Archive: Opinions

What’s missing from the Town of Lansing Agriculture & Farmland Protection Plan? Everything that’s important.

This Agriculture and Farmland Protection Plan does not adequately describe the district it wants to so radically change. There is no space or thought given to the pejoratively named 'non-farming' rural population, a demographic many times larger than the agricultural segment that this plan favors, but much poorer, and completely unrepresented. This 'non-farming' majority has a history in this district quite as long as any farming activity. This Plan ignores the historical importance of the settlements and villages in North Lansing, a more than two century pattern of mixed usage which so baffles the 'we have no town center' minds looking for a cookie cutter community. Lansingville proper, just a few hundred feet north of my house, included a general store, a post office, a couple of churches, and a two-story hotel, as well as quite a few homes dating back to the 1830s and 1840s. This is not at all the perception of North Lansing that this report wants to present.

This Plan also never bothers to answer the questions: What is the size of the 'non-farming' population? What is their income? How has, not only the development of the South Lansing suburbs, but also the aggressive/invasive growth of large corporate agricultural interests in North Lansing affected them? And how will the establishment of a Right to Farm Ag District affect them and their children in the future?

The documentation includes many vague phrases which have very definite legal implications for the health and environmental well being of the town’s residents.  Phrases like 'normal farming practices,' 'sound farming practices' and 'restricting uses that are not compatible with agriculture' are used throughout, but are never explained, and their impact on the district’s rural residents is left unanswered. A CAFO, Vision Quest, moved in next to me a few years ago and has made two big expansions since then. The farm it bought and occupies was too tiny for my cousin, a small New York State traditional family dairy farmer to even consider buying, and most of Vision Quest’s feed lots are located elsewhere. On December 18 and 19 of 2013, many containers of liquid manure exited the farm. The temperature hadn’t gotten out of the 20s for two weeks and the hard, frozen ground had a covering of snow. As predicted, within a couple of days the temperature soared to 60 degrees and there were heavy rains. What happened to that liquid manure? Is this an example of  'sound farming practices?' And does it really matter anyway? The 'sound farming practices' are only guidelines, just a palliative which offers no real legal standard of protection.

Just look at the case of Willet Dairy, just north of the Lansing border and Fred Coon, a retired carpenter was living on land that had been in the family since the 1800s. "It was a terrible process,'' Coon said."I was raking leaves by the barn, and my eyes started stinging. I came inside and looked in the mirror, and there were a million little tiny blisters over here, and here,'' he says, pointing to the magenta tissue his lower eyelids used to cover. The blisters burst and became infected, prompting doctors to amputate the thin flaps of skin containing them.

In the good old days, the air here smelled like lilac trees, flowers grew in the garden and marathon barbecues brought the town together, Coon said. They even had neighbors. But that was before Willet expanded. Now they're surrounded by Willet on three sides. "I'm just angry they took our lives away,'' His daughter says. "I can't even get a friggin' clean glass of water."  (Parts of the above taken from Toxic Business by Rebecca Lerner)

After attempting, and failing, to get help from every Federal, State and local agency they and their neighbors could think of, they brought the case to court, where it was dismissed.

The rural residential population is repeatedly misrepresented in this report. It condemns them as 'rural residents unfamiliar with farming activities' This is untrue. There are generations of rural residents who remember all too well the easy coexistence of agricultural and residential interests in their community. It’s the change of agricultural methods to the modern 'max your profits at any cost to your neighbors' that turns the rural residents against these farms. And, it’s only to be expected.

Why does this report never compare the farming to the non-farming residents in the district? Why, for example, aren’t the 'Taxes paid by Lansing Farmers' statistics compared with the taxes paid by the other residents of the same district? And why do we constantly hear about the Village of Lansing in this report? They have nothing to do with this proposed reinvention of rural Lansing. No one would dare make a plan for them where the 'dominant' malls and businesses were judged to be all-important and the welfare of the Village residents was dismissed without their involvement or approval.

And that is just what’s happening in North Lansing. The plan participants have already laid the groundwork to leapfrog the rural residents, and get approval from the South Lansing residents - many of whom, don’t know and don’t care about rural Lansing, are only staying while their kids are in school, and are more than willing to appear generous and caring when someone else bears all the costs. Especially when it’s the 'hillbillies' as they sometimes refer to us.

Now a few words about the Sewer/High Density development portion of the Plan. When this was first proposed last year, I asked both the Sewer Planning Board and the Town Supervisor how this large scale high-density residential development could be implemented without flooding the schools with students and requiring new schools to be built, both of which would skyrocket the already crushingly high Lansing school taxes. Could they supply any facts or figures that would support their claim that it would 'Stabilize the Local Tax Base' and 'offset the loss of taxable value' of AES Cayuga? After weeks of promises, I was given a flat refusal. In August of last year, under great public opposition, the Superintendant announced "To all intents and purposes the sewer initiative is over with, 12-A and 12-C are no longer on the table.' And the Lansing town website still proclaims 'The proposed Town Sewer Plan is no longer being considered.' in bold red text. But, in less than four months, the sewer and developments plans are back, and listed as 'ongoing' and' high' priority respectively, to 'Encourage in-fill development in South Lansing to reduce rural sprawl' Are the plan’s proponents willing to answer my questions about increased school taxes yet? Stopping development pressure by promoting profitable high density sewer enabled housing is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. Another obvious question is, if the Ag District designation will protect North Lansing from development, why do we need the sewers and 'in-fill' development in South Lansing? And, since there’s demonstrably no development to speak of in North Lansing [except agricultural] under the present zoning, why do we need this at all? Who really benefits?

There have been many plans, and plans-within-plans presented in Lansing in the last few years, and they are all eerily alike: No matter how long they’ve been in the works, they’re always rushed to approval in as short a time as possible. A plan like this, entirely backed by outside interests, and created without the involvement and approval of the vast majority of the people in the district, needs a great deal of examination.

Another troubling issue is the demographics. When you 'follow the money' the Plan looks like this: Lansing’s rich and invasive corporate agriculture, a rich arrogant Cornell, a rich and entrenched Tompkins County bureaucracy, and rich, profit taking gang in South Lansing, banding together to make a better life for themselves by taking from Lansing’s poorest and least represented segment - its non-agricultural rural residents. A segment which seems to have no place in this or any Ag plan, or in Cornell’s future plans for Lansing. When you look at it this way, isn’t this Plan just that old, old sin with a fresh coat of paint? The 'Greater Good' has become a tool of oppression and discrimination. Maybe, this millennium, we can put a stop to it.

But, if our district is destined, or to put it more accurately, pre-destined to become a Right to Farm Ag District, we should take advantage of the very profitable opportunities.

Renting landowners - there are more profitable Ag District scenarios than catching the crumbs from the agricultural feast.  With 7,427 farmed acres rented from landowners - by incorporating as an Ag Corp, we would have the leverage to demand much higher rental fees. By banding together to grow and sell feed - we could actually get a seat at the table. And, if we formed our own dairy farm, we could sit at its head. It would still be Agriculture - but the windfall profits would go in our pockets, not someone else's.

'Non-Farming' residents - I propose that the non-farming rural residents band together to form their own Ag corporations. How about a corporation to promote the inclusion of CAFOs in suburban and urban areas? All these 'farms of the future' would need is room for a big shed stuffed with cows [or hogs] - the feed can be trucked in and the waste products stored locally in aromatic lagoons - to be spread on the local parks, playing fields and lawns for additional profit. And because its government sponsored, there would be a host of special perks and tax write-offs for the participants. It’s a sure fire money-maker, as you can see from the big profit-taking and big government forces lined up in favor of Ag growth, and there’s no bigger partner in profit than our government - they would even help us with the paperwork.. The start-up would be fun, and the costs could be very low - just a tank of liquid manure, a bunch of old vehicles and signs.

Can’t you see a promotional fleet of corporately owned [spelled 'tax break'] pickup trucks and trailers, glistening with this precious brown nutrient, parked all over South Lansing and Downtown Ithaca, winding their way through the ivory towered lanes of Cornell, and clustered around our County buildings like flies around . . nutrient. We’ll show our thanks to the community for their support and give back by showing up en-mass at parks and sporting events, and we’ll pack the town hall parking lot and the new Lansing Center as well.

Influential Ithaca demands a special treatment, and should be saturated with our moving and stationary displays. What attention grabbers! And what posh downtown Ithaca restaurant wouldn’t be better for a pungent reminder to their patrons of the Ag district where their locally grown vegetables, dairy products and meat come from. The possibilities are endless, and this is only one of many ways to integrate agriculture back into the community. (The advertising campaign would of course, along with the parking fees, be written off as a corporate expense.)

This is not a joke, it’s a serious idea. If this Ag Plan passes, let’s start our own Ag corporations and make our own plans. We have the skills, and we have the motivation - let’s do it. In a couple of years, we’ll all be sitting back with money in our pockets, laughing. Aren’t you tired of being pushed around by bullshit bureaucrats, moneyed manipulators, and the Big Red Bully on the hill. So, don’t blame the system - game the system! We’re all in this together, and it’s deep shit.

Power to the people!

Doug Baird
Lansing, NY

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