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Charley Martinez and his team at UTIA have been conducting research on the amount of farmland we’ve lost in Tennessee. They now have hard data, and the numbers are staggering.
Thomas Capps
So joining us now on root of the matter is Charlie Martinez with UT and Charlie, y’all have been looking at the numbers for farmland loss for several months now. And we’ve got some numbers in what What have y’all come up with over the last several months.
Charley Martinez
So we’ve of course been going through looking at different data sets, the number of acres that have been converted out of agriculture production, it depends on what data set you’re looking at. So for instance, crops gate data, which comes from USDA, NASS, they estimate that we’ve lost around 86,000 acres a year for the past four years, five years. Actually, if you look at comptroller data, and you look at that, from the comptroller treasury, here in Tennessee, we’re averaging 34 34,000 acres a year that we’ve lost the last five years. And so we’re getting a wide range of variation in terms of how much we’ve been losing, to, you know, out of, you know, out of production, I think, regardless of the of what dataset you’re looking at, the big thing is that we are still losing data at a high rate. And it depends upon what county or what region of Tennessee that you’re in east versus West versus middle. And the one thing that we’re excited about the most is that we’ve collected parcel of a data from tax assessor’s offices offices across the state. And we’re on our way to having a data set that’s going to have parcel of a data that allows us to look not only just at an aggregate state level, or, or by county, for instance, but then we can actually dive into regions of a county that might be nearing, you know, the Nashville area. And you know, how was that land, what land what type all that stuff, we’re on the right track. And it’s, I wish we could already have it done today. But it’s just taking time and effort. And it’s not just me it’s CTAS and UT as well, they’ve been tremendously helpful in getting data. It’s other colleagues in our department, that we’ve really worked hard, and our grad students and our undergrad students have really helped us. And so it’s just taking time. I wish we could fast forward it. But I think we’re, we’re well on our way on the right on the right path.
Thomas Capps
So we have the the numbers of how much we’re losing, is the why factor. Is that something that you all are going to eventually try and dive into as well?
Charley Martinez
Yes. So you know, the why factor, it’s when it comes to agriculture, we know that there are producers that will sell their land whenever they’re ready to retire, because that’s basically like a 401k for them. And so we know that that’s part of it. Another part of it’s going to be the low profitability over the past couple of years in agriculture. And so that’s driving it, but the y part of it, it could be regionally based in terms what I’m what I mean by that it could be a city that wanting to build schools and needed and it for school zones, it could be an area that wants to build more residential area, you know, have more residential area have more things of that nature. But we also know that there’s industrial, there’s commercial growth in certain areas as well. If you think about West Knoxville, and the Farragut area and things like that, that those have all changed over the last 20 years. And so the why is is going to be something that we’re chasing, but not only the why, but what does it mean for the Tennessee economy is what we really want to know what does it mean, as this land has gone out? We know it’s not going to be even and we know we have the blue of city coming. What’s that? What’s that going to look like in the future? That’s what we really want to know.
Thomas Capps
I mean, that’s a good point, because these are large numbers. And that’s before Blue Oval city is built.
Charley Martinez
Yes, yeah. And then I think that’s why having the parcel of of data is going to give us more insight. And then we know we can look at historically speaking, we know we can go look at where other dealers are not not dealerships, but manufacturers have built in how you know what the spatial ramifications were. And we can do that and forecast in West Tennessee and think about okay, what can it look like hearing in 1520 years? We know that that’s going to be a question that you know, not only us, but other folks in in Tennessee want to know.
Thomas Capps
So you’re at the Tennessee Farm Bureau headquarters here in Columbia today. And you all presented your data and and met with some Farm Bureau folks met with some folks from the Department of Agriculture here in Tennessee, what all the y’all talk about? And it looked like in there that you all were maybe kind of brainstorming about this particular topic and issue.
Charley Martinez
So part of you know, you know, Assistant, Mr. Jeff Aiken asked us to start looking at data and trying to understand about that, and this happened last fall. For today’s meeting, it was everything we’ve got up to this point in terms of the data availability, the limitations, the the pros and cons, if you will, of the data, the data that we’ve currently been assembling from the tax assessor’s offices, and then here’s where we are, and here’s where we’re at. And here’s where basically what we presented on was where we think the estimates are correct, where they we think that there’s some issues, and why we think this parcel of data is going to be the key to it all. You know, for us in education and an extension, it’s we do the research and try to figure out, you know, are certain measurements better than others. And so for the folks that were in the room, they wanted to know, how much land have we lost? And that’s what we’re there to answer. And so, it was interesting hearing, you know, everybody’s different takes on it because we have different agents He’s, and the one thing that’s been kind of, I wouldn’t say surprising, but it’s been kind of refreshing is that the question of farmland conversion has been asked by not only TDA, but Farm Bureau tax assessor’s offices, local government have asked those types of questions. And I think we’re on the path now to have a data set that can help answer those questions. And so this brainstorming session today, for you know, for us coming in here and presenting the data, it was really refreshing to see that, hey, you know, we want to, we’re gonna we can trust this data, we can move forward. And that’s what they were doing in the room. So very fun and refreshing, though.
Thomas Capps
So you mentioned that you’ve come a long way and getting the numbers but still a long way to go kind of where are you at in the process right now, and what what’s the end goal for you all and collecting this data.
Charley Martinez
So if you rewind the clock to last fall when we had parcel counts. Now, because of C tasks, which is the County Technical Assistance Program at UT Extension, a fella named Joe Griffin and I have been going around the tax assessor’s offices getting parcel data, the shapefile data for GIS mapping, we currently have seven counties, from the from the counties, there’s nine counties that don’t report the state because of software package issues that they just don’t communicate. But we have seven of those nine counties, we’re waiting on a one dump one dump set from the state, or the 86 counties that do report, it should become anytime soon. And once it gets in, once we get our hands on all that. The next goal is I feel bad for saying this, but my grandson is gonna have a lot of work crunching, data crunching and making maps for us. But I think it’s only a matter of time, I think our hope is to have it done before the end of summer, and have a data set that, you know, if policymakers have a question on, you know, what, what is the impact of blankenberge? In certain counties, we can answer that, we want to move towards this baseline, the baseline though, it’s going to take a little bit more time, because we have to go historically, back and estimate prices, look at land quality, so like soil survey ins, for instance, roads, all this type of stuff, is what we’re going to have to do what we have to do to understand it. The other issue that I know we’re going to run into is that not all counties record data the same. So we’re trying to figure out, you know, if county a reports, agriculture has a certain code, and county B doesn’t, we got to start matching them all up. And so that’s been the other tricky part. But it shouldn’t take too much longer. It shouldn’t take too much more time. It’s just gonna be a matter of getting the data and in crunching, crunching them, Bill, not me, the grass students.
Thomas Capps
Well, the name of our podcast is Root of the Matter and we try to ask everyone that we have on our podcast, what is the root of the matter? What What would you say the root of the matter is this particular subject and really the root of the matter of the data that you have collected thus far?
Charley Martinez
I see. I think that it’s a classic economist, the root of the matter, it depends how you know who’s asking the question. So for me, and how we look at this data, the root root of the matter is, I think there’s data sets out there. And I suggested that we’re losing land at a certain rate. And I don’t know if I truly believe those. And so the root of the matter for me is that we want to get to a data set that we can trust we can rely on, we don’t have to worry about reporting, decreased reporting rates and stuff of that nature. And the best part about it is that it’s not only us that wants that want the data to get done. It’s everyone that has questions about this one wanted to get done all the way from local to state government. And so for me, that’s the that’s the most exciting part about it all.
Thomas Capps
Well, Charlie, thanks for joining us, and I’m sure we’ll be talking with you again on this
Charley Martinez
Of course, thanks.
