ROTM: UTIA’s Charley Martinez on Farmland Loss Numbers

Charley Martinez and his team at UTIA have been conducting research on the amount of farmland we've lost in Tennessee. They now have hard data, and the numbers are staggering.



Thomas Capps
So joining us now on root of the matter is Charlie Martinez with UT and Charlie, y'all have been looking at the numbers for farmland loss for several months now. And we've got some numbers in what What have y'all come up with over the last several months.

Charley Martinez
So we've of course been going through looking at different data sets, the number of acres that have been converted out of agriculture production, it depends on what data set you're looking at. So for instance, crops gate data, which comes from USDA, NASS, they estimate that we've lost around 86,000 acres a year for the past four years, five years. Actually, if you look at comptroller data, and you look at that, from the comptroller treasury, here in Tennessee, we're averaging 34 34,000 acres a year that we've lost the last five years. And so we're getting a wide range of variation in terms of how much we've been losing, to, you know, out of, you know, out of production, I think, regardless of the of what dataset you're looking at, the big thing is that we are still losing data at a high rate. And it depends upon what county or what region of Tennessee that you're in east versus West versus middle. And the one thing that we're excited about the most is that we've collected parcel of a data from tax assessor's offices offices across the state. And we're on our way to having a data set that's going to have parcel of a data that allows us to look not only just at an aggregate state level, or, or by county, for instance, but then we can actually dive into regions of a county that might be nearing, you know, the Nashville area. And you know, how was that land, what land what type all that stuff, we're on the right track. And it's, I wish we could already have it done today. But it's just taking time and effort. And it's not just me it's CTAS and UT as well, they've been tremendously helpful in getting data. It's other colleagues in our department, that we've really worked hard, and our grad students and our undergrad students have really helped us. And so it's just taking time. I wish we could fast forward it. But I think we're, we're well on our way on the right on the right path.

Thomas Capps
So we have the the numbers of how much we're losing, is the why factor. Is that something that you all are going to eventually try and dive into as well?

Charley Martinez
Yes. So you know, the why factor, it's when it comes to agriculture, we know that there are producers that will sell their land whenever they're ready to retire, because that's basically like a 401k for them. And so we know that that's part of it. Another part of it's going to be the low profitability over the past couple of years in agriculture. And so that's driving it, but the y part of it, it could be regionally based in terms what I'm what I mean by that it could be a city that wanting to build schools and needed and it for school zones, it could be an area that wants to build more residential area, you know, have more residential area have more things of that nature. But we also know that there's industrial, there's commercial growth in certain areas as well. If you think about West Knoxville, and the Farragut area and things like that, that those have all changed over the last 20 years. And so the why is is going to be something that we're chasing, but not only the why, but what does it mean for the Tennessee economy is what we really want to know what does it mean, as this land has gone out? We know it's not going to be even and we know we have the blue of city coming. What's that? What's that going to look like in the future? That's what we really want to know.

Thomas Capps
I mean, that's a good point, because these are large numbers. And that's before Blue Oval city is built.