Bloomberg has offered an in-depth look at how land used is throughout the United States and golf leaves a small but significant mark.
The largest amount of specific-use land is devoted to raising livestock and feed. Approximately 41 percent of the land in the lower 48 states is being used for that purpose. There are 654 million acres in the U.S. being used at pasture and another 127.4 million devoted to growing and producing feed crops.
The chart below helps to illustrate the amount of land used for various purposes, according to USDA data reported by Bloomberg.
The amount of land being used for golf courses is about 2 million acres. That is larger in size than the state of Delaware, but smaller than Connecticut. The USDA says the “miscellaneous” land used for items such as golf courses, cemeteries, marshes and deserts contains “low economic value.”
More than 50 times that amount – about 108.3 million acres – is set aside for parks and wilderness areas – such as National Parks, National Seashores and wilderness preserves. On those sites, most commercial activities are prohibited.