This suggests that we are consuming land at excessive rates, and probably in excessive amounts. For this same period in northern New England, Vermont had the highest ratio of growth in developed land to growth in population - 2.63, compared with 2.11 in New Hampshire and 1.91 in Maine. According to the U.S. Census of Agriculture, over the past 50 years Vermont has lost over 2 million acres of farmland, and more than 10,000 working farms. The 1997 census counted 5,828 farms in Vermont, on 1,262,155 acres of farmland. Farmland is not a renewable resource.
People build in the countryside for reasons of lifestyle, but also because of financial decisions.
If it takes less time and money to develop in a farm field, people will tend to go there. We need to make investing in community centers more rewarding. On a regional basis, from 1982 to 1992, the southern counties of the Taconic Southwest and the Connecticut River Valley saw land develop at over three times their rate of population growth. The concentrations of ski resorts and vacation homes in these areas may have been major contributors to the development rates. The lowest ratio of development to population growth was in the Northcentral Highlands.