Road corridors, housing, businesses devouring agricultural spaces

Mormon crickets played a key adversarial role in the early history of farming in Utah, but increasingly the pest is giving way to an even greater challenge facing modern-day farmers in the Beehive State: development.
Utah’s growth is coming at the expense of its farmland, creating more questions than definitive answers when looking at the state’s future.

Randy Parker, president of the state Farm Bureau, is hesitant to be too specific about where agriculture will be in the Beehive State in the next two decades, but he’s confident the need for agricultural products will grow, even as the state may lose farmland to development.

Of the state’s roughly 16,600 farms, approximately 12 million acres are in agricultural use. Of those 12 million acres, 1.2 million are irrigated. Read more: Standard Examiner