LANDED GENTRY, LANDLESS FARMERS

by Tracy Frisch

Issue 46 (July-August 09)

[Copyright © 2009, The Valley Table]

In the popular imagination, the American farm family owns the land they farm and has deep, multi-generational roots in the community. In various times and places in our nation's history, oppressive institutions like slavery and sharecropping have thrown a wrench in this Jeffersonian ideal, and more recently, new social forms like corporate agriculture and contract farming have begun usurping the role of the family farm as our primary food producer.

Further, of course, all land is not created equal. No one gets rich growing vegetables even on the best ground. Cultivating soil that's rocky or hilly or prone to wetness or drought can leave even an expert agriculturalist vulnerable to loss. Few farmers willingly part with prime farmland, but developers have deep pockets for the level, well-drained farmland. In today's Hudson Valley, non-farming landowners retain much of the limited supply of this precious resource. (Rented land comprises more than half of all agricultural land nationally, in fact).

Thus, in recent years, a new class of "landless farmers" has emerged here and elsewhere--a group that includes educated, idealistic first-generation novices as well as scions of old farming families who didn't inherit land. Whatever their backgrounds, their modestly (or marginally) profitable enterprises alone don't allow them enough capital to purchase good farmland at current real estate prices.

One of these new tenant farmers, David Rowley of Monkshood Nursery, in Stuyvesant, enjoys the luxury of farming excellent, stone-free land. "The stuff grows like nowhere else," he brags of the rich Columbia County loam he tills. The story of his small farm and others like it illustrate the benefits and pitfalls of what it means to be a "landless" farmer today.

For over a decade-and-a-half, Roger and Lorelle Phillips have allowed some or all of their 70 acres of tillable land and pasture in Stuyvesant to function as a de facto agricultural incubator. By any measure, it's been a resounding success: Of the five beginning farmers who have worked their land, four developed thriving operations.

The couple bought a large historic house on several acres overlooking the Hudson River, and soon acquired farmland across Route 9J that had once belonged with the house. At first, the newest of three barns, a steel building, became Roger Phillips' sculpture studio.

Making their land available to farmers who share their environmental values was a no-brainier for the couple. Money has not been the motivation: They charge only modest rent and pay a portion of the utilities, and they also have chipped in on an occasional construction project. They have willingly absorbed minor costs in order to have their land well cared for. "This is totally consistent with my objectives," Roger Phillips says. "We really want to make a difference in the world."

When some of Phillips' good ground became available six years ago, Rowley, a former employee of a 2-acre hydroponic facility, jumped at the chance to rent it. Starting with a single acre, he and his wife Melinda progressed to six, plus several hoop houses for year-round vegetable production and a full-time livelihood.

The landlord/tenant relationship between Phillips and farmers such as Rowley is infused with mutual respect. Marveling at the transformative power of organic farming and intensive rotational grazing on his land, Phillips uses adjectives like "spectacular" and describes the agriculturalists as "scientists."

"You know how hard they work and how smart and knowledgeable they have to be to make it happen," he comments. He also admires farmers for having the "temperament to just roll with it" when adversities strike, like too much rain, or none at all.

The first organic vegetable farmers on Phillips' property-- Willy Denner and Claudia Kenney, of Little Seed Gardens, whose long-term search for good farmland spanned five Hudson Valley counties and a 4,000-mile trek on the Delmarva Peninsula—arrived in 1995. The Bard-educated couple had come to a sobering realization: "We could set ourselves up with our savings or we could buy land and not farm it," Denner states.

So, rather than dreaming about farming while awaiting a suitable place to buy to materialize, they leased farmland from Phillips, who welcomed them and gave them the "total freedom to make it work," according to Denner. They gardened there for seven years and then, with family help, in 2001 bought 50 acres of "farmed-out" cropland at the conflu¬ence of Kinderhook and Stony Kill Creeks and began restoring it.

Despite his belief that farmers are better off with secure property rights, Denner considers renting at the start of his farming career to have been a good decision. Without the pressure of a mortgage, he and his wife could experiment as they shaped the farm and developed markets. By the time they were ready to buy a farm, they could realistically assess their needs and avoid costly mistakes. "It's easy to throw a lot of money into structures and facilities that you don't need," Denner observes. "If you're renting, you just have to deal with the situation you have." (The key drawback of the Phillips property, in fact, has been inadequate water resources-estimates for constructing a large irrigation pond range from $20,000 to $30,000.)

One of the reasons farmers give for moving on from rented property is its uncertain future. The Rowleys have never put in crops like strawberries or other fruit that needs more than one year to produce, for example, and their five-year evergreen lease automatically renews at the end of each year. The lease also contains a fairly standard escape clause: Should the property be sold or inherited, the farmer's tenure is terminated in 12 months. Whether the Phillips children inherit the land and continue to rent it, or "another owner take[s] it over and [is] as delighted with the arrangement as we are," Phillips is reluctant to discuss the potential for a less-desirable outcome.

Initially, bard environmental studies professor Jennifer Phillips (no relation to Roger and Lorelle) was an accidental farmer. Her love affair with grazing animals began when she acquired a few sheep to mow her 2-acre yard. It wasn't long before the promise of a neglected field across the street from her Stuyvesant home beckoned like a magnet. The land she coveted was part of the Phillips farm. She watched its seasonal progression into a colorful mess of late-summer goldenrod, thistle and milkweed that was too rank to nourish livestock. Though a local dairy farmer mowed the meadow on occasion, he showed little inclination to stop its decline.

Imagining the field in grass and clover, Jennifer Phillips borrowed an old Farmall tractor from Phillips one fall and mowed 6 acres, then pastured her tiny flock there the following spring. "Mowing made it instantly beautiful," she recalls. Every year she brought back more land. By 2008, her sixth year on the Stuyvesant farm, she was managing 70 sheep and 18 beef cattle and dairy heifers on 35 acres of pasture.

Jennifer Phillips suspects that if the field across from her house hadn't been available, she never would had tried her hand at farming, now the "greatest source of contentment" in her life. Though she spent about $7,000 for permanent fencing, for example, her annual rent was a lamb. "Having an opportunity to learn the ropes and grow my business without having to pay a mortgage was essential to getting me going," she says. "I'm very thankful."

Indeed, though her commitment to farming deepened, Phillips realized that purchasing a farm would be impossibly expensive, and she had other constraints, as well: She needed to be close to Bard for her job, and she needed affordable housing within a mile of the farm so she could tend to lambing and calving. After two years of looking, she approached Diane O'Neal, a landowner in Clermont who had been one of her graduate students. She rented a house from O'Neal and additionally signed a nine-year lease for 87 acres and a barn.

This past winter, Phillips rented out her Stuyvesant house and moved her household, red Devon cattle, Icelandic sheep, tractor and other farm equipment to Clermont, where she has reestablished Gansvoort Farm. To set up her new farm operation, she made a hefty investment in permanent fencing and a watering system. (Under the terms of her agreement, O'Neal owns these improvements; they serve as advance rental payment for the duration of the lease agreement.)

Like the Phillips family to the north, O'Neal and her late husband didn't have much grasp of agriculture when they bought their Clermont farm in 1986--they were New Yorkers looking for a weekend getaway, and the region's agricultural ambiance attracted them to the area at a time when a house on a lot in the Hamptons cost as much as a 200-acre Hudson Valley farm.

After the death of her husband in 2001, O'Neal moved to Clermont as a permanent resident and doubled her landholdings to almost 350 acres. Most is very good agricultural land that is currently being farmed--there's even a defunct farmstand on Route 9 that could be resurrected some day. Until very recently, however, non-agricultural development of at least some of the property seemed imperative "because I couldn't imagine anything else," O'Neal admits.

But now, O'Neal's reading of trends puts her "on the cusp of change." Lately, she has embraced sustainable agriculture as a realistic vision for her land within the next five to ten years.

O'Neal says she is inclined to rent to farmers who are responsive to her stewardship concerns, such as soil erosion, sedimentation of a pond and the use of toxic pesticides like the weed killer atrazine (a suspected carcinogen outlawed in parts of Europe)--and for the first time she has been able to choose from among several farmers vying for the use of her land. "It used to be that you were lucky to find anyone to farm your land," she observes, adding that under those circumstances the farmer could call the shots.

O'Neal also contends that assessors are getting tougher on landowners who claim an agricultural exemption. This year, the Clermont assessor required landowners to provide much more extensive documentation; simply having a fallow field bush hogged is no longer considered sufficient to qualify for this property tax break.

Peter reiss uses words like "commitment" freely when he describes his life-long, mutually beneficial relationship with Hugh Williams and Hanna Bail, the biodynamic farmers who run Threshold Farm on his land in Claverack. "Think of it as an additional marriage," Reiss declares.

In 1993, Williams, a biodynamic orchardist, signed his first lease with Reiss's late father, who had a strong desire to have a working biodynamic farm on his property. A few years ago, Peter Reiss entered into a 45-year land lease with the farm couple. "It's very important for them to have a long-term lease so they are comfortable investing in it," he says. Fruit trees might take seven years to reach full production and continue bearing for decades; building soil and healing the ecosystem on a piece of land takes a lifetime. Reiss, a retired airline pilot turned aviation security consultant, believes that local farmland and farming are an integral part of our nation's critical infrastructure.

He stresses the value of trust in his dealings with the two resident farmers. "Just like my aircrew and I had the same objective--getting the passengers from point A to point B," he says, "it's the same between us and [Hugh and Hannah]: It's a team effort."

While hands-off in terms of management, Reiss readily puts available resources in the service of the farm because improvements that enhance the farm also enhance the property. "Anything on the property that's usable is a savings for Hugh," he stresses. Reiss bought materials to build the barn, for example; Williams provided the crew. They split the cost of a pond fifty-fifty.

"Farming is very, very expensive if you have to buy land and pay taxes," Reiss says. "Cooperative effort makes it possible." Williams and Bail pay no rent. Instead, Reiss receives shares of fruit, vegetables and meat.

Land constraints are the stumbling block for Common Ground Farm. With only five acres under cultivation, the eight-year-old Wappingers Falls CSA squeezes out a phenomenal 200 shares of vegetables for its shareholders.

Common Ground, which was founded not by a farmer but by people who wanted fresh produce, always has relied on land at the Stony Kill Farm Environmental Education Center, owned by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. (In the 1940s, Stony Kill was gifted to the state by the historic Verplanck family, with the stipulation that it be used agriculturally. For a couple of decades, it served as a student practice farm for the state college at Farmingdale. To honor the donors' deed, the center maintains a small livestock farm and offers community garden plots.)

Another long-term problem has been to find affordable housing for its farmers in the high-cost area of Dutchess County. "Farming is not just a job, it's a whole lifestyle--and commuting just isn't a part of that," explains Lisa Jessup, Common Ground's half-time coordinator.

A few years ago, Common Ground Farm found a benefactor. An heir to a nearby southern Dutchess County estate, Alex Reese has been the primary advocate for keeping his family's 200-acre farm in agriculture. Initially though, he had wondered whether it made sense if there were no one to farm it. Crossing paths with Lisa Jessup of Common Ground solved that problem. Reese said he loves the CSA model.

Since 2007, Reese, who has worked in investment banking and real estate, has provided free accommodations to the two Common Ground farmers in one of his family's houses. He is also determined to find a way for the CSA to relocate to Obercreek, as his family's land is called. Jessup characterized it as "great land" and said "it has never been chemically farmed." This year, Common Ground will cultivate a token parcel.

The land, which has been in the family for over 150 years, was operated as a dairy farm when Alex Reese's grandparents owned it. In the early 1960s, his father, a law professor, decided to sell the cows, and a local farmer, who still works the land, specializing in beef cattle and sweet corn, began farming its fields. Obercreek was passed on to Alex Reese and his three siblings after the death of their mother, Franny Reese (a founder of Scenic Hudson, the non-profit group that cut its teeth fighting the Storm King pump storage plant) in 2003. Alex Reese, who had been living "down the road," sold his own house and moved into the historic main house, which he acquired with 40 acres from his siblings.

Reese has been trying to craft a vision that will satisfy all the stakeholders--including his siblings and the town, as well as the CSA, which he wants to make the centerpiece. He says the solution must provide sufficient return to his siblings, who "may be looking at the land as a different kind of asset" than he is. The approach he has been pursuing involves developing a portion of the land and putting a permanent conservation easement on the rest, though he is open to other options. The moratorium Town of Wappingers has placed on construction of new subdivisions, imposed while it updates the town master plan, will soon expire.

Describing himself as "naïve," Reese stresses, "I want to do the best I can, given that there are different stakeholders whose views don't necessarily align." Reese hopes to hold a charette in June.

The financial events of the past year have only strengthened his belief in the enduring value of agriculture. "You really have to look past the boom or bust cycle," he says.

Dairyman jeff sills farms far more land--400 acres for his 100 milk cows--than the other farmers considered in this article, and he has managed well without owning any of it. Half the tillable land he uses comes with his rented home farm. He also grows hay and crops on another four or five properties he rents within about a 4-mile radius.

The son of a Connecticut tenant dairy farmer, Sills briefly owned his own farm, but with a mere 30-acre home base, it was too far from rented cropland to be practical. Before that, Sills had taken over his father’s situation after he retired. He had to leave when a New Yorker who did not want a dairy purchased the farm.

Since 1984, Sills has been renting from the same landowner in Hillsdale. He moved to a larger farm with better facilities about 16 years ago. His Long Island landlord owns three of the town's four remaining dairy farms. (Sills estimates that the town had 20 dairies when he first came.) With a deal founded on trust and sealed with a handshake, theirs has been a smooth relationship. Early on they had a couple of three-year leases, but since 1990 he and his landlord have relied on an unspoken understanding about their roles. Sills says, "We have never discussed it at all." The landlord maintains the buildings (when heavy snow caused the shop roof to collapse, he replaced it). Last year, he put in drainage tile in some land so Sills could expand a field.

Sills has standard five-year written leases for the other land he farms that, he says, protects your investment in your crops. (Under New York State agricultural law, once you have planted a crop, you can harvest it. This provision doesn't apply to multiple year harvests for perennial crops like alfalfa.) A lease also is a prerequisite for the landowner getting an agricultural exemption and thus reducing property taxes.

On the question of land ownership, Sills is philosophical. "There would probably be an advantage in owning a home base, but I don't think it's feasible--land values in the Mid-Hudson Valley are too high." He acknowledges that farmers who own their farms can pass them on to their children (at this point his do not intend to farm) or sell them for their retirement. But for Sills, not having to buy his own farm and pay the capital cost of farm buildings may have been an advantage. It's allowed me to invest in cows and machinery," he says. "It's hard to pay for land and cows and machinery at the same time."

Some landowners would be thrilled to have a seasoned farmer like Sills working their land, but they lack appropriate soils, facilities, or perhaps the financial wherewithal. Take Doreen O'Connor, for example, who, with her two siblings, nieces and nephews, inherited more than 375 acres of farm and forestland in the Dutchess County town of Beekman from their 93-year-old father, a gentleman farmer. Soon they had to deal with crippling jumps in property and school taxes that came with the town-wide revaluation in 2007.

The O'Connor family cannot afford to rent the estate's 101-acre farm below the cost of taxes, even though the $10,000 annual tax bill puts the rent significantly above the going rate. Nor can they easily make improvements that won't be recouped. Yet keeping its agricultural use is essential for retaining their tax status, and they genuinely want it to be farmed in a meaningful way.

Often, landowners like O'Connor find themselves in similar situations--everything checks out but they have no idea where or how to begin to find a farmer, design a farm or implement sustainable practices. The Glynwood Center, in Cold Spring, runs several programs designed to promote sustainable agriculture, identify markets and help communities develop programs to support farming and conserve farmland. Through a Glynwood pilot project, O'Connor met over the course of a year with seven other landowners in a learning group. While the problems of being land rich and cash poor haven't vanished, O'Connor developed a more realistic view of her family's goals and options.

Kathy Ruhf co-directs Land For Good, a New England organization that assists farmers with land access. She offered this rule of thumb: "The more secure the tenure, the better it is for the farmer and the landowner."

Ruhf has faith that with proper care and technical assistance, landowners and tenants can negotiate mutually satisfying agreements. "A lease is a living document that can be changed to meet both parties' needs, as the relationship and circumstances evolve," she stresses.

Columbia Land Conservancy and Hawthorne Valley Farm also are developing a "matching service" for landowners and farmers. Facilitating relationships between the two parties will be essential, says Hawthorne Valley's Rachel Schneider. "People don't get married after the first time they see each other," she quips.

The trick is to find someone you can have a relationship with. Big differences in life experiences can manifest as a clash of cultures and divergent expectations. Sometimes it's a matter of educating landowners about the messy realities of farming. Do the farmer and the landowner have compatible senses of aesthetics? How is their chemistry? Some issues can be worked through; others cannot.

There's a lot of give-and-take and, after a while, it begins to sound like a marriage, only better: It's a win-win-win situation for the communities, the landowners and the farmers.

COMMODITY OR PUBLIC RESOURCE?

Two Hudson Valley farms are leading the way in changing how agricultural land is treated--as a public resource rather than as a commodity that gets sold to the highest bidder.

Hearty Roots Community Farm serves 440 households without owning land, or even a greenhouse. Though the current farmers have amassed five tractors and a large box truck, they produce vegetables and fruits on 30 leased acres spread over two farms. They own no land and lack long-term security; they borrow greenhouse space from a not-for-profit. "Everything we own has wheels!" observes Miriam Latzer, who runs the Red Hook farm with co-farmer Benjamin Shute.

Hearty Roots was founded by Brianna Davis just six years ago with about 25 members on less than an acre of land at a former dairy farm. As it has scaled up, Hearty Roots retained access to five acres on that property. According to Latzer, though, it is much better suited to cows than vegetables. Finding their melon crop underwater has been among the consequences of stretching the limits of the land.

Eventually, Hearty Roots added 25 acres at Greig Farm, which has superb soils. Though it's only in year three of a five-year lease, the community farm is faced with a waiting list of members at its six sites in Brooklyn and Dutchess and Ulster Counties and has no room to expand. "Every year we've doubled in size," Latzer explains, "but this year we've had to limit growth to 30 percent because we're using every square foot we have."

Uncertainty about where Hearty Roots will end up has not stopped Latzer, already an experienced farmer when she joined the farm, from becoming active in the local community. She serves on two town committees concerned with farming and open space preservation.

A key Red Hook ally in Hearty Roots' quest for a permanent home is Pete Hubbell, who provides Real Estate appraisal services for land conservation. Of special concern to him is the inflated price of land that has already been protected for agriculture through the purchase of development rights. (While land with a conservation easement cannot be developed, an owner can opt to keep it idle or farm it for looks rather than productivity. In the Hudson Valley, such land tends to sell for its open space value--far more than a working farmer can afford.) "Given the proximity to New York City, there will always be high-income folks who can outbid farmers," Hubbell says. In Vermont, applying an additional level of protection to land to maintain it solely for agricultural use has worked quite well, and has led to an active market for this land, according to Hubbell. He and Latzer are slowly building support for this idea in Red Hook.

One of the largest Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms in the Northeast, Roxbury Farm currently supplies over a thousand households with organic produce in the Hudson River bioregion from Manhattan to Albany and Schenectady.

When the farm lost its lease a decade ago, Roxbury collaborated with the late Chuck Matthei and his not-for-profit organization Equity Trust to set aside land specifically for growing food using sustainable practices. Matthei first implemented this novel arrangement with another CSA farm in California.

After Roxbury located suitable acreage in Kinderhook, Equity Trust bought the 150-acre parcel and began renting it to the farm. It also sold the development rights to the Open Space Institute. Those actions alone did not complete the deal. As Jody Bolluyt (who runs the Columbia County farm with her husband Jean-Paul Courtens) notes, "Buying development rights for conservation doesn't protect the land for agriculture. It still doesn't make it affordable." So Roxbury Farm embarked on a successful three-year campaign to raise about $400,000 in tax-deductible donations from its CSA members and other supporters. That sum enabled Equity Trust to retire other non-agricultural interests in the land by, in effect, paying for them.

In this context, those "other interests" are the bundle of rights that make the land worth more than a farmer can afford to pay after development rights have been forfeited. They include the difference between the property's worth as working farmland and the amount that potential second-home buyers would be willing to pay for it as open space that could be used purely for pleasure.

Under their 99-year lease, Courtens and Bolluyt can pass on their farm business to their children. They also have the right to choose their successor should they move or retire, since finding an appropriate successor is the only way that they could ever sell their business and recoup their investment in all their improvements: In the past decade, they have put up a couple of barns (one with an apartment), a mobile home, a greenhouse and extensive fencing. While they do not own the land they work, they do own all the improvements. (Equity Trust has the right of first refusal on the farm's improvements.)

Their biggest investment, though, is the existing farmhouse. First Pioneer Farm Credit appraised the house and provided information on what comparable homes were worth in a less-developed agricultural region in western New York. Bolluyt and Courtens were able to buy the house at a price affordable by a farmer and they can sell it only at such a price.

WORKSHOPS TO WORK IT OUT

The Glynwood Center, the Putnam County nonprofit whose stated aim is "to help communities in the Northeast save farming," is synthesizing what it has learned from working with landowners into a new educational program called Grow Farming. The Glynwood effort strives to prepare landowners to enter into an effective long-term relationship with a farmer to bring their land back into productivity. "It's important for each landowner to gain an understanding of their land, its soil, topography and ecology, and what it's good to grow," explains Glynwood President Judith LaBelle. She says some of the participating landowners even had the Farmscape Ecology Program at Hawthorne Valley Farm conduct an ecological assessment on their farms.

Landowners in the learning group also explored different lease arrangements and worked on coming to terms with crucial issues in advance of negotiations with a farmer. For example, they clarified their desires for their land and considered how much authority they would be willing to delegate to a farmer.

Another part of the puzzle involves connecting landless and land-poor farmers with non-farming landowners seeking a farmer. In February of this year, the Columbia Land Conservancy and Hawthorne Valley Farm joined Glynwood in putting on a day-long workshop entitled Landings to help jumpstart the process. The organizers had planned for an intimate workshop for 15 landowners and 15 farmers, but the gathering swelled to twice that size and still couldn't accommodate everyone who wanted to participate.

Columbia Land Conservancy co-sponsored the workshop because supporting agriculture has become a top priority in its quest to protect open space, according to executive director Peter Paden. Based on his interpretations of the latest trends--such as the increasing demand for local foods--Paden expressed optimism about the role that the new wave of landless farmers will play in regenerating agriculture. He considers the pros¬pect of a renewed and viable farming sector as "a brilliant and cost-effective means to accomplish conservation."

Rachel Schneider, of Hawthorne Valley Farm, foresees additional workshops as a means of maximizing interactions among as many interested landowners and farmers as possible. People are very eager to meet one another, she observes, adding, "We actually thought about speed dating."