs exclusively within the designated AOCIs; and

  • Scenario 2 - The AEIA assumes that all working land conversion occurs within the designated AOCIs and areas currently zoned as county rural residential.  The two FUT 2040 land conversion rates, “Business As Usual” and “Building Better Cities”, are equally allocated across the total acres of each of the top ten crops (acres and value) currently grown within the designated residential areas, which results in two scenarios (AOCIs only, AOCIs and county rural residential). An annual percent loss of production of those top ten crops relative to the total for the county is calculated for the two scenarios. The loss of production is then multiplied by the NASS crop values to calculate the farm gate value of that loss.

AFT research has identified a multiplier range of 2-10 times the farm gate value as the total economic impact depending mostly on crop types, region, and market fluctuations (Farm Credit East, 2020). A representative of University of Idaho Extension that was part of the MVLT AEIA peer review informed AFT of an IMPLAN economic impact model of the Magic Valley that used data from 2018. The IMPLAN model calculated a multiplier of 2x, which was also used in the MVLT AEIA (University of Idaho, September 2021).


Findings

The FUT 2040 model estimates the 2022 agricultural land conversion rate of the Magic Valley for “Business As Usual” at 513 acres per year and “Building Better Cities” at 220 acres per year.


The AEIA calculated a baseline economic loss for each scenario (Table 1 – AEIA Results for the Magic Valley). With no reductions in the areas already designated for development (i.e. “Business As Usual”), the Magic Valley is on track to lose approximately $2.5 million of its agricultural economy to development annually.  However, should county leaders decide to focus growth in the AOCIs (i.e. “Building Better Cities”) they could reduce the annual economic loss to approximately $640,000.


Table 1 – AEIA Results for the Magic Valley


The results of the two scenarios are in alignment with FUT 2040 model findings that suggest that when efforts are made to focus new development near/within existing urban areas, it protects the surrounding agricultural lands by default without having to create new solutions and tools to protect those working lands.


Another way to use the AEIA results is to take a step back from the estimated dollar values and look at the estimated acres of crops currently in the path of growth (Table 2 – Land Conversion Estimates for the Magic Valley). For example, in the scenario where the county continues to develop as-is within all currently designated residential areas, the AEIA estimates that 12 percent of the county-wide alfalfa crop is at risk. Initially, this seems manageable, however, that alfalfa is feeding the dairies, which in turn are supplying the cheese, yogurt, and other food manufacturers in the Magic Valley. It would be prudent to consider the potential impact of farmland loss to the overall agribusiness systems in the Magic Valley.


Table 2 – Land Conversion Estimates for the Magic Valley


Conclusion

The overall Magic Valley economy benefits significantly from the heavily integrated crop production, dairy, and food production of the agribusiness market. Any loss of land in production has a system-wide effect on downstream use of those crops.


References

  • Contribution of Agribusiness to the Magic Valley Economy, 2018, University of Idaho, BUL 1005, 2021

  • Farms Under Threat 2040: Choosing an Abundant Future, American Farmland Trust, 2022

  • CropScape – Cropland Data Layer (CDL), supported by the Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems at Geroge Mason University

  • National Agricultural Statistics Service, United States Department of Agriculture, 2022

  • Northeast Economic Engine: Agriculture, Forest Products and Commercial Fishing, Farm Credit East, 2020

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