agriculture

From the New York Farm Bureau:

New York Farm Bureau members today elected Dean Norton, a dairy farmer and agricultural consultant from Batavia, N.Y. as the organization's new president.  Eric Ooms, a dairy farmer from Kinderhook, N.Y. was elected as vice president.

The election was held at Farm Bureau's State Annual Meeting in Albany.  Membership delegates representing farmers from around the state cast ballots. New York Farm Bureau is the statewide lobbying/trade organization that represents approximately 30,000 farm families.

Norton takes over for John Lincoln who retired today after 14 years as president and 29 years in various leadership positions in Farm Bureau.

Norton is a Senior Agriculture Consultant with Freed Maxick & Battaglia CPA's.  His family owns a dairy farm in Elba, N.Y. and runs a custom trucking operation for forage and commodity harvesting.  Norton has served on Farm Bureau's state board of directors since 2004 and was the Genesee County Farm Bureau president from 2000-2004.

"I am proud to have the opportunity to represent this organization during such a critical time for the farm families of New York," Norton said.

Ooms owns and operates a 425-cow dairy farm with his father and brothers in Kinderhook in Columbia County. 

He has served New York Farm Bureau for 10 years as Columbia County Farm Bureau President, and six years on the State Board as Young Farmer and Rancher Chair and District 10 Director.

"It truly is an honor to be selected by the membership to help lead this great organization," said Ooms.

Photo courtesy of the Farm Bureau. Pictured: Outgoing President John Lincoln (left) congratulates newly elected President Dean Norton.

Pavilion's Steve Rigoni is the subject of an article in today's Buffalo News. Rigoni is a cash crop farmer, descendent of three generations of upstate dairy farmers, who has been featured in a pair of videos on The Batavian for his construction of a corn dryer that is fueled by switchgrass rather than propane. (If you haven't seen either of those videos yet, please check them out. It's pretty remarkable what Rigoni put together... from scratch.)

In the Buffalo News piece, Rigoni is in the spotlight again for his allegiance to alternative energies—this time, for mounting a windmill outside his home. From that article:

It’s easy to spot Steve Rigoni’s place in Pavilion — just look for the wind turbine spinning high above his house.

“I look at it as my midlife thing,” Rigoni said. “Some people get a Corvette, or a new woman — I got a windmill.”

His 10-kilowatt Bergey Windpower rig is hardly a wanton spree, however. While it cost him $25,000, after state incentives, it has nearly wiped out electric bills that used to average $120 to $140 a month.

Reporter Fred O. Williams calls it "wind power to the people."

For Rigoni, converting to wind power was as much a labor of love, he said, as it was about economics. A proponent of alternative energy, he also heats his home partly with wood, and burns switchgrass instead of propane to dry corn for his farming operation.

But the wind turbine pays its way. For the last two years, it has pumped out about 800 kilowatt-hours a month, powering Rigoni’s washer, dryer, water heater, fridge and lights.

When the wind is blowing but the appliances aren’t on, the turbine spins his electric meter backward, generating a small credit toward future energy use.

“We don’t ever make much money on it,” he said.

It turns out that the Great Lakes region is "a prime wind-resource area," especially in the colder months, which would be good news for folks like us who max out our energy bills come January and February. But is it really worth it?

Does small wind save money? The rule of thumb is that a well-located turbine with an average wind speed of 12 mph and with 10-kilowatt capacity can generate about 1,000 kilowatt- hours a month, or enough to power a typical home — not counting heating or air-conditioning. Whether that will break even over the 20-year life of a turbine depends on current and future electricity rates. Utility rates of 10 cents per kilowatt-hour begin to make the cost of wind attractive.

Wind power economics just got a push from Congress. The financial bailout package enacted in October included a tax credit of up to $4,000 for small wind systems.

So, would you do it?

 Thanksgiving is this Thursday and Americans will come together to give thanks and enjoy a safe and affordable meal with their families.  It's important to remember where our food comes from and the family farmers and ranchers who provide America with such a bountiful harvest.

Earlier this month, eleven 4-Hers from around the county showed off their nutritional and culinary know-how at the Produced in New York State Food Contest that was held at Martin's Super Food Store in Batavia. In front of a panel of judges, each participant prepared a recipe using at least one cup of fruits, vegetables or meat that had been produced here in the Empire State.

Jennifer Lichtenthal showed us how to make her cabbage casserole, a recipe passed down from her grandmother. She also informed us that New York, if you can believe it, is the number one cabbage growing state in the country. Enjoy! 

For the complete recipe, or for any of the other ten recipes featured at the Produced in New York State Food Contest, please contact the Cornell Cooperative Extension at (585) 343-3040.

A front-page story by Tom Rivers in today's Daily News examines the toll taken on the health of migrant workers by "grueling farm work." We wouldn't do the article much of a service by trying to sum it up here. It's lengthy and detailed. So if you're interested in the topic, you may want to pick up a paper today.

Several articles are featured on the front page and elsewhere in today's paper on the proposed state budget cuts. They tackle, in particular, the issue of cuts to school aid and agriculture. A chart on page five lists the school districts in Genesee, Orleans and Wyoming counties and the amount of proposed cuts along with percentages. In what looks to be a wire story on the back page, the state Farm Bureau criticizes Gov. David Paterson for his proposed cuts, which "disproportionately" target agricultural programs. The article is informative, but it's hard not to wonder that every member of every group that may see their programs cut in the state budget wouldn't make the same claims of a governor who is being unfair and "disporportionately" targeting them. As we mentioned in a post earlier today, the Albany Times Union noted that busloads of protestors—at least 1,000 of them today—have been disembarking at the capitol to make noise about "unfair" cuts.

Main Street Coffee owner, Rob Credi, plans to close up shop likely by the end of the year and sell the business to property owner Ken Mistler. Credi will then manage the Daily Grind, the coffee shop and juice bar that Mistler will be opening inside a health club going up at the corner of Main and Jackson streets. Credi hopes the place will be open by the end of January.

We encourage you to pick up a copy of the Daily News at your local newsstand. Or, better yet, subscribe at BataviaNews.com.

About 16 people gathered in the town of Batavia last night for a meeting to discuss possibly formulating a farmland protection plan for the town, according to the Daily News.

The town has about 19,000 acres of agricultural land, which accounts for roughly 60 percent of total land in the town.

Roger Muehlig writes:

The goal is to create a land use policy on how to keep agricultural land in production and protect it from commercial and residential development.

In other news, the city of Batavia has hired a new code enforcement officer. Apparently, Ronald Panek has been working since last week. Panek, 41, is from Wyoming.

We encourage you to pick up a copy of the Daily News at your local newsstand. Or, better yet, subscribe at BataviaNews.com.

This past July, we paid a visit to Rigoni Farms in Pavilion. Steve Rigoni was a dairy farmer his whole life, and his father and his father's father before him. Not long ago, however, Steve made the switch to cash crops and began experimenting with alternative sources of energy. When we visited him in July, Steve showed us the tank in which he planned to burn switchgrass to heat the air to dry his corn crop—bushels of dried switchgrass would replace propane as the fuel source. He told us about how he manufactured the device and a little about his reasons. Please, be sure to go back and watch that video.

Well, we got a message from Steve last week asking us to come back out and see his invention in action. Long story short: it's a success. There are some things that need to be tweaked, as there are always things that need tweaking. But all in all, it works great. We put together another video to show you the burner and hear a little bit more from Steve about how it works. You can check that out below.

Before you watch it, however, let me say one thing. This video does not quite capture the marvel that I felt—and that I would hope some of you would feel—when I saw up close what Steve had built. This burner was made by hand, by Steve from whatever he could find to piece it together. He welded, he fanagled, he improvised. He manufactured a heat exchanger out of metal sheets and pipes. It's a thing of beauty, really. And that's before you consider that he now grows his own fuel and saves some 1,000 gallons of propane per day, every time he uses the dryer.

Mark T. Mitchell, writing for First Principles Journal, discusses sustainable farming in an article "The Rediscovery of Agriculture?"

Is there any farm in Genesee County like Polyface Farms in Staunton, Virginia?

Although he sells beef, chickens, eggs, turkeys, pork, and rabbits, Salatin calls himself a grass farmer. That is, he is in the business of raising meat and eggs for sale, but he realizes that the quality of his products, and ultimately the success of his farm, depends on the quality of the grass in his pastures. Unlike the vast majority of meat products in the U.S. today, Salatin’s cows are raised and finished on grass; his chickens are pastured; his hogs are happy, and his turkeys, well, they seem friendly. The Polyface website affirms their belief that the natural world is the model they seek to emulate: “Believing that the Creator’s design is still the best pattern for the biological world, the Salatin family invites like-minded folks to join in the farm’s mission.”

Salatin has developed innovated methods of enhancing his grass farm and thereby providing a good place for his animals. For example, his cows are moved to new pasture almost daily, and these docile beasts are anxious to move, for each fresh pasture represents, in the cow’s mind, what Salatin calls “cow ice-cream.” As in nature, once the herbivores (in this instance, cows) have moved to another field, the birds (in this case, chickens) come next. Portable chicken coops make it possible to move the chickens through a recently grazed pasture. The chickens flourish on the cropped grass, and they pick through the cow dung, eating bugs and parasites, and in the process spread the manure over the field, while depositing plenty of their own. The symbiosis of this relationship between cows and chickens replenishes the pastures even as it sustains the animals living there. This is just one example of how the people at Polyface seek to work with the natural world to raise healthy animals while simultaneously sustaining and even improving the land on which they farm.

Mitchell then goes on to talk about the work of economist John E. Ikerd, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri.

Ikerd admits that his views are not typical of economists, but

[B]eing an economist is no excuse for ignoring ecological and social reality. How can agriculture meet the food and fiber needs of a growing world population if we destroy the natural productivity and regenerative capacity of the land? Economists generally assume that we will find substitutes for anything we use up and will fix any ecological or social problems we create, but these are simply beliefs with no logical, scientific support in fact.

Furthermore, although it is true that, at least in the short term, industrial agriculture can produce an incredible amount of food, there are trade-offs, and we are remiss to ignore what is inevitably sacrificed.

What is the net benefit of an agriculture that meets the physical needs of people but separates families, destroys communities, and diminishes the overall quality of life within society? How can it possibly be good to defile the earth, even if it is profitable to do so? Economists simply don’t consider the social, psychological, or ethical consequences of the things people do to make money. Economics treats such things as social or ecological externalities, which may impose irrational limits or constraints on the legitimate pursuit of wealth.

Mitchell then lists three reasons why centralized farming is bad for the nation.

• Industrialized food doesn't taste as good and isn't as healthy;
• Centralized agriculture is less secure against terrorist attacks;
• Industrial farming is not sustainable.

This is an agricultural community.  I would be interested in two reactions to Mitchell's piece -- is it realistic based on what you know about local farming, and are there any farms in Genesee County implementing sustainable agricultural tactics?

The blog Ethicurean, a site dedicated to healthy, locally produced food, put together a post about President-Elect Barack Obama's farm and food policies as detailed during his campaign.

Since Genesee County is a rural farming community, it is probably useful to look at some of the key issues raised by Obama in his speeches and policy statements.

Here's the key point of the post:

So what might we expect from an Obama administration when it comes to food policy? Maybe quite a bit. In his plan for rural America, he lays out a number of policy positions that are a departure from the status quo. Obama:

• Supports subsidies as a safety net, but calls for a $250,000 payment limitation and closing of loopholes, so that the program supports family farmers, not corporate agribusiness.
• Supports regulation of CAFOs (factory livestock operations).
• Wants to enforce anti-trust laws that so that smaller farmers can compete against large-scale meatpackers.
• Wants to cap the size of agricultural businesses that can receive government funds for environmental cleanup so that taxpayers don’t subsidize cleanup for large, polluting corporations.
• Supports Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) for meat, a critical issue as we learn how widespread melamine contamination of animal feed is in countries like China.
• Wants to increase support for organic agriculture and local food systems by helping farmers with organic certification/compliance costs.
• Wants to provide incentives to encourage and support new farmers, land conservation, renewable energy on the farm, and microenterprise for farmers and other rural Americans.
• Calls for greater food safety surveillance and communications.
• Plans to encourage local foods in schools.
• Supports providing farmers with incentives that will prevent agricultural runoff.

From his campaign web site, here is Obama's Plan for Rural America.

We begin our countdown to Halloween tonight with the first of five videos devoted to the celebration of the spooky. Our good friend Anika Zuber, the Genesee County Dairy Princess, will show us how to make Jell-O eyeballs, a perfect treat for the ghoul and goblin in your life. So, without further ado...

Today's Daily News features reporter Tom Rivers' third installment in the apple orchard series that started Tuesday. That's about all for this issue.

We encourage you to pick up a copy of the Daily News at your local newsstand. Or, better yet, subscribe at BataviaNews.com.

Byron diary farmer Robin Keller, 39, has been elected the new president of the Genesee County Farm Bureau, according to the Daily News. Tom Rivers reports that Keller replaces Dale Stein, a Le Roy dairy farmer, who did not seek re-election after his four years in the position. Keller and her husband moved to the area a little less than a decade ago, looking to expand their dairy business.

"Genesee County was the ideal location for growing a farm business," she told Rivers.

Genesee County Legislature Chair Mary Pat Hancock told the Daily News that

the New York State Association of Counties is not going to sit back and allow the state to impose budget cuts without NYSAC having some say in how those adjustments are made and implemented.

County Manager Jay Gsell said that the current fiscal crisis on Wall Street could be an "opportunity for reform in Albany" by getting the state to cut back its "expenditures, jobs, services" and "unfunded state mandates"—what Paul Mrozek describes as "the albatross on the back of county governments."

Mothertime Marketplace will roll into St. Joseph's School this Saturday and Sunday. The consignment sale event that often includes everything from bedroom sets to books, will run from 10:00am to 5:00pm Saturday and from 10:00am to 3:00pm Sunday. Admission is $2 per day or $3 for both days. Some coupons are available at selected locations around the city. Visit Mothertime Marketplace online for more information. St. Joseph's School is located at the corner of Summit and East Main streets downtown.

We encourage you to pick up a copy of the Daily News at your local newsstand. Or, better yet, subscribe at BataviaNews.com.

Ann Gavenda didn't only talk about the Elba History Barn when we met a few weeks back. She had some great stories to tell me about working in the muck on the Elba onion fields back in the 1940s, when her and the other girls ran into snakes, cigars, highly articulate Jamaicans and more dimes than you can shake a stick at—and she had the blisters to prove it. Without further ado:

A few weeks ago, I paid a visit to the new History Barn in Elba, built to store all the ancient farm equipment and other relics that were locked up in who knew how many barns all over the town and its environs. Ann Gavenda was kind enough to come down and tell me a bit about the town's new treasure and the treasures inside it. Here's what she told me:

Were you able to make out the price of a gallon of gas on the old Esso pump?

Ann didn't only tell me about the history barn. She told me a lot more about growing up in Elba and working in the muck fields. Please be sure to check out that video which should go up later this afternoon.

Many of us drive by the Cornell Cooperative Extension every day without knowing much about what goes on inside. They've got something to do with gardening. Most of us know that much. So, in the hopes of reintroducing to Genesee County what Beverly Mancuso calls our "best known secret," I sat down with Bev this morning to find out just what goes on at the extension. Here's what I learned...

"We want to focus on what no one else is doing and what we could do the best," says Bev.

That means agriculture education, which is probably priority number one for the extension. Back in the day, the Farm Bureau and the extension were one and the same, but they split off. Farm Bureau now handles all the lobbying for the agriculture community, while the extension takes care of education. They do it all, from vegetable growing to dairy production and everything in between, whether they're working hands-on with farmers or with students.

For students, the incubation program and Dairy Day are the two biggest draws. The incubation program is exactly how it sounds: incubators are brought into schools so the students can watch eggs hatch and learn about it. Dairy Day is targeted at the younger grade schoolers. For one day, they're bused out to a farm to learn everything that goes on, first-hand and up close.

Aside from working with school students, the extension also offers several courses for adults and families, most of which are free to the public. Unfortunately, not too many people are taking advantage, Bev tells me.

One of the extension's most valuable programs is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). SNAP is an eight week course on how to eat better by buying smarter and more healthy foods. Anyone who wants to take this course can register at TOPS Market in Batavia. All you have to do is fill out a registration card and drop it in the box near the produce section.

What makes SNAP worthwhile? Well, for folks who complain about the high cost of doctor bills or obesity or how they can't afford to eat healthy, these courses will teach you the fundamentals on such things as food safety and portion size. You can learn how to eat better on your budget.

Speaking of your budget. The extension offers a trio of what they call "empowering" programs: one on how to save on energy costs, another on credit and debt management and a third on how to put together a spending plan to better make your ends meet.

All of these programs are free, folks. Now I can't understand why people wouldn't be taking advantage of this. I understand that we're pressed for time and money. But these programs could help you better manage both of those.

"At the end of the day, it's all about trying to make the community better," says Bev.

Classes on how to eat better and how to better manage a tight budget are sure to help out, as long as folks take advantage. It's easy to do people: visit the extension's Web site, or give them a call (343-3040), send them an e-mail or stop by at 420 E. Main St. They're happy to help out.

Oh, we almost forgot: as we said at the beginning, the extension is also about gardening. Perhaps their most popular course is the twelve-week master gardener program. This one isn't free. It costs about $250. But for folks with a desire to green their thumb, it's a great way to get some in-depth knowledge of gardening.

You may have seen the work of the extension's master gardener graduates around the county. Once they've gone through the program, many of them volunteer some time back to the extension by sprucing up gardens at sites such as the VA Medical Center or the School for the Blind.

Hopefully, that will help people get to know a little more about Genesee County's best known secret. Check back with The Batavian in the coming weeks and months as we plan to work more closely with the extension and 4-H to get up the news and happenings of our next generation.