By Phoebe Silag
American Farmland Trust co-hosted the Governor’s Summit on Agricultural Viability in Boise on Thursday, in partnership with Idaho Governor Brad Little, the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation, and the Idaho Farm and Ranch Center. The summit focused on how Idaho farmers and ranchers can implement communal and adaptive practices to help sustain and grow agriculture into the future. AFT announced the launch of a new initiative, Thriving Farms and Ranches, at the event.
The Governor’s Summit on Agricultural Viability in Idaho brought together landowners and leaders of Idaho agribusiness, academia, conservation, development, and government to explore the challenges of balancing growth with Idaho’s valuable agricultural economy. Idaho’s working lands are being lost to development at an alarming rate according to recent data, the rate of conversion is 96 times faster than expected.
“We could see it in the field that the significant population growth here in Idaho since 2016 was accelerating the path of growth of our cities at the cost of surrounding agricultural land,” said AFT Idaho Senior Program Manager David Anderson. “What was surprising about this new data is how much of the land conversion has been low-density residential outside our cities and especially in rural ranch country. Idaho has a bad case of rural sprawl. Our rural county government planning systems are not prepared for the scale of growth coming at them.”