WASHINGTON (AP) - The Agriculture Department says it overestimated the amount of farm land that was developed between 1992 and 1997 by 30 percent and it blames faulty software for the mistake.

The department initially reported that nearly 16 million acres of farm land were converted to development between 1992 and 1997 - a rate of 3.2 million per year. The correct figure, it turns out, is 11.2 million acres, a development rate of 2.2 million acres per year.

Between 1982 and 1992, the annual conversion rate was 1.4 million acres a year.

The department this week posted the corrected version of the development report on its Web site along with an explanation of the error.

When the report was originally released in December 1999, Vice President Al Gore said the figures confirmed that ``too much of our precious open space is being gobbled up by sprawl.''

The nation had 98 million acres of developed land in 1997, about 6.6 percent of the nation's non-federal land, according to the revised report. About 25 percent of the non-federal land is farmed. More than half is in rangeland or forests.

Lycos

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2001