help, these programs do not provide farmers with long-term protection against the increasing pressures of urban sprawl (Differential2). Local governments are also providing needed protection devices, such as protective zoning and urban growth boundaries, to minimize the affect of urban sprawl on farmland. Agricultural protection zoning is the act in which counties and municipalities allocate areas of land where farming is encouraged and all other types of land use are discouraged through the use of minimum lot size and maximum density laws (Agricultural1). A second way local government can fight urban sprawl is by setting up an urban growth boundary, which is nothing more than a line around an area, outside of which residential buildings may not be erected (Cooper869b). Critics often blame urban growth boundaries for increased land prices and causing city populations to rise; but this is a reasonable price to pay to save the agriculture of this country (Cooper).Of the 20 agricultural areas considered, by the American Farmland Trust, to be the most threatened, 6 of them are in the west, including California’s Central Valley, which is in the most danger (Cooper869a). Even with all the destruction urban sprawl is causing, people like Mr. Hudgins still seem to believe they should be able to put a farmer out of business so that they will have a nice piece of land, away from the city, to build a summer cottage. For the most part farmers are poor and politically weak; that is why they need help, from government and fellow citizens, fighting wealthy land developers. Do not shun the government and preservation organizations for helping the farmers; because without their help, land developers who are greedy and irresponsible would eventually turn this entire country, not just the west, into a sea of concrete. ...
