Local farmers might benefit from a new US Department of Agriculture proposal to cut the sodium and fat in school lunches, Ron Plants at Buffalo TV station WGRZ reports. Linda Muldoon, Director of Food Services for the Hamburg Central School District, says her cafeteria staff has been preparing items like nutritious wraps and serving up vegetables and fruits for some time. They also offer healthier soup options for students in the cafeteria, and they try to partner with local farmers to save money and get children healthier vegatables. The federal government may try to provide an extra six cents per meal for districts which comply with their guidelines, the station reports.
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Tags: farmers, farms, school lunches
A staff report in The Columbia Paper says the U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated Columbia, Greene, Dutchess, and Rensselaer counties in the state as natural disaster areas due to losses caused by a drought that began June 13, 2010 and continues. Columbia is also among 19 counties around the state designated by the USDA last week as natural disaster areas due to losses caused by frost, freezing, high winds, hail, excessive snow, excessive rain and cold temperatures that occurred from February 15 to May 12, 2010. “President Obama and I understand these conditions caused severe damage to a wide variety of crops including fruit and vegetable crops, and we want to help,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a December 20 press release announcing the drought declaration, as reported in The Columbia Paper. “This action will provide help to farmers who suffered significant production losses,” said the secretary. He visited the region earlier this year during the campaign season at the request of Congressman Scott Murphy. All counties listed above were designated natural disaster areas December 17, 2010, making all qualified farm operators in the designated areas eligible for low interest emergency (EM) loans from USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), provided eligibility requirements are met. Local farmers have eight months from the date of the declaration to apply for loans to help cover part of their actual losses. FSA will consider each loan application on its own merits, taking into account the extent of losses, security available and repayment ability. FSA has a variety of programs, in addition to the EM loan program, to help eligible farmers recover from adversity. Interested farmers may contact their local USDA Service Centers for further information on eligibility requirements and application procedures for these and other programs. Additional information is also available online at http://disaster.fsa.usda.gov. The Department of Enviromental Conservation says current drought conditions are normal.
Tags: agriculture, drought, farms, loans
Governor Andrew Cuomo today announced $3.2 million in grants through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) for farmers to save on energy costs. The program provides financial incentives to support 75 percent of the cost of electricity and gas efficiency investments. Farms that are eligible for the grants include: orchards, dairies, vineyards, maple producers, egg and poultry farms, grain, specialty crops, and others. Upgrades covered in the grants include: process improvements, lighting upgrades, and high-efficiency fan, pump, and motor systems, and other measures. Small farms could be eligible for free energy audits to assist in identifying energy efficiency projects. “The state’s agricultural sector helps fuel our economy and put food on our table, and we have a plan to make New York farms even more competitive,” Governor Cuomo said. “These grants will improve the energy efficiency of farming operations and lower costs for farmers. This not only protects farming jobs, it creates green jobs for the people making the improvements.” Past NYSERDA programs demonstrate that a typical dairy farm can save 20 to 30 percent of its energy bill with cost-effective energy efficiency improvements at an average seven-year payback. The Agriculture Energy Efficiency Program can provide a typical dairy farm with $2,700 to $4,000 per year in savings from a farm investment of $4,800 to $7,000. For more information about the Agriculture Energy Efficiency program, visit www.nyserda.org/programs/agriculture, or call 1-800-732-1399.
Tags: agriculture, Andrew Cuomo, energy, farms, grants
Gene Logsdon in The Atlantic reports that there may be a glimmer of hope for struggling dairy farmers, not in the milk they can’t get much for, but from the other thing livestock produce in abundance:
“The main reason that manure is suddenly seen as a science is that chemical fertilizer prices are on the rise. The price of a specialty fertilizer like ammonium polyphosphate is nearly $1,000 a ton as I write. Deposits of potash in Canada, which we have long relied on for potassium fertilizer, are dwindling, and there is no other known supply as readily available. It has taken us about 100 years to reduce soil organic matter to dangerously low levels—from about 5 percent, on average, to below 2 percent—and experts say it might take at least that long to build them back up again using organic methods on a large scale. Getting all the manure and other organic wastes needed to maintain yields high enough to support rising populations without a full complement of commercial fertilizers would be an enormous challenge requiring new agricultural and cultural attitudes…. The laugh of the day now is that maybe manure will become more pricey than food—that the confinement operations will become, in fact and not in jest, manure factories that just happen to produce meat, milk, or eggs as by-products. “
Tags: agriculture, farms, manure
Photo from CLC taken Nov. 30, 2010 at land being protected by William and Deborah Cohan in Ancram.
Photo from CLC taken Dec. 9, 2010 of Joe and Diane Haley's protected land.
Tags: agriculture, Columbia Land Conservancy, development, farms, Hawthorne Valley, wetlands
As a reminder of our region’s continuing rural nature, the Register-Star has a story today about how firefighters from three agencies worked to drown a silo fire on County Route 10 in Taghkanic with thousands of gallons of water Thursday morning, which was apparently caused by spontaneous combustion. It turns out silage can be spontaneously ignited when the bacteria responsible for fermentation produces too much heat and there is a low moisture level in the silage… as happens in extreme cold. Although there was no damage to the silo, local firefighters are on the lookout for flare-ups over the coming months… turns out this was at least the third time this particular silo has caught on fire this year.
Tags: farms, rural nature, silage, silos, spontaneous combustion
On The Air
WGXC is on 90.7-FM now, at full-power, 3300 watts. We cover all parts of Greene County except parts of the mountaintop, and all of Columbia County except for a bit of Western Columbia County south of Germantown. WGXC also covers a large part of southern Albany County. We have heard reports that the signal is getting from Delaware County to Great Barrington, from Selkirk to Saugerties, from Pine Plains to the I-90 extension.
Local weather/webcams
National Weather Service, Albany
Hawthorne Valley Farm Weather Page
When the computer is turned on, the Hawthorne Valley Farm Weather Page reports weather information in Harlemville. Check dates and times to see whether reports are live or from when the computer was turned off.
Greene County webcams:
Catskill webcam: Thomas Cole House Claude Mirror
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