Update on Smithsonian Tractor

We received a letter from one of the tractorcaders who had written to the Smithsonian. The tractor is still being displayed in the Smithsonian as it has been for the past 16 years. The Chairman claims that this is a long time and that they never gave us a permanent place for the tractor.

We all should write letters until they get tired of receiving them. Address: Steven Ubar, Chairman, Division of the History of Technology, National Museum of American History, Room 5000, 14th and Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20560; E-mail lubars@nmah.si.edu; phone 202-357-2371; fax 202-357-4256. We should all continue writing this person even if you have written before. Be sure to cc a copy to your Congressmen and Senators.
 

Sprawl Consuming Two Acres A Minute

According to a new study by the American Farmland Trust, the United States is losing two acres of mostly prime farmland every minute to development, the fastest such decline in the country’s history. That loss has been on the edge of the outer suburbs, where some of the country’s best fruit farms are being replaced by houses on large lost, linked by new roads, highways and malls. The reports pointed out that sprawl, not development is the problem. Using census data as well as Agriculture Department information about crops and soil, the study found that more than half of the lost farmland is being carved into 10-acre lots, paralleling an increasing economic divide between the rich and urban poor. Keith Collins, the chief economist for the Agriculture Department, said that the loss of farmland has been a concern for years because it destroys open spaces and local food production.