Friday, June 14, 2019

Beef-group film shows sprawl's impact on farmers, ranchers

"Losing Ground", a new documentary from the American Angus Association, a beef industry group, aims to show the impact of urban sprawl on farmers and ranchers. According to the American Farmland Trust's "Farms Under Threat" report, the U.S. is losing 1.5 million acres a year to the urban sprawl, which the Angus group says is unsustainable.

"It’s easy to drive through, especially the Midwest, and feel like we have plenty of land," film director Josh Comninellis said in a press release. "But, it’s a little more complicated than that as we dug into the research. Not only are we losing some of our best ground and a lot of total agricultural land, but the population, and therefore demand, is going up. When you pair those two things together, you see, down the road, a really dire situation emerging."

The documentary focuses on five farming and ranching families who talk about the challenges and opportunities they've faced because of urban sprawl: the Lovin family in Lexington, Georgia; the Marsh family in Huntley, Illinois; the Stabler family in Brookeville, Maryland; the Cropp family in Damascus, Maryland; and the Nelson family in Wilton, California.

See the video below, on YouTube, or on RFD-TV.

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