1.0 Why Farming Is Important to Greene County - The Top 10 Reasons

1.1 Farming is big business to Greene County.
1.2 Farming provides year-round business for other Greene County enterprises.
1.3 Income from agriculture goes further than other sectors in helping the economy.
1.4 Agricultural opportunities can actually increase with growth of an area.
1.5 Farms lower taxes.
1.6 Farms create rural character and attract tourism.
1.7 Successful farming limits suburban sprawl.
1.8 Farms and forests preserve natural environments.
1.9 Farms and forests support wildlife, sport hunting and other recreational land uses.
1.10 Farmland is an invaluable resource for future generations.

1.0 Why Farming Is Important to Greene County - The Top 10 Reasons

Farming is much more than a starting point on the development scale. It represents a fundamental economic opportunity that also pays dividends in cultural, environmental and social gains for Greene County. Consider the following:

1.1 Farming is big business to Greene County.

Farming in Greene County involves some 244 business locations, both large and small, that generated sales of $8,781,000 million in 1997. The average value of land, buildings and equipment used in each of these businesses was $327,314 for a total investment in the Greene County economy of approximately $79,865,000, the equivalent, from an economic development standpoint, of several major manufacturing facilities.1

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1.2 Farming provides year-round business for other Greene County enterprises.

Agriculture is much more than farming. A substantial number of non-agricultural businesses supply the needs of farmers. These include processors, vehicle and equipment dealers and other enterprises. Greene County farmers, for example, own and must maintain and replace 226 mower/conditioners, 251 balers, 410 trucks, 653 tractors and numerous other pieces of farm equipment and machinery. They also annually purchase $348,000 of electricity, $490,000 of petroleum products, $834,000 in repairs and maintenance, $926,000 of property taxes, $1,371,000 of hired farm labor, $2,007,000 of feed and approximately $2,701,000 of other products and services from Greene County and other nearby enterprises, many of which would not be considered farm supply businesses.2

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1.3 Income from agriculture goes further than other sectors in helping the economy.

Agriculture produces much higher economic multipliers than any other sector of the Greene County economy.  These multipliers indicate how many times a dollar of sales recirculates in the local economy for feed and supplies and still additional purchases of labor and goods by those businesses. Dairy production, for example, enjoys a 2.29 income multiplier compared to 1.66 for construction, 1.48 for services (which includes tourism), 1.41 for manufacturing and 1.40 for retail and wholesale trade. Applying these multipliers indicates agriculture represents a total contribution to the economy of approximately $20,000,000, not including forestry enterprises, many of which take place on farms and all of which are part of agriculture.3

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1.4 Agricultural opportunities can actually increase with growth of an area.

While development can, obviously, create conflicts for farmers, the leading agricultural county in New York is Suffolk County. It is home to 1.3 million people and one of the most highly developed suburban environments in the nation, suggesting not only that farming and urbanization can co-exist, but also that the local demand for agricultural products increases with the latter and raises the value of farming as an economic enterprise.4 Greene County is growing much faster than the rest of the State and is only 30 minutes from Albany. Farming will, therefore, become ever more important to the County as it continues to develop and grow in population. This is particularly true for fruit and vegetable growers that depends so much on direct marketing and the rapidly developing nursery industry in the County.

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1.5 Farms lower taxes.

Farms are tax winners despite preferential assessments afforded by the Ag District Law. A 1995 study of Tompkins County at the other end of the Southern Tier East region found "agricultural .. uses should be recognized as beneficial because they do not demand a large amount of services and provide other benefits such as employment."

The data, in fact, indicate agriculture typically produces $1.00 in tax revenue for every 15¢ to 40¢ of town and school expenditures it generates, whereas residential development costs $1.09 to $1.56 per $1.00 of taxes gathered. Similar analyses in adjoining Schoharie County for 1998 indicated agriculture produced $1.09 to $2.06 in tax revenue for every $1.00 of municipal and school costs created.5 These results are consistent with those of a number of other similar studies done throughout the Northeast.6

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1.6 Farms create rural character and attract tourism.

Farms contribute to Greene County's rural character and protect open spaces essential to the quality of life for both permanent and seasonal residents. Any number of surveys of rural residents and second-home dwellers indicate the primary reasons people live in such areas have to do with their appreciation of the natural resources and open spaces offered, but the anecdotal evidence is perhaps even stronger and local tourism brochures provide examples. They include references not only to the County's historic and natural sites but also its "spectacular scenery" and the "natural beauty of the countryside," They also speak of the "exceptional natural beauty" along the 21 miles of highway designated as the "Catskill Mountain Heritage Trail" that is included on New York States Scenic Byway system. The Catskill Game Farm, a family-owned tourist enterprise established in 1933 has also attracted millions of visitors who, according to its website, "have enjoyed the close contact of exotic animals in a relaxed, country atmosphere."

These facets are directly created by working farm landscapes in many instances. They help support some 44 bed and breakfast operations throughout the County. There is, indeed, a direct relationship between farming and the attractiveness of Greene County as a place to both live and visit.

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1.7 Successful farming limits suburban sprawl.

Preserving farmland discourages expensive suburban sprawl, steering development toward hamlets and villages with existing services. "Gasoline taxes and other user fees only cover about 70% of the direct cash costs of building and maintaining the nation's road system," according to a recent article on sprawl. Hook-up fees for sewer systems within areas of sprawl often cover less than half the real costs of those extensions.7 These differences are attributable to the high costs of servicing development spread out along highways and the deficits must be made up by all taxpayers.

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1.8 Farms and forests preserve natural environments.

Farms and forests provide working self-sustaining landscapes which preserve and enhance environmental quality. Use of New York City watershed lands in the West-of-Hudson region of New York State (including Greene County) for largely farm and forestry uses have, for example, allowed Federal water drinking quality criteria for filtration avoidance to be met. The suburbanized Croton and other East-of-Hudson area watersheds, by contrast, cannot meet these same standards and demand extraordinarily expensive filtering processes to produce potable drinking water.

Forest land, which is a part of nearly every farm, "may reduce sediment, nutrient and other pollutant loadings by as much as 85% by minimizing soil erosion and filtering watershed runoff" according to a Watershed Agricultural Council publication.8 A recent study of land use and water quality along 100 Wisconsin streams also found that "watershed with more than 20% of land in urban use had very poor biological diversity."9 This is particularly important to those portions of the County within the New York City watershed and increasingly so in the remainder of the County as environmental requirements tighten.

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1.9 Farms and forests support wildlife and sport hunting.

Farms support wildlife such as deer, turkeys and small-game and thereby sustain hunting as a source of tourism to the area. The 1997 white-tail deer harvest was, in fact, some 2,129 deer with the largest takes being in Durham, Greenville and Catskill, respectively.10 The 1996 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation estimated that $322,919,067 in retail sales and $575,535,000 in total economic output was generated for New York State as a result of deer hunting (an economic multiplier of 1.78). This equals $712 and $2,654, respectively, for each deer harvested, yielding a $5,650,000 deer hunting economy for Greene County.11  Bird watching and other forms of hunting (e.g. bear), fishing and outdoor recreation and eco-tourism are also supported by farming. There are, in addition, a number of related summer festivals in Hunter and elsewhere that support local businesses.

Finally, as indicated earlier, the County is home to the Catskill Game Farm, a home-grown specialty tourism business that involves the exhibit of approximately 2000 animals, representing over 150 different species from all parts of the world and including both domestic and exotic species. It alone attracts some 200,000 visitors per year. The Catskill Game Farm zoological park is a unique and important purchaser of agricultural products as well, including grain and local hay.

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1.10 Farmland is an invaluable resource for future generations.

Farmland is a valuable future resource for the County in providing for a healthy and plentiful local supply of food products and generating new sources of farm income. Many new residents of the County and of areas to the North and South (e.g. Albany, Kingston), as well as visitors to the Hudson Valley, are seeking locally grown fresh fruits, vegetables and flowers, both organic and non-organic. County farmers are already capitalizing on these opportunities in the promotion of farm stands. There are also CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture) groups operating successfully in Greene County, supplying the metropolitan markets.

Likewise, the County's base of both small and mid-sized farms provides a foundation for exploring new dairy and non-dairy opportunities for added-value ventures and development of new niche businesses. These resources offer tremendous economic potential for the future and, once again, Suffolk County provides an illustration. Its agricultural economy has been reinvented several times with urbanization but today yields well over $167,000,000 in annual sales and its lead as New York's most valuable agricultural producer is lengthening because of the shift to these higher valued products.12

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FOOTNOTES:

1)  Source: U.S. Census of Agriculture, 1997. Farming is also integral to the support of SUNY Cobleskill which is an economic center onto itself. Market values of land and buildings averaged $281,800 in 1997 and machinery and equipment was valued at an average of $45,514. BACK

2)  Source: 1997 U.S. Census of Agriculture. BACK

3)  Source: "Economic Multipliers and the New York State Economy," Policy Issues in Rural Land Use, Cornell Cooperative Extension, December 1996. Crops produce a multiplier of 2.28, nursery and wood products yield 1.78 and poultry and livestock generate a 1.64 figure. Agricultural processing operations offer multipliers of 1.65 (meat) to 2.61 (dairy). BACK

4)  Source: Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County. BACK

5)  Source: Costs of Community Services Study, Tompkins County, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County; Tompkins County Agricultural and Farmland Protection Plan, August, 1995; and Schoharie County Agricultural Development and Farmland Protection Plan, 2000. BACK

6)  These include studies by American Farmland Trust, Cornell Cooperative Extension, and Commonwealth Research Group, Inc. of communities in Dutchess and Oneida Counties in New York and various other Connecticut and New England areas. BACK

7)  Source: "Who Pays for Sprawl?," U.S. News and World Report, April 27, 1998. BACK

8)  Source: Policy Recommendations for the Watersheds of New York City's Water Supply, Watershed Forest Ad Hoc Task Force, July 1996, p.8. Also, remarks by Watershed Agricultural Council Chairman Richard Coombe at "Promoting Partnerships" Conference, American Farmland Trust and others, Albany, New York, May 1998. BACK

9)  Source: Land Works Connection, October, 1998, American Farmland Trust. BACK

10)  Source: New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. The 1998 harvest was 2,172 deer. BACK

11)  See http://www.restorewildlife.org/dollars/index.cfm for details on Statewide basis. BACK

12)  Source: Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County and U.S. Census of Agriculture, 1997. BACK

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