No Farms, No Food: A Visit to Albany

I traveled to Albany last Week to attend No Farms, No Food – a rally and lobby day organized by American Farmland Trust (AFT). Why? Because New York is an important agricultural state – agriculture is our biggest source of revenue – and we are losing farmland at an alarming rate (approximately 9,000 acres per year, or one farm every 3.5 days)!

A few statistics:

• Milk is New York’s biggest crop and the state ranks 3rd in U.S. for dairy milk production.
• New York ranks 6th in U.S. for production of fresh market vegetables. Our biggest crops are cabbage, sweet corn and onions.
• Apples and grapes are the highest value fruit crops in the state.
• 228 million pounds of meat were produced in NY in 2007.
• A variety of field crops are grown (mainly to support the dairy industry), including corn, oats, wheat and soybeans.

Having farms in our own state provides food security as it ensures availability of local food. Local food is fresh, nutritious, bolsters the local economy and is better for the environment.

I took one of the two early morning buses that left from Union Square. The buses were arranged (at no charge to the attendees) by AFT, and they were well organized – the trip even included a breakfast of croissants and Red Orchard juice.  The ride was fairly quiet, with everyone mostly napping, reading or working on laptops. I sat with Choi Wah Wong (who, along with Tonice Sgrignoli, was there from Astoria CSA) and I chatted for a bit with Nadia Johnson who heads both the Food Justice and the City Farms Market Network programs at Just Food. Arriving in Albany, the bus rolled past The Egg, a performing arts center (photo on left, above), before pulling around the corner to the Federal Building (right, above) where we were met by Jen Small, a member of the AFT staff. She welcomed us and then positively whisked us off our feet as we all rushed down a long hallway to our meeting room in a quick blur (we were running late for our first appointment)! After picking up our name badges we found the teams to which we’d been assigned. Each team had a list of scheduled appointments with legislators from their district (we had been split up according to our home districts, thus I was on a team that would meet primarily with Queens officials).

My team, from left: me; Andrew Chmar (from Hudson Highlands Land Trust in Garrison, NY); Melissa Danielle (from Bed-Stuy Farm Share, a CSA in Brooklyn) and Nicole Willis (from New York Farm Bureau in Albany).

We then headed through security (where the only negative aspect of the day occurred when a whistle – a British Bobbie’s whistle which I’d had on my keyring for ages – was confiscated and disposed of by State troopers. Seriously!) and up to our first appointment. The plan was that we would each speak from personal experience. Thus, I spoke about my CSA in Jackson Heights, Farm Spot, and described how the farm that we are partnered with, Golden Earthworm Farm, operates on rented land that is protected under a land preservation trust – without which, it’s likely their farm could not exist.

Since most legislators were in session that day voting on the budget (the budget was due April 1st and we were there on March 30th), many of our appointments entailed meeting with staff members. That was the case with Senator Michael Gianaris’s office, where we  had a conversation about CSAs with staffer Martina and with Assembly Member Barbara Clark’s office, where we spoke with Amanda Lester. Assembly Member Daniel O’Donnell was in his office and we spoke with him about CSAs, access to local food (and cooking and recipes). He mentioned that there are no restaurants in Albany that stay open past 8:30 or 9:00pm, even though many lawmakers regularly work late into the night. Seems like a good opportunity for someone to open a place with good, local eats for legislators to break bread in our capital!! I must add that Assembly Member O’Donnell have a beautifully designed office, with hand-painted multi-colour stripes on the walls and a collection of World’s Fair memorabilia (as a painter, I notice such things).

Then it was back to the Meeting Room for lunch. AFT provided box lunches comprised of NY State farm products. Pictured above (left) is Mixed Grain Salad sourced from Cayuga Pure Organics and Deviled Eggs sourced from Flying Pigs Farm. There were also apples from Migliorelli Farms, Cabot Cheddar (from milk of NY dairy farms), Maple Roasted Root Vegetables (from Paffenroth Farms & Remsberger Maple Farms) BBQ Beef Sandwiches (from Keith Farms & Long Necker Farms) and NY milk and apple cider. During lunch I briefly chatted with a dairy farmer sitting next to me. He told me his farm in Saratoga, which is now managed by two of his sons, has 900 cows and is a member of a milk co-op -which means the milk from his farm is combined with milk from other farms before being bottled. He also sits on the board of a land trust association. I noted that, appropriately enough, he was drinking milk with his lunch.

(clockwise from top left: Reverend Jackson; Richard Ball; David Haight and Josh Morgenthau; Robert Morgenthau)

There was a roster of speakers during lunch, each of whom spoke briefly about their commitment to land preservation. David Haight, the New York Director of AFT introduced everyone. Commissioner Darrel Aubertine; Reverend Robert Ennis Jackson, who spoke about his work with the Brooklyn Rescue Mission; Robert Morgenthau, former Manhattan District Attorney and owner of Fishkill Farms, (which has been in his family for generations and is now run by his son Josh, who was also present) spoke of the importance of where State institutions source their food “…(they) spend millions of dollars on food and we need to focus on where public institutions are buying their food. Whenever possible, support local agriculture.”; and Richard Ball of Schoharie Valley Farms, who spoke of his partnership with Corbin Hill Road Farm and the importance of connecting urban with rural – “(need to continue) connecting the dots between farms – some of which may be only a couple of hours away – and the city.”

After lunch, we headed back upstairs for several more appointments – or we tried to. There was a huge line snaking out from the security checkpoint which we stood in for a solid 30 minutes, causing us to effectively miss our next appointment. (There were many different groups in Albany that day protesting budget cuts, hence the crowds.) We spoke very briefly with a staffer in Senator Charles Fuschillo’s office (he was in session); Assembly Member Nettie Mayersohn cancelled our meeting as she had just announced her resignation after 28 years; and finally we spoke with Assembly Member Francisco Moya, whose district is right next to mine – actually his Queens office is in my neighborhood. He spoke of the “food desert” that exists in his district of Corona, and we spoke of different ways to improve access to local food for his constituent,s such as CSAs and farmer’s markets.

Jen Small bid us farewell, and sent our two busses off with pizza and apple cider for the ride home. (That’s Jen in the blue jacket, above, standing in front of one of our busses, and our very friendly bus driver.) The return trip was much more social than the morning one had been, and I met and chatted with a truly awesome group of people. Michelle Hughes from  New Farmer Development Project; Stephanie Sosinski who is interested in issues of food distribution (and who I ran into this morning at the Jackson Heights Farmer’s Market, where she is currently working); Abby Youngblood, who runs Fresh Food for All at Just Food; Adriana Velez, who works with Brooklyn Food Coalition and blogs here; Ulla Kjarval, whose family has a meat farm upstate and who blogs here; Asantewaa Harris, an advocate for Black farmers and alternative health; Daniel Bowman Simon, an advocate for community/school gardens and Severine von Tscharner Fleming, who I ran into in the hallway between meetings, who is a founder of the Greenhorns, a grassroots organization of young farmers (their buttons are pictured below).

All in all, the day was enlightening. It slightly demystified the legislative process and made government seems a teeny bit more accesible. More importantly, there were approximately 200 of us who had arrived from all parts of New York State – rural farmers, urban farmers, community activists, food activists, environmentalists and just plain old New Yorkers who all shared a common sentiment: preserving New York farmland. Hopefully, our presence and the message we brought about land preservation impacted the awareness and decision making of many legislators in Albany. And not just for this fiscal year, but for the long term – because once land has been developed, it will not be available for farming for a long, long time – if ever.

And as we all know, no farms = no food.

-Written by Sonya Gropman