County officials tackle concerns raised by farmers
CANTON — Ideas gathered earlier this year at a series of public hearings will be incorporated into a plan steering the future of St. Lawrence County farming, but putting them to work to strengthen the agricultural industry could prove tricky.
The challenges hearing participants identified most frequently — such as high taxes and restrictive state and federal regulations — are not something members of the county's Agriculture and Farmland Protection Board can tackle, said Matilda M. Larson, a county planner.
"The chances of a local county board having any influence over those issues could be rather small, so it would make sense to direct our time and energy to issues that could be influenced on the local level," Ms. Larson said. "When it came to weakness and opportunities, we focused on the factors we can address."
Those factors include improving county road and bridge maintenance, forming a local development corporation focused on farm assistance programs, developing better ways to market farmers' produce locally and encouraging the development of processing businesses for farm goods.
"A lot of raw product is being exported, and we could be generating more profit for our businesses if we keep it here," Ms. Larson said.
Doing that might not be as easy as it sounds. Daniel Z. Martin, Stockholm, has been looking into developing a small-scale food processing operation allowing him to sell his produce out of season.
The challenges, he said, are the myriad government regulations he may have to follow, the expense of product testing and obtaining proper permits and the paperwork that must be filed regularly with state agencies.
"There are a whole bunch of things that make it difficult or expensive for a small producer," Mr. Martin said. "The other problem is that what I do doesn't cleanly fit into any category. I'm not a restaurant. I'm not a processing plant that buys wholesale quantities of produce and then resells it after I've processed it. Some people have told me certain laws apply to me, and others say they don't. It's pretty clear that a commercial food processing facility needs to have all this paperwork and stuff, and it's pretty clear the laws are written so that retail food stores are inspected. But I'm just processing stuff and selling it out of my house."
Mr. Martin said he's still building his facilities and looking into the idea, but if the regulations turn out to be too burdensome, he plans to use his processing equipment just to preserve food for his family.
Dennis G. Durant, Heuvelton, ran into similar problems when looking to establish a small-scale processing business several years ago. He said another problem was coming up with a sufficient volume of food to make the business profitable. He said the idea isn't dead, but it will be difficult to pull off.
"Some people would like to see a certified site that they'd like to be able to access in order to can their own product," Mr. Durant said. "I guess that sounds good, but I don't know how realistic that is. You have to look at it from a volume standpoint. In order to even make it work, you'd have to have a catchment area that's three to four counties."
Ms. Larson said the Agriculture and Farmland Protection Board will meet in November to discuss changes to its agriculture plan and how to advance the ideas gathered at the hearings.
