As economy struggles more local development land returns to agriculture

On a late November afternoon, tractors with side chutes harvest sorghum from a small roadside farm, spitting it into a truck riding along. The grain is milled and sold as feed to a nearby dairy. About a year ago, this land was set for development. But the owner went bankrupt, another developer bought at auction and leased it to farmer Jason Perry. "A lot of our land is in that situation," Perry said. Rick Gibson, University of Arizona county extension director and agriculture agent in Pinal County, said the real estate crash has farmland once sold to developers finding its way back into agriculture, especially in Maricopa and Pinal counties. "Some are buying or coming back to them when the buyers defaulted on payments," he said. For the developers the land might have dropped in value or may not be worth developing at present, he said. In the meantime, Arizona farmers are happy to take the extra land and increase acreage for commodities like cotton, wheat, alfalfa hay and corn that are enjoying high prices amid increasing demand. For instance, Arizona's cotton acreage rose from 136,000 acres in 2008 to 261,000 acres this year according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. "Farmers have to be businessmen," Gibson said. "They watch the trends and make financial decisions based on those trends."

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