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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992                   TAG: 9201260024
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                  LENGTH: Short

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FARMLAND OWNERSHIP DECLINING

The nation's farmland has fewer owners than at any other time in this century, and lawmakers and environmentalists say the trend poses troubling questions about stewardship of the soil and control of the food supply.

The Agriculture Department estimates that 2.95 million people and organizations own 833 million acres of private farmland.

But only 4 percent of the owners - approximately 124,000 - hold nearly half of the land, said the recent report by USDA's Economic Research Service.

The report also found that more than 40 percent is held by owners or organizations that do not operate the farms themselves.

While total farmland acreage is only slightly more than in 1900, the average farm has tripled in size. And while there were 5.7 million farms at the beginning of the century, there were 2 million remaining by 1988.

This means an ever smaller minority of the overall population is making decisions about land use, conservation and resource quality, USDA said.

Ken Cook, vice president for policy at the Center for Resource Economics, a non-profit research and publishing organization, said `You have more non-farmer landlords having at best a detached interest in the day-to-day quality of the land."

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