In 1997, American Farmland Trust released a study that showed the geographic relationship between high quality farmland and land development pressure in the United States. To do this, we used the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Resources Inventory. That study used the unit of Major Land Resource Areas to determine where the most threatened farmland lay throughout the United States.

This 2002 report analyzes how actual land use changes are affecting each state's share of the nation's high-quality farmland.