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contrast, people living right on the edge of farmland are understandably eager to see the end of farming that is noisy, smelly and messy, even if it’s all an essential part of a farmer’s livelihood — and even if the farm was there long before their subdivisions were. But deep in the public gut is a feeling that farmland is a community resource, not just a commodity, and one day we all might have to depend on our own local farms to supply a lot more of our food. Fields used for export crops and animals today are our insurance against food insecurity tomorrow. It’s a primal, practical instinct to protect ourselves against food shortages, however disconnected that might be from the reality of what’s being produced on farms on the edges of our cities. That might be horses, Christmas trees, ornamental shrubs, flowers, or produce and livestock for export — all completely unrelated to what we are eating today, but grown on land that could feed us tomorrow if we really needed it.
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