Photo by Tina WrightIn Brooktondale, Erick Smith is ready for spring plowing. His farm, Cayuga Pure Organics, was featured in a recent county report on agriculture.

Tompkins County has a wide range of farmland and farming operations. We have small Community Supported Agriculture farms that grow vegetables and fruit, large dairy farms and small organic dairies, horse farms, crop farms and more.

To get a better look at the big picture, the Tompkins County planning department presented the second part of its conservation plan last week at a public meeting at the Tompkins County Public Library, “A Strategic Approach to Agricultural Resource Stewardship.”

This draft report looks at issues facing local agriculture and suggests strategies for saving critical farmland and supporting farmers. Six particular agricultural regions in the county were identified as Agricultural Resource Focus Areas (ARFAs), regions with high quality agricultural soils and contiguous, actively-farmed land. Not all Tompkins County farms fit into these maps, but each area does have its own “flavor” or particular characteristics that define it.

Leslie Schill, senior planner, provided a sense of the Northeast ARFA, which covers the central and eastern parts of the Town of Groton and drops south into the Town of Dryden. “The Northeast has the largest number of dairies of the ARFAs, almost 30. Many of these are located in the upper northern area of Groton, in the corner near Cayuga and Cortland counties. We’re looking at a real powerhouse dairy area.”

Schill continued, “Some of the critical issues we’ve identified here are farmland protection and development pressure. This is quite an opportunity area for farmland protection. It has the largest contiguous blocks of farmland of any of the ARFA areas. We find high owner-occupancy, farmers own a lot of this land, even support lands are often adjacent. Here’s a lot of potential for creating big areas that could be covered for protection.”

In contrast, the much smaller Sixmile Valley ARFA has the highest rate of rented land of all the Agricultural Resource Focus Areas. This region, roughly following Route 79 near Slaterville Springs, also lost the biggest percentage of farmland, 25 percent, from 1969-2007. This “checkerboard effect” with many farmland parcels all spread out, creates vulnerability for farming in the area.

County planners met with farmers in all of the ARFAs to hear their concerns. The profile summaries contain a wealth of information breaking down farm acreage into average farm size, percent of farmland actively farmed, prime soils and more. They recognize the impact of leasing in agriculture today — 29 percent of county farmland is leased.

Leased farmland is often transitional and unpredictable. Farmers can lose rented farmland with little advance notice and farmers renting land are also less likely to invest in it long-term. On the other hand, renting land has allowed young people with low cash reserves to get into farming on a shoestring. As the proportion of leased land increases, it means more farmers are traveling further distances to get to their fields, creating traffic challenges and conflict with residential areas.

Organic dairies are a bright opportunity spot, especially in the North Lansing- West Groton ARFA and the Northeast ARFA, according to the report, although perhaps all dairy growth will be slowed down for a time by the poor economy. New farms have started or converted from conventional farming to grow fruit, vegetables and small grains organically.

Other opportunities for growth are renewable energy crops and wind power. Farmers interested in value-added products may need help navigating rules and regulations in food processing and marketing.

Spicing up the report, featured farms are profiled in each of the six Agricultural Resource Focus Areas (available at www.tompkinsco.org). Beck Farms, the largest dairy in Tompkins County, represents the Northeast ARFA; Bensvue, an organic dairy, the North Lansing-West Groton ARFA; Indian Creek Farm, the Northwest ARFA; Cayuga Pure Organics, the Sixmile Valley ARFA. Mazourek Farms represents the Newfield area which has two very small ARFAs called Benjamin Hill and Pony Hollow.

While the maps do not name the farms, it is easy to find farms that one knows. All farms are colorcoded. Some rented land was missing from far ms on the maps (according to my own personal knowledge), but overall, the detail in this report is impressive.

County Senior Planner Scott Doyle listed some countywide actions that could help local agriculture, including cross-county cooperation with adjacent counties. Municipalities can use the report to prioritize farmland protection. Enhancing vegetation streambuffering on farms, identifying highway corridors that have farm traffic risks and drawing up a model hunting lease for farmers are all ideas to help ARFAs stay agricultural.

Tom Shelley, who is part of a sustainable chicken-raising project at Steep Hollow Farm in the Town of Ithaca, asked county planners about “the 800-pound gorilla in the room,” referring to gas drilling and its possible effects on local agriculture. Doyle acknowledged the importance of the question, though it is not addressed in the report.

TAGGED WITH: agriculture, ARFA, farming, renewable energy, Tompkins County