Farmer’s say ‘no’
County office to buy the farm"



NEW SCOTLAND — At a public hearing last week, farmers said ‘No’ to closing a federal farm service office in Albany County.

The Albany County Farm Service Agency’s office in New Scotland at the William Rice Center is one of eight sites in the state slated to merge with a neighboring county.

The FSA pays $55,800 in rent, utilities, travel expenses, and temporary staffing for the Albany office, said Mark Dennis, executive officer of the FSA. The figure does not include the salaries of full-time employees.

Many farmers and county, village, and town officials attended the hearing. No one spoke in favor of consolidation.

If the state closes the facility, the Albany FSA office will merge with the Schenectady-Schoharie office in Cobleskill.

Brymer Humphreys, the state executive director of the FSA, said he doesn’t have the funding or the resources to staff the state’s FSA offices.
"If the name is Farm Service Agency, what word are we having trouble with"" asked County Legislator Alexander "Sandy" Gordon.

Gordon, a Knox farmer and county legislator, has been a proponent of farmers’ rights. He recently co-sponsored Albany County’s right-to-farm law, which passed unanimously in the county legislature.
Farming, Gordon said, is the largest industry in New York State. "It needs more attention, not less attention," he said.
"Tell Washington, ‘No,’" said William Cooke, the chairman of the Albany County Water Quality Coordinating Committee and a lobbyist.

Cooke is a farmer.
"What you people do will affect farming for the next century," Cooke said. He implored the state FSA members to listen to those in the audience, "not the pencil-pushing bureaucrats in Washington."

Both Gordon and Cooke cited Senator Hillary Clinton’s efforts to stop the closure of governmental offices.

No one at the public hearing was in favor of closing the office, Cooke said to the committee near the hearing’s end.
"Are you listening" What more do we need to do"" Cooke asked.

Many farmers applauded the small staff of the Albany County FSA.
After the hearing, Cooke also praised the office’s three employees. "Everybody is focused on one thing — that farm," Cooke told The Enterprise.

Thomas Della Rocco, the executive director of the Albany County FSA, said the state committee members will have a finalized plan by the end of September.

According to Dennis, the FSA paid $413,000 to 162 farmers in Albany County in 2005. In 2006, the agency paid $625,000 to 153 farmers.

At the Cobleskill office, 222 farmers in Schenectady and Schoharie counties were paid $672,000 in 2005, and 212 were paid $1,208,000 in 2006.

Farmers say ‘No’

At the public hearing last Thursday, farmers wanted the committee to stand up to leaders in Washington D.C.
"I think you should be outraged. I think you should be indignant," said Peter Ten Eyck, who owns Indian Ladder Farms in New Scotland. Farmers, he said, "get things out of pity, not out of respect."

Ten Eyck and his daughter retired their development rights to their property in exchange for payment from the state and private funds raised for that purpose.
"It’s farmland forever," Ten Eyck said. He and his daughter, he said, have tried to close the gap between agriculture and the consumer.

Many attendees were not convinced with the committee’s justification for closing the office.
"I would be happy to come and volunteer," said Hilder Stanton, an elderly woman whose family’s dairy farm in Coeymans has been in operation since 1873.
"I don’t know what I can do, but I’d be willing to try," she said.

Stanton’s son, Mark Stanton, said he doesn’t approve closing the FSA office in New Scotland.

Stanton is the vice-chairman of the county’s soil and water conservation district board of directors and a Farm Bureau representative.
He called the Albany FSA "our agricultural center of our county" and the "life-blood of the county," where farmers are able to do "one-stop shopping."
The FSA office in Cobleskill is "a good hour away," he said, where there aren’t any John Deere dealers. Mark Stanton said he is proud to be in Albany County, which he called "the dairy capital of New York State."

John Santacrose, also a board member of the Albany County Soil and Water Conservation District’s board of directors, questioned the FSA committee’s process for deciding which sites will close. He questioned whether there was a conflict-of-interest policy. He asked if some committee members recused themselves. The process used by the committee in their decisions should be made public, Santacrose said.

Robert Howland, a state committee member, responded by saying he had experienced the merger of the FSA office in Tioga and Chemung counties in the mid-1990s.
"I know what this process is about," Howland said. Howland was once a farmer and a Tioga County FSA committee member.
"It works. It can work. I’ve lived through it, and it’s not a difficult thing," said Howland.

Farmers were concerned about the distance between their farm and the FSA office in Cobleskill.
"You don’t have to go to the office. You have to communicate with the office," Howland said.
"When Dawn [Latham] goes on maternity leave, what am I going to do"" Humphreys asked a hostile crowd. Latham is one of the Albany office’s staff. If the office closes, a part-time position, held by Margie Renko, will be eliminated.
"Tell Washington we’ve got a problem," Gordon replied.

Near the end of the meeting, Kevin Crosier, Berne’s supervisor and a maple syrup producer, pressured FSA committee members to drive with him to the lookout at John Boyd Thacher State Park, where, Crosier said, they can see farmland being encroached upon.
"They don’t face that in Schoharie County," Crosier said. "We’re facing it in Albany County."

Near the end of the hearing, some farmers, angered and frustrated, walked out, slamming the door behind them.
"We will consider what you’ve said," Humphreys said at the hearing’s conclusion. "This isn’t my favorite topic either, by any means."