Is Western Mass Losing Its Farmland? What the Last Full Survey Showed

Between 1971 and 1999, Western Massachusetts lost 25,866 acres of cropland, pasture and orchard, a decline of 14.0%. Over the same years, land in residential use grew by 51,897 acres, or 43.7%.

Now the part that should be the headline. That survey has not been repeated. The Commonwealth mapped land use in this form in 1971, 1985 and 1999, and nothing comparable has been published since. So the most recent authoritative answer to what is happening to this region's farmland is more than twenty-five years old, and everything anyone tells you about the position today is an inference.

Where The Acres Went

Across the three surveys, the region's mapped acreage is identical each time, which is what you want to see: the same ground reclassified, not remeasured. So every acre that left one category arrived in another, and the transfers are real.

• 1971: 184,258 acres farmland, 1,351,082 forest, 118,806 residential
• 1985: 178,313 acres farmland, 1,325,635 forest, 140,798 residential
• 1999: 158,392 acres farmland, 1,307,866 forest, 170,703 residential

Residential land grew by 51,897 acres. Farmland gave up 25,866 and forest gave up the rest, falling 3.2%. Housing in this region was built on both, but it took proportionally far more from farmland than from woodland, which is exactly what you would expect: the flat, well-drained, already-cleared ground with road frontage is the cheapest place to put a house and it is also the best place to grow food.

That is the quiet tragedy in the numbers. The land that makes good farmland and the land that makes cheap building lots are the same land, and there is not very much of it in a region that is mostly hills.

It Did Not Happen Evenly

West Springfield saw the steepest proportional decline, from 600 acres to 345. Hadley still had the most farmland of any town at the last survey, at 7,370 acres.

8 towns actually recorded more farmland in 1999 than in 1971, which is usually reversion of scrub to pasture or a change in what the surveyor classified rather than new fields being cleared.

The towns that lost most are the ones within commuting distance of the valley employment centres, which is the same pattern that shows up in sixty years of population movement: the hill towns filled up as the car made them reachable, and the fields nearest the roads became house lots first.

What The Gap In The Record Actually Means

Twenty-five years without a survey is a long time, and it is worth being precise about what we can and cannot say about the period since.

We can say that residential building slowed markedly. The permit record runs to the present, and what it shows is a region building far less than it did in the 1980s. Less building means less conversion, so the rate of loss after 1999 is very unlikely to have matched the rate before it.

We can also say that the state has spent the intervening decades buying development rights on farmland through preservation programmes, which takes land permanently out of the conversion pool. That is a real and deliberate counterweight.

What we cannot say is a number, and we are not going to invent one. If somebody quotes you current farmland loss for this region, ask what they measured it with.

Every Town, 1971 Against 1999

Sortable and filterable. Read the two change columns together: the towns where farmland fell hardest are generally the towns where residential land rose fastest, and it is frequently the same acres.

If You Are Buying Farmland Or Near It

1. Check whether the land carries an agricultural preservation restriction. It is a permanent deed restriction that prevents development and it transfers with the land. That is the point of it, and it drastically changes what a parcel is worth and what you may do.
2. Check whether it is enrolled in the reduced-assessment programme for farm and forest land. Enrolment lowers the tax bill while the use continues and can trigger a substantial penalty if the land is converted. Buying enrolled land without knowing is an expensive surprise.
3. If you are buying a house beside working farmland, understand what that means. Massachusetts protects normal farming from nuisance complaints by neighbours who arrived later. The spreading, the machinery at five in the morning and the smell are lawful and will continue.
4. If you are buying land to build on, the ground decides. What makes cheap acreage cheap here covers slope, wetland and water in the order they tend to end a deal.