Economic Research totals for U.S. land use released

The USDA Economic Research Service's Major Land Uses (MLU) reporting series is the only accounting of all major uses of public and private land in all 50 States. The results are published at “roughly five-year intervals.” Just like the census, the ERS takes years to issue final reports; therefore, information released during this December are for what the numbers showed in 2007.

“Land use and land-use changes involve important economic and environmental implications for commodity production and trade, open space, soil and water conservation, and other policy issues. To study land-use change, statistics on land use over time must be developed. This publication presents the results of the latest inventory (2007) of U.S. major land uses and discusses national and regional trends in land use compared with earlier estimates,” the ERS claims.

“Estimates of cropland, urban area, and special uses, which are based largely on census data and administrative data, are devel­oped first. The estimates of forest-use land and grassland pasture and range are then developed, followed by miscel­laneous land uses,” ERS explained. It was also noted that input comes from the USDA’s Forest Service, National Agricultural Statistics Service, the U.S. Census Bureau, public land management, conservation agencies and other sources. The authors of the final document also have to do some “reconciliation” to have state totals match national totals.

All in all, questions might be raised about the slowness of issuing the report, its true value when finally issued and the accuracy in some categories based on “methodology changes” as the series of land-use reports have been compiled since the 1940s.  

Even the authors warn, “In general, more confidence should be put in the broader land-use trends over decades rather than specific five-year fluctuations.”

Detailed information can be found by going to www.ers.usda.gov. ERS summary results of the Major Land Uses series are included below:

What did the study find? The U.S. land area totals nearly 2.3 billion acres. Major land uses in 2007 included forest-use land at 671 million acres (30 percent); grassland pasture and range at 614 million acres (27 percent); cropland at 408 million acres (18 percent); special uses at 313 million acres (14 percent); miscel­laneous uses at 197 million acres (9 percent); and urban land at 61 million (3 percent).

Cropland. Total cropland includes land planted for crops (82 percent of total cropland), crop­land used for pasture, and idled cropland (including acreage removed from production under government programs, such as the Conservation Reserve Program). Total cropland increased in the late 1940s, declined from 1949 to 1964, increased from 1964 to 1978, and decreased again from 1978 to 2007.

Between 2002 and 2007, total cropland decreased by 34 million acres to its lowest level since this series began in 1945, even though harvested cropland (which accounts for most land planted to crops) increased 5 million acres due to a recovery of failed cropland from severe droughts in 2002. A 26-million-acre decline in cropland pasture contributed to this trend, partly due to methodological changes in the 2007 Census of Agriculture that reclassified some cropland pasture to permanent grassland pasture and range.

Grassland Pasture and Range. The estimated acreage of grassland pasture and range increased by 27 million acres (almost 5 percent) between 2002 and 2007, partly offsetting a decline in this land-use type during 1945-97. The recent increase almost exactly offsets the decline in cropland pasture over the same period. Based on acreage for all grazing land (the sum of grassland pasture and range, cropland used for pasture, and grazed forests), land available for grazing declined from 783 million acres in 2002 to 777 million acres in 2007, continuing a downward trend since the 1940s.

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