Smart Land Planning After COVID-19
The COVID pandemic has taught us many things about our environment, the effect that humanity has on the environment, as well how little humanity is prepared for pandemics and other global disasters. As the pandemic continues, we have an opportunity to make changes to the way we do things. An area where there could be great improvement in the way land is being used and planned for. Land use refers to the many ways that land can be used. These decisions can be made at different levels of government, from local authorities to national and sometimes global governments. An example of this has occurred in my home valley, Cache Valley, Utah. Many of the locals are unhappy with the amount of residential development that is occurring.
They want to preserve the agricultural heritage of our valley. The Cache valley board has presented two different plans for development. One allows for more space for animals and crops while the other places the home in the central in the property. They placed a survey for locals to fill out. Only 100 people filled it out. This highlights the difficulties surrounding land use planning even outside of the pandemic. Land use brings together the issues of housing, production, and environmental preservation. The pandemic has created a great opportunity to re-examine how land has been used in the past and create better plans for future generations.
My background is in cattle ranching. This has given me a unique perspective on how land use planning should go. I have only been alive for 25 years and I have seen agriculture lands being pushed out as more houses and apartments are being developed. These actions seem to counteract each other. We need food to survive, and we also need shelter. The shelter we are building is taking up our food spots but our food spots are preventing the expansion of shelter and there aren’t many laws that regulate either. There can be a multitude of solutions to these problems that can be adjusted and changed to work in different regions and circumstances.
One solution is to build up instead of out. This way there are apartments available for shelter and it doesn’t take up as much space as a house for every individual family would. This is important as many reason that deforestation happens is because agriculture ground is sold for development making producers go elsewhere to find ground. Unfortunately, the one of the only places of unclaimed land is under forests. When you are not shoving producers to go other places you are also helping preserve forests and other wild places. Another solution is to create laws that preserves a certain amount of farmland.
This would be saying that a certain number of acres could only be sold at farm prices for farming, not anything else. This creates a system where the farming is done on the same amount of ground and more people can become farmers if they wish. Instead of the land being transferred to developments when the family doesn’t want to inherit the farm, another individual could buy the property and begin their own farm. A third possibility is using land for dual-use purposes with grazing. There are many benefits to grazing if it is managed properly. Grazing can decrease the potential for wildfires, promote the local ecology, and produce food on the ground that does not have enough water or nutrients for crops or for shelter.
There are tradeoffs for each of these solutions. Humans like to have their own land and not many people enjoy the idea of living and raising a family in an apartment without a yard. This creates a difficultly in the building up solution. Preserving farm grounds could potentially see a decrease in sustainable family farms as big agriculture companies could buy the land up for themselves and lastly grazing can be potentially detrimental if it is not implemented correctly.
With all these solutions it is important to remember that climate-friendly approaches should be used to create homes that are environmentally friendly and agricultural production that is green and sustainable.
Additional Resources: