Ag and County Stats

Don Smyers, Executive Director of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Otsego and Schoharie Counties, was at the Health and Ed meeting earlier this week, to talk about budgetary issues. Cooperative Extension is another one of the services that the County supports but is not obligated to. Last budget season, they took a big hit, and that has forced some realignment of staff and services.

New York is second in agriculture in the United States (guess which NY county leads? Answer below). Otsego County has a long, proud history of farming, but there are some significant obstacles that have caused a slow erosion of historic crops. Few of us are unaware of the loss of dairy farms throughout the county, as small herds have a harder and harder time competing with large factory-like operations and the kind of transportation system that makes it possible to move milk almost anywhere. Even having Chobani nearby doesn't help; they buy milk from a wholesale supplier who aggregates the best deals every day and ships to the factory with a fleet of trucks. Economy of scale keeps the price of yogurt down, but it doesn't help the small dairy down the road.

Cooperative Extension provides educational services, among other things, to help farmers and policy-makers respond to the economic environment that agriculture lives in. In support of this role, Don handed out a county statistical profile assembled by Cooperative Extension. Being a data guy, I found it fascinating. Here, in no particular order, are some interesting results I found in this report:

• County population – 62,259 in the 2010 Census – is projected to begin declining about... now. Both the City and Town of Oneonta, however, have shown strong growth since 2000.
• Just like everywhere, the proportion of the population over 65 is growing, and is projected to grow even more quickly in the next twenty years. The median age right now is 41, and the median ages of all the towns are at or slightly above that – and the City's median age is 22. It's important to be able to factor out the college student effect from most of this data if we're going to understand it.
• 26.3% of Otsego County residents have a Bachelor's degree. The national average ranges from that to about 30%.
• Unemployment in Otsego County certainly increased in the last few years, but remains somewhat lower than the New York State average.
• We generally have more people in poverty, and few wealthy folks, than in the rest of the state, but you probably knew that already. However, median household income is substantially below the state average – about $11,000 lower.
• About 16% of children in Otsego County live below the poverty line, but this is true of one in five living in the Town of Oneonta, and one in four in the City.
• Number of farms, and land in farms, are both declining in the County, but the latter a little faster than the former.

That last piece of data suggests that we might be losing larger farms, but seeing an increase in smaller farms. It's not clear, but if it were true, I think it would be a harbinger of the future, when rising oil prices require that we find our food closer to home. The time of the 3,000 mile lettuce is ending. Our vacant farm acreage has doubled since 1970, and this positions us well when the demand for local food increases drastically.

{Answer: Suffolk County – the western 2/3 or so of Long Island – has more than $150 million in annual agricultural sales – while ranking 27th in the state for number of farms and 50th for land in farms. There might be something to learn from the agricultural entrepreneurs out there, who are doing a lot more with a lot less.}