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They were called family farms for a reason. They were to sustain your immediate family. They weren't built to have employees outside of the family. You sustained yourself and sold whatever you didn't need.
Farming in NYS has been "commercial" for a long time, especially on the good agricultural lands. "Family" farms referred to the kind of ownership, not the type of agriculture. What you are calling "family farming" was really subsistence agriculture and was much more representative of farming in southern Ohio and Indiana, and the Appalachians than in much of New York by the mid 1800s.
The Erie Canal enabled farmers on the broad lake plains along the canal route to ship their wheat and other grains to the eastern ports. This area was the "breadbasket of the nation" in the 1830s. As better land for wheat and corn were opened further west, New York turned to other crops and to dairying.
Dairying has been an "industry" in New York for well over 150 years, too. Where do you think all those millions of New Yorkers living in NYC, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, et al in 1900 got their milk, butter and eggs? They did NOT keep a dairy cow tethered in their back lot or "urban chickens" in a coop. There were cheese factories and dairy processing plants throughout New York in the 19th century.
The same with fruits and vegetables. Farmers in southern Erie and Chautauqua Counties were raising commercial crops for canneries with gangs of migrant farm laborers before WW I. My grandparents worked in those fields when they first came to the US from Italy and finally saved up enough money to buy their own farm when my grandfather went to work in a factory during WW I. My grandfather raised Concord grapes to sell to the grape cooperative which later became Welch's.
That New York continues to produce large amounts of diverse agricultural products isn't the issue. The issue is that agriculture doesn't support local Upstate economies the way it used to. I grew up on a farm in Cattaraugus County. We raised truck crops and beef cattle. If you lived in the country back then, you usually were a farmer of some type, mostly dairy but not always. That was how you earned a living, and if you were a successful farmer, you had a "hired man" or two to help you or maybe your son or son-in-law worked in a partnership with you. All those people who farmed and the people they hired and the veternarians who tended their cows and the tractor dealers who sold them equipment and the local Agway owner who sold them feed or baling twine --they're all gone. You have maybe 5 or 6 working farms in an entire town now and sometimes less, and they don't hire many people because they've got equipment that enables 2 or 3 people to do the work that 6 or 8 used to do.
It's a lot like what's happened in industry when productivity increased to the point where 1 person can produce as much as 8 used to do.
Yet, somehow most farms are working out just fine. Are they millionaires? Probably not. There are even more people who are starting farms. They're not usually startin out with 100+ acres. Often times it's far smaller and they are selling at farmer's markets and on their farm. Plenty of that around my area. May not be like that throughout the whole state, but it's working just fine in Ontario County.
There are several tractor/farm equipment companies in the FLX. There are also Agway's and feed & seeds. Not to mention Tractor Supply and Country Max's all over the place. Not quite the same, but again they supply farmers not IT workers.
That New York continues to produce large amounts of diverse agricultural products isn't the issue. The issue is that agriculture doesn't support local Upstate economies the way it used to. I grew up on a farm in Cattaraugus County. We raised truck crops and beef cattle. If you lived in the country back then, you usually were a farmer of some type, mostly dairy but not always. That was how you earned a living, and if you were a successful farmer, you had a "hired man" or two to help you or maybe your son or son-in-law worked in a partnership with you. All those people who farmed and the people they hired and the veternarians who tended their cows and the tractor dealers who sold them equipment and the local Agway owner who sold them feed or baling twine --they're all gone. You have maybe 5 or 6 working farms in an entire town now and sometimes less, and they don't hire many people because they've got equipment that enables 2 or 3 people to do the work that 6 or 8 used to do
Even just reading about the old days gives me goosebumps. Change Cattaraugus to Herkimer County and I coulda typed that.
I been in NY Dairy all my life from cradle til about a half hour from now. Even having watched it all I can't believe how much its changed. Tractors thunder across NY that 30 years ago would have startled people in Kanasas. To be fair I'm an Eastern NY bumpkin and small farms stayed normal there for years. Even back then Canastota and Cazenovia were famous for selling huge Midwestern style toys,errrr TOOLS sorry, and of coarse the farm show in Syracuse had all the big stuff. We'd joke how that planter could do it down and back and stuff.
SIGH!!!! Its not right or wrong its just the way it is. Working on the town end pays better anyway and the hours are better.
Even just reading about the old days gives me goosebumps. Change Cattaraugus to Herkimer County and I coulda typed that.
I been in NY Dairy all my life from cradle til about a half hour from now. Even having watched it all I can't believe how much its changed. Tractors thunder across NY that 30 years ago would have startled people in Kanasas. To be fair I'm an Eastern NY bumpkin and small farms stayed normal there for years. Even back then Canastota and Cazenovia were famous for selling huge Midwestern style toys,errrr TOOLS sorry, and of coarse the farm show in Syracuse had all the big stuff. We'd joke how that planter could do it down and back and stuff.
SIGH!!!! Its not right or wrong its just the way it is. Working on the town end pays better anyway and the hours are better.
Sad but true. A lot of older farmers, guys who have been successful and own alot of the land they work outright as well as equipment, end up just selling out when they're ready to retire because their kids don't want to farm because they can make more money working off the farm.
I think that the analysis you cited is only part of the issue. Splitting up the state would undoubtedly have some unintended consequences.
For example: Upstate NY's economy was once based largely on manufacturing and agriculture, and both sectors have severely declined, and upstate has not found replacements. That makes the Upstate economy very vulnerable because there's much less diversification.
One of the biggest contributors to upstate economies are now colleges and universities, especially the SUNY colleges located in small cities and towns like Alfred, Ithaca, Cortland, Potsdam, Fredonia, etc. because a college employs hundreds or thousands of people from janitors and maintenance people to librarians to office personnel to administrators in addition to faculty. In turn, college faculty and staff, especially in these smaller areas, tend to have better salaries and benefits than most workers. They also tend to support the cultural life of the city/town more than do blue-collar or agricultural workers.
NYC area students make up a significant percentage of the student bodies at most SUNY colleges, and even a majority at some. If the state split in two, there would be no more in-state tuition for NYC area students attending Upstate schools. Without all those NYC area students, some upstate SUNY campuses would close, and the rest would severely contract, costing tens of thousands of jobs across Upstate. That would have a devastating impact on local economies of college towns like Cobleskill, Geneseo, and Oneonta because there would be nothing to replace those lost jobs.
Many fewer Upstaters attend SUNY schools downstate, and the NYC metro's economy is prospering, even booming in some sectors, so the loss of SUNY students and schools would have much less impact Downstate than Upstate. In fact, it would probably result in NYC metro public colleges expanding.
A lot of NYC area people attend private colleges upstate, Cornell University, Syracuse University, Wells College, Ithaca College, etc. But basically your point stands, universities are major employers upstate.
Dairying is the main agricultural pursuit in most of Upstate NY, and farmers are quitting dairying in droves primarily because most farmers can't sell their milk for what it costs to produce it. Older farmers who have little debt can probably get by but even then, they struggle and frequently quit the business. Very few younger farmers are coming on board. The only dairymen who can clear a profit are those who produce organic milk, which is only feasible if there's lots of cheap land available to either buy or rent because you need lots of pasture for your cows and much more cropland because yields are lower without chemical herbicides and fertilizers. I rent my cropland to one for almost nothing.
Where there used to be 8 or 10 good-sized dairy farms in a town, there's now 1 or maybe 2, leaving lots of empty barns and fallow fields. That the existing farms are larger and have more sales doesn't change the fact that they provide livelihoods for many fewer people.
Most of the fruit, grape, and truck farmers in New York are struggling, caught between competition from other parts of the country and foreign countries, high gas and fertilizer costs, and a diminishing labor supply because of the problems with immigration.
This is true of rural areas all across America. Technological advances have made it possible for far fewer people to produce even more food.
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