how many farms are demolished because of house development every year?

Question

how many farm estates are eliminated every year because of house development

Answer 1

One number I've heard is 50 acres an HOUR are being converted to development.

But why does this happen? In many cases, it has to do with property values and/or property taxes. Someone comes in and rezones a farm and property taxes skyrocket 10, 20, 30 TIMES.

But then there is the saying "Houses are the most valuable crop a farmer can grow." And that is true, and who can blame the farmer? On a grain farm which is not yeilding much or any profit, someone comes in and offers a farmer MILLIONS for his land. Can you expect him to say no. He would never make that in a hundred years.

That's why so many communities and orginizationa are looking at buying development rights to save farmland.

Here are a couple rescources...
http://www.biodiversityproject.org/mediakit/Sprawl_1B_farmland_loss.pdf
http://www.farmland.org/programs/states/futureisnow/projections.asp

Answer 2

The farms aren't being demolished due to housing developments. Farmers however are going out of business due to the fact that they cannot be competitive with all the corporate farms. The cost of borrowing money is too high and when the weather ruins the crop they cannot recover financially. Of course some of the properties that the private farm owners leave gets turned into housing developments.