OurView Re-growing cities, keeping farms alive

OurView

Re-growing cities, keeping farms alive

Family farming is a business, a tough business.

Long hours, little profit and health care is out of pocket.

Farmers are not viewed as a business like the way most people view a business something that has bricks and mortar and a storefront.

Hudson Valley Business recognizes the significant economic contributions of the agricultural industry. That is why we recently launched “Made in the Hudson Valley,” a feature that will look into the issues affecting the industry as well showcase farmers and their products and unique creations.

We drive by the farms in the spring and see the fields bustling with tractors and tillers.

In the summer, we take in the view of fields of green and we may remark as to how the corn is growing so high this year.

In the fall, the farms are viewed as a place to take the family to coax apples from trees and visit the farm store for pies, pumpkins and doughnuts and cider.

In the winter, however, we only see emptiness, save for the dairies whose cows still mill about the outside, or perhaps those mysterious “tunnels” that keep warm the ground for year-round growing of garlic, kale and other leafy edibles.

In the eyes of developers, however, those open fields are filled with houses.

Urban flight has transformed vast empty fields into a cash crop for farmers retiring and not transferring the land to a young farmer. The money they make from a developer may be the first major profit they have seen in a long time.

That field of corn you drove by last year is now filled with workers putting up houses. You moved away from the urban centers to take in the countryside with all your senses.

What happened? Don’t blame the farmer; blame yourself for not buying local and giving the farmer his and her due. Without the financial support, farmers will pack their bags and that beautiful vista will be but a memory.

The Hudson Valley is known for its beauty as exemplified in the works of the Hudson River School of artists. Frederick Church painted wonderful vistas from his home, Olana, above the Hudson River, and none contained houses. The same goes for Jasper Cropsey and his views of Warwick Valley or Greenwood Lake.

About 25 percent of land in the state, or 7.55 million acres, are used by 35,600 farms, according to figures by the state Department of Agriculture and Markets.

Imagine all that beauty disappearing?

A balance needs to be struck. Not every developer is looking at farmland.

Urban developers are doing a good thing by rehabilitating the interiors of ancient buildings such as Luckey Platt in Poughkeepsie and several buildings in Kingston.

We reported on these pages last week that many of these buildings are in Empire Zones and afford owners breaks on fees and sales tax for material and labor, as well as investment tax credits for manufacturers.

Kingston has a mixed-use overlay for certain sections to allow creation of work-live space for artists and ground-floor retail with residential space on the upper floors.

This type of thinking brings cities back to how they used to be when children would run down to the meat market to pick up chicken for mom’s cacciatore or maybe hit the vegetable and fruit stand for fresh tomatoes and corn and lettuce. And don’t forget the fresh milk and maybe something sweet from the bakery.

The big cities are still like this. In New York City’s SoHo section, former manufacturing buildings now contain offices and/or living space. On street level there are markets, delis, pizzerias, restaurants, bars, assorted shops and green grocers. And want to guess where a lot of that produce for the stands is coming from? Yes, Hudson Valley farmers. Seems odd that they have to go down to Manhattan to sell freshness.

Reviving the river cities by breathing life into the old buildings that still hold such rich architectural underpinnings as huge wood beams, red brick walls, wide-board flooring and adding year-round farmers markets would all combine for a wonderful milieu not duplicated in housing developments on former farmland.