As Salem thinks of locking up Minto farm acres forever

The question should not be how many acres of farmland can we afford to trade for cash today at the expense of people tomorrow. The question is how many acres of asphalt can we rip up and turn back into Willamette Valley farmland, and how fast. Image via Wikipedia

Smarter people recall the most important thing about good farmland:

"They aren't making any more of it."

The money quote from the story:

The fundamentals remain in place for a long-term boom in the prices of everything ag-related. The simplest metric to consider is the amount of farmland per person worldwide: In 1960 there were 1.1 acres of arable farmland per capita globally, according to data from the United Nations. By 2000 that had fallen to 0.6 acre (see chart above, "Precious Acres"). And over the next 40 years the population of the world is projected to grow from 6 billion to 9 billion.

"Land is scarce and will become scarcer as the world has to double food output to satisfy increased demand by 2050," says Joachim von Braun, director general at the International Food Policy Research Institute. "With limited land and water resources, this will automatically lead to increased valuations of productive land. And it goes hand in hand with water. Water scarcity will probably increase even more than land."

Don't forget to attend City Council on Monday, June 22!