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Green Infrastructure: Linking Landscapes and Communities, by Mark A. Benedict and Edward T. McMahon. 2006. The Conservation Fund, Island Press, Washington, DC 20009, $35.00, paper, ISBN 1-55963-558-4.
Teachers in agriculture must consider the fate of farmland, our most valuable and often vulnerable resource. Authors Benedict and McMahon quantify the challenges of sprawl in the U.S., noting that from 1982-1997 land loss to development occurred at three times the rate of population increase. Along with land loss come decline in wildlife habitat, more endangered species, and reduced ecosystem services from the rural landscape. Sprawl adds economic and social costs of providing infrastructure to far-flung dwellings and swells transportation costs for human interaction. Growing awareness of the problem is leading to smart growth and non-profit land conservation, but there are no simple or short-term solutions. Most land appropriation for houses, shopping malls, and roads puts a higher value on that land than can be earned by all but the most intensive vegetable and flower production, and even they cannot compete when land prices...