farmland

More than 40 percent of China's arable land suffers from degradation, such as the impact of erosion, fertility losses, climate change and pollution, according to the official news agency Xinhua, said Reuters.

Since 2007, enrollment in the long-term Conservation Reserve is down by 9.9 million acres; in fact, the 26.8 million acres in the reserve in 2013 was the smallest amount since 1988, writes economist David Widmar at the blog Agricultural Economic Insights.

The Agriculture Department and a congressionally created foundation will put up to $100 million into restoration of wetlands, farmland and waterways damaged by the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster of 2010.

Returns from investment in U.S. farmland in the third quarter of this year were the lowest in four years, said the National Council of Real Estate Fiduciaries, a trade group based in Chicago for investors.

The Japanese government tries an experiment in mountainous rural Japan to re-populate a farming town, says the Washington Post.

With sharply lower commodity prices at hand, "one of the key supports for sky high farmland values is changing rapidly," writes economist Brent Gloy at the Agricultural Economic Insights blog.

The executive summary of a European study, "Nitrogen on the Table," says if Europe reduced its meat consumption, it "would reduce nitrogen air and water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions, while freeing up large areas of farmland for other purposes such as food export or bioenergy."

The Midwest lost 1.06 percent of its farmland in the two decades ending in 2021; development accounted for half of the loss, said three Ohio State University analysts on Monday. "The role of large urban areas is paramount, as 81 percent of land lost to development in the eight states occurred within metropolitan statistical areas," which are regions with a core city of at least 50,000 people and strong ties to its surrounding communities.