A recent paper by Hart (1976) demonstrates that the amount of rural land lost to urbanization in the United States is very small relative to the total supply of this land. This paper investigates the possibility that while the amount of land lost to urbanization is small, it may be predominantly land that is ideal for agriculture, or prime farmland, which unlike rural land in general is highly limited in supply. To explore this possibility, answers to three questions are sought: (1) is prime farmland in the U.S. located predominantly in the vicinity of urban areas; (2) are the areas of high population growth predomi nantly the areas with high concentrations of the good soils, and (3) what is the rate of loss of prime farmland to urbanization?
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