Home grown BY BOB ROZYCKI

Home grown
BY BOB ROZYCKI

Rolling along Pulaski Highway, Pine Island is surrounded by an ocean of rich, dark black earth.

The ultraplush soil that once was the bottom of a large glacial lake pulls you in with each step if you dare venture out into a field on a late winter day.

At the Rogowski Farm, a red-tailed hawk skims silently just feet above the fields looking for prey.

But the bucolic, serene setting doesn’t translate into dollars for those in the agriculture industry. It might for retiring farmers who had dairies, orchards or hay fields who are now choosing to sell to developers who will be “growing” houses instead.

But that’s not the case for the muck farmers, whose land is not eligible for purchase and development rights like their upland brethren. The black soil is protected in New York state and can never be built upon.

For Cheryl Rogowski and the other lowland farmers, they have to survive on the money they make from what they grow and sell.

And in order to do that, they have had to adapt their crops from a monoagriculture mindset that was steeped in the history of the region to diversified multicrop farms that can draw the raw material for epicurean delights from the ground all year long using simple techniques.

And with the forward thinking of Rogowski, the homegrown farmer, philosopher, advocate and activist, agriculture has a chance to continue and expand.

Perhaps her biggest hurdle is to get the consumer to think local when it comes to food.

ECONOMIC PRODUCER

“People will pay tons and tons of money to have their lawns manicured, to have a beautiful home.” But when it comes to feeding their families, “they want cheap food,” she said.

“You’re literally voting with your fork where you choose to put your food dollars.”

The small, family farmers are holding their own, Rogowski said. With so much of farming tied to the oil industry from fuel for the equipment to the plastic tubing and covering used in greenhouses, operating costs are always on the rise.

“When you go past the gas station and it’s three cents higher than yesterday and it happens day after day after day, and when you look at a huge component of farm life, which is fuel (including) plastics that come from oil ... then you see that farm life, as it is in so many of our lives, is driven by one industry. And without alternative sources that make sense to help contain or constrain the cost, it’s a challenge.”

An additional challenge is finding skilled workers as landscapers are now dipping into the same labor pool as farmers and driving labor costs up.

Agriculture is still the leading industry in New York, Rogowski said, closely vying with tourism.

“We have a tremendous Ag and markets program,” she said, but “there’s always more that can be done. The leadership focus drives what the market can and is able to do. The governor, commissioner of agriculture, they bring their strengths and directions. It’s a tough climate economically.”

What’s important to remember, she said, is that the farmers of the Hudson Valley are important to the local economy.

“Since we are a local industry and a local economy and we are literally and figuratively tied to the land, the money stays here. And it drives the local economy engine. Whether it’s the local people we hire, the local businesses that we get our supplies from … they in turn keep that money here. This part of New York is different from the rest of the state, geographically, geologically; we have a huge population base in our backyard (New York City) that is vital to the survival of this area. And some people say a drain on this area.”

She said the challenge from the state Agriculture Department is to meet all the needs of these diverse communities and diverse farmers; from the conventional and organic farmers to the and new midlife and ethnic farmers.

“It’s not just farming; it’s tied to so many industries and aspects of life that can’t be minimized.”

SEEDS PLANTED

Rogowski is passionate about farming. She grew up on the 150-acre farm that her dad, Walter, bought in 1955 and cleared by hand with his brothers using a two-man saw and horse-drawn plows. She learned about harvesting and driving a tractor sitting on the lap of her mom, Lillian, when she was 7 years old. Her dad didn’t think she belonged on a tractor -- not a woman’s place -- until he saw how good she was at it. “Once dad saw how I could perform, I never got off.”

She learned as her dad did in the early 1980s that just raising onions, whose delicate lives were decided by the unpredictable whims of nature, was not the future for their farm.

The ultimate reason came when they started losing crops to what was thought to be a virus in the field. The so-called experts who were called in to investigate could not come up with a solution, so they instead offered the Rogowski family three choices: quit farming, which wasn’t an option; fumigate the soil at a cost of six-plus figures that might not end the problem; or thirdly, diversify.

Diversification proved to be the path to survival in the area that was once the onion-producing capital of the world. Rogowski was princess of the 1983 Onion Harvest Festival.

Walter Rogowski started diversifying the crops around 1982 with the addition of lettuce, tomatoes and peppers.

“Lettuce was a good crop to grow with onions because it doesn’t take a lot of nutrients out of the soil. It gives the ground a rest and it’s a fast crop. Onions are pretty much a one-shot deal. If a disaster happens or if something goes wrong early in springtime, you might have a chance of getting another crop in, but it’s a long-season crop.”

September is the hurricane season, Rogowski said.

“This area is known as the Drowned Lands and nature does not let us forget that.”

In the spring of 2005, the fields were under 5 feet of water. Later in the year, when the remnants of Hurricane Katrina came through, “we were under 3 feet of water.”

Walter Rogowski became involved with green markets after fellow farmers suggested that he join them.

GROWING A NETWORK

Rogowski’s brother, Michael, worked on the farm while she attended Orange County Community College and later Mount St. Mary College where she earned a degree in international studies and Hispanic studies.

He now handles the farmers’ markets they developed in New York City, while their sister, Susan, is involved in the marketing of the farm, the farm store the Warwick Farmers Market that Rogowski co-founded.

“I’m just starting to realize now the voice I had early on, expressing it in different ways … making things better for farmers and workers,” she said.

“External influences have allowed me the courage and the confidence to be a spokeswoman. … It’s a lifetime of experience and love and passion.”

Rogowski has done a lot of outreach into the community. “We were willing to go out and get involved. We helped to bring the visibility that hadn’t been here before.”

She recounted how in 2000, the town of Warwick, which is made up of Florida, Greenwood Lake and the village of Warwick, and also includes Pine Island and four other hamlets, lost all three of its supermarkets.

With a high number of senior citizens living in the town who would walk to get their groceries, Rogowski created a “special senior share of the harvest, specifically geared to senior citizens,” and offered it for $100 a year, which was way below cost.

The $100 enabled a senior to receive 20 weeks of fresh crops and locally made products. “Even bakers developed smaller loafs of bread for the seniors.”

Following a farm tour that was created by Cornell University, she met Kathy Lawrence, the creator of Just Food in New York City, a nonprofit that provided fresh food to low-income residents. That meeting eventually led her to El Puente, a Hispanic community group with whom she and her brother created a community-supported agriculture program.

“Nobody should ever go hungry. We provide amazing food without having to leave the region.”

Her hard work resulted in her being the first farmer to receive the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation award in 2004. The award came with a no-strings-attached $500,000 grant.

“It takes a community to make a MacArthur,” she says modestly.

THE FUTURE

Her latest endeavor is creating a central distribution site for regional farmers’ produce.

The most likely site is the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx. The problem she’s facing is logistical: How to get the items to the market.

To collect all the products is daunting and time-consuming and drives the prices up, she says.

One solution is for the farmers to work together, get one truck and share cost of the truck, she said.

Only 2 percent of produce grown in the Hudson Valley stays in region, she said.

“That’s a big deficit that needs to be met in this region. There’s a lot of small growers that are coming on the scene… looking to farm small acreages, but if you put these small farms together you come up with some tremendous land masses. Managed appropriately, the yields can be tremendous.”

The former Onion Harvest Festival princess says she misses growing all those onions that once held sway over the entire farm.

She now goes to a neighbor’s farm who does grow onions and stands in their barn and just breathes it in.

“When they’re ripe and ready for harvest, and they’re dried and cured they’re so aromatic, it’s unbelievable.”

The very last thing her father said to her before he died was, “Farming is a tough life, but you’re gonna make it, you’re gonna be all right.”