The state may finally have a budget, but that doesn’t mean everyone is happy. Farmers and others who work directly with the farming industry are disappointed with the hit their industry took, so the Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Future of Farming in New York State will try to fix what some say the governor and Legislature have broken.
Too many New York farms have fallen victim to federal and state policies that make it harder and harder to eek out a living working the soil and tending livestock, and its time that local leaders stand up to defend an important part of our economic heritage, said Thomas J. Santulli, president of the New York State Association of Counties (NYSAC) and creator of the task force. Santulli created the Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Future of Farming as a way to preserve the state’s historically strong agricultural industry.
Nearly 30 leaders from counties across the state make up the task force, which recently met at the Empire Farm Days in Seneca Falls to discuss recommendations that will be submitted at the NYSAC Fall Seminar in Buffalo in September. Alan Grattidge, supervisor of Charlton, is the only member of the task force representing Saratoga County.
`I look at farming as economic development for our area. People are concerend with our food sources, so we nee dto have a strong farming community to be able to provide the food source for our population,` said Grattidge. `The one thing that people will tell us is, they think what makes Saratoga County so special is all the farms we have here in the county, so it’s very important to support the community when it’s struggling as it has been in the past couple years.`
The Town of Charlton is undeniably a farming town, ruled by dairy, cattle, hay, equine and field agriculture and supplemented by specialty farms like alpacas, maple syrup and Christmas trees. The region has six active dairy farms, accounting for nearly half the agricultural land in the town, said Grattidge. In an effort to protect and preserve the town’s farmland, it passed a Farmland Protection Plan in February 2010, which identifies ways to help farms survive.
Among the ways to do this, as identified by the plan, are get the information out to make landowners aware of their options; develop the marketing strategy; install right-to-farm law signs which demonstrate the town’s commitment to farming; explore ways to locally fund farmland protection projects; and updating and modifying various town plans and codes.
Grattidge said this farmland protection plan is a demonstrated effort by the town to recognize the importance of the agriculture industry in the region and county, but said state leaders don’t seem to realize this value, as demonstrated by their `sweeping away` of funds.
`This past year’s budget was devastating to a number of farming communities and the state legislature, under the leadership of the governor and downstate leaders, basically swept away a lot of the funding for programs that were already in place,` said Grattidge, who referred a program called the New York State Farm Viability Institute that was budgeted more than $3 million in 2008. `This money would fund a lot of projects to help with profitability of farms. One of their programs was the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Saratoga County, but that money was stripped away and we basically had to close that program in March because we had no more funding for it.`
He said this deprivation of funds goes against one of Saratoga County’s biggest businesses, horses.
`That program was started to help people in the equine business develop business plans and encourage the equine industry, which is so huge in this county,` said Grattidge. `So many people were directly impacted by the recently passed budget.`
Grattidge said his participation on the Blue Ribbon Task Force is incredibly important to lend a voice for Saratoga County to the leaders down in Albany.
`One of the advantages of being on this committee is our voice is heard by a lot of legislators, and that’s pretty powerful for getting good policies passed,` said Grattidge.
At its meeting last week, the task force drafted several recommendations. It suggested `develop and supporting policy that is farm-size neutral and focuses on overall farm profitability; require more accurate supply and demand reporting for all dairy products in this country; create and fund an agricultural economic development program that is driven by a set of metrics that recognize the overall wealth creation within a community rather than just the overall job creation count; support proper labeling of products to promote enhanced consumer confidence; support programs that assist farmers in their ongoing efforts to be stewards of soil and water resources; incentivize counties to develop their own farmland protection programs to leverage state funds and play a more direct role in protecting farmland for future generations.`
Grattidge said he was encouraged by the task force’s work and said supporting agriculture state-wide ends up benefiting Saratoga County.
Charlton is 21,000 acres, or roughly 33 square miles, and out of 1,943 properties, 196 are agricultural.
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