2018 Conference

Poster Presentation

Modern agriculture in the United States relies heavily upon large-scale industrial farming, a system with significant social and environmental costs including greenhouse gas emissions, water quality degradation, public health impacts, and poor labor and animal welfare conditions. Social movements pushing for more localized, socially just, and sustainable food systems have emerged in recent years. Among the calls to action is the New England Food Vision (Donahue et al., 2014), which sets a target of producing 50% of New England’s food within the region by 2060. In order to reach this goal, additional land in New England will have to be brought into agricultural cultivation. Other considerations such as wetland protection, core forest habitat preservation, and economic viability for farmers require that the site selection for increased cultivation be done with care and foresight.

Locating new agricultural sites in close proximity to already existing farmland is one strategy with several potential advantages. This expansion is less likely to impact core forests important to many wildlife species and allows farmers to increase operations without increasing travel time (Sloan, Praus, and DeChiara, 2015). Furthermore, land in proximity to already existing farmland is likely to also be in proximity to necessities like water sources, markets, or supply stores.

This poster will display the methods and results of a GIS-simulated farmland expansion scenario in Windham County, Connecticut. This will provide an example of what one path towards achieving the New England Food Vision might look like “on the ground” at a county scale and will provide a jumping-off point for discussions of future agricultural planning within the region and how best to balance local agriculture with other environmental and social concerns.