That should be no surprise to anyone. It's one of the biggest agriculture producers in the nation, although south of Des Monies there is more woods and grazing to be found. The famously fertile soils of the Great Plains in Northern and Central Iowa aren't as great as you south of Des Monies.
The primary purposes of Lake Alice Wildlife Management Area (WMA) are for wildlife management, wildlife habitat management, and wildlife-dependent recreation. The area encompasses 1,468 acres. The principal portions of this management area were acquired in two stages from the William H. Miner Foundation-648 acres in 1953 and 750 acres in 1970. Prior to state ownership, the area was primarily used for agriculture and timber harvesting. In addition, water control structures were built along Tracy Brook to generate hydro-electric power. This mosaic of cropland, woodland, and impounded open water provided an ideal base upon which to establish a wildlife management area. https://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/24410.html
Map derived from the USDA Plant Hardiness Zones data based on the work of the US Department of Agriculture and Oregon State University (OSU) Grid Data, contoured at 5 degrees F of the minimum average temperature for the year.
While a lot of people think of Pennsylvania for it's dairying and other forms of farming, the Allegheny Plateau region, sometimes called the Pennsylvania Wilds from Wellsboro to Warren, south to Dubois and Williamsport really is mostly timber country -- a land of camps and trees, along with oil and natural gas wells. The highly forested area is much larger then just National Forest.
Today is Queens Day in New York State. This comparison lets you zoom in and compare Queens today versus nearly 100 years ago in 1924. There was still a lot of agriculture in Queens back in the 1920s.
According to new data from the Rhodium Group analyzed by ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, warming temperatures and changing rainfall will drive agriculture and temperate climates northward, while sea level rise will consume coastlines and dangerous levels of humidity will swamp the Mississippi River valley.
Taken with other recent research showing that the most habitable climate in North America will shift northward and the incidence of large fires will increase across the country, this suggests that the climate crisis will profoundly interrupt the way we live and farm in the United States. See how the North American places where humans have lived for thousands of years will shift and what changes are in store for your county.
What is going to happen in the next 30 years, something we should accept as adults and not deny, while focusing on harm reduction whenever it makes sense from both an environmental and social perspective.
Agriculture means field cultivation. Cultivating fields is a big part of farming but a lot of agriculture, is not field crops as much as grasses.
Grasses for pasture and hay, converted by rumens, especially beef cattle 🐮 into meat 🥩. A lot of areas aren’t really well suited for field crops and tillage due to slope and shallow soils but grow grass pretty darn well. Some corn silage 🌽 is a required for high performance Holstein dairy cattle but not so much for beef and other breeds.
You can see that well on the National Land Cover Dataset for New York. There are far more acres of pasture and hay (yellow) than cultivated crops (brown) even in many rural farming parts of the state. 🗺