Archive: Opinions

When we moved to our house in Lansing I told my wife we lived in 'deep country'.  Coming from a farming family she scoffed at me and told me you're not in deep country if you can get cable TV.  But I am a city boy... well, a suburb boy, at least... and to me this was deep country.  It was rural.  It was pastoral.  And then one day I opened the door and took a deep breath and it smelled like... manure. Really strong manure.

I figured the farms were here long before I moved in, and I chose to live in deep country, so the effluvia was just something I would live with.  If I didn't want to smell it I could have moved into a city.  It's not like I didn't know there were farms here before I made the offer on our house.  Besides, when I went back inside I didn't really smell it.

Since then I have heard of new homeowners complaining about the smell or the noise, or the huge, slow farm vehicles slowing traffic.  I've even heard of a road rage incident or two that resulted in damage to farm equipment, though I would have expected a car to be pummeled if it hit one of those huge farm vehicles, city boy that I am.

I don't get this.  Well, I do get it.  Manure smells bad.  People don't like to go slow, especially on rural roads where most people speed most of the time.  But seriously, when you are living or driving or sniffing near farms, what do you expect?  Is it so unreasonable, in a farming community, to expect farmers?

Common sense aside, Lansing is a 'Right To Farm' community.  It even has a 'Right to Farm' law that pretty much states that farmers have the right of way where farming is concerned.  They get to put manure on their fields and drive their vehicles from field to field, and do all the things farmers do.  And the rest of us have to live with that, by law.

In a community that so values its agriculture, why is this such a surprise to some people?  In the nearly 12 years the Lansing Star has been around, I have never heard a Town Board members say they don't want farms in this town.  To the contrary, the boards have consistently done all they can to protect the northern portion of the Town from development that would be detrimental to farms there.

The Lansing government was thrilled when Kingdom Farm was purchased by a farmer.  Some may remember that the previous owners had big plans for subdividing and developing that large parcel as what would have amounted to a village.  Town officials have also been very supportive of farmers looking to sell their development rights to the State, which guarantees that the land will remain for agriculture use in perpetuity.  'Protect our farmland in the north part of town' is Lansing's mantra.

As a city boy I used to believe that fresh meat and vegetables comes in Styrofoam packages covered with cling-wrap in grocery stores.  Ice cream comes in waxy cardboard containers.  And soup comes in cans.  But it turns out that all those things come from farms.   The plants I eat grow in dirt covered with manure, and meat comes from those sanguine animals I pointed out to my children when they were small as we drove by local farms.  It's messy, and kind of stinky, but even my favorite food -- jellybeans -- comes from farms.  I believe jellybean farmers plant the beans, and a vine grows from which they harvest more jellybeans.

So common sense and the law aside, think for a moment before you complain or drive into a combine.  When you are hungry you're going to stay that way unless farmers farm.  Eating is certainly worth a little inconvenience, especially when that inconvenience happens where farms happen to be.  Instead, eat a jellybean.  It will make you happy those farmers do what they do.

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