The Long-Term Adequacy of Agricultural Land in the United States

Will the United States have enough agricultural land to meet rising demands for food and fiber over the next two to three decades and beyond? This question, or some closely related variant of it, was the subject of five major conferences held between November 1979 and July 1980. It was addressed in an important study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and was the principal focus of another interagency study by the federal government, spearheaded by the USDA and the Council on Environmental Quality. ¹