HomeMy WebLinkAbout2021-12-08Agricultural Advisory Committee
12/08/2021
Via Hybrid
Members Present: Evan Carpenter (Chair), Austin Beck, Marie McRae, Kim LaMotte, Steve Foote, Brian
Magee
Absent:
Liaisons: Loren Sparling (Town Board), Tim Woods (Conservation Board)
Guest(s):
The meeting was called to order at 7:35 PM.
Review and approval of minutes dated November 10th, 2021
On motion made and seconded, minutes were unanimously approved as written.
Bio sequestration/Topsoil/Aquifer Management
T Woods briefed the villages of Dryden & Freeville on this topic. He has also talked to the
Conservation Board and Town Board. He is now bringing it to the attention of the Ag Committee
because they are the agents that would implement it. It’s a program to increase bio sequestration and
CO2 out of the atmosphere through the natural carbon cycle and topsoil. There are two kinds of
manmade contributions to the global warming program around the globe. One is industrial and the
other is agriculture itself. Because of the practices in the US, it is decreasing the amount of usable
topsoil around the world. Because of that, the soil will not hold the amount of co2 that it used to. That is
interrupting the soil along with the plants. The solutions are to use organic low till/no till and continuous
cover cropping and managed livestock rotational grazing. That’s how they used to move herds from
pasture to pasture. Also, grassland and forest propagation. T Woods went on to list several ways farmers
could adjust their daily practices, but the committee did not seem receptive of it, mostly because
farmers are many lightyears ahead of what we already know. A Beck said that these seem like great
ideas but how do we get there? The committee is still open to ideas and T Woods will continue to work
with the members on best management practices.
Comprehensive Plan
Through this comprehensive planning process, the people of Dryden will share their vision and
hopes for the future of our Town. This plan will incorporate a 25-year planning horizon and update the
previous 2005 comprehensive plan.
• Page 57- Where do they get this data from?
• Ag land usage is very incorrect. What about land being leased to farmers?
• They did a decent job in explaining they want to protect farmland although it is very vaguely
worded.
• In the ag section, they only included cattle. What about sheep?
• Page 30- Ag land represents 22.5% of the land area in Dryden. Where did they get that number?
That may have come from the Ag Plan. The source is the county GIS data base.
• Page 31- They have ag land listed as vacant all over the place. If they knew that to get the
percentage then their numbers are way off.
• The owner might not be claiming ag exemption for their land. In that case, it’s considered vacant
land even if its been worked for 50 years. Some farmers don’t want Ag exemptions.
• Page 53- Ag is not included in this-how they define open space is not consistent in every map.
• Page 58- They were valuing land by the parcel. That doesn’t seem to give a reasonable value.
• Do they have residential maps that are being leased by farmers?
• They did a decent job stating in the plan that they want to protect prime farmland. The wording
just throws it off a little.
• Why does it say dairy farms have a higher assessed taxable value? Dairy land and field crops
should be among the same value. It’s possible that since they are using parcels instead of acres
that a dairy farm parcel would be a much larger piece than a field crop parcel.
• Page 53- wouldn’t ag be considered in open space? It’s not included in the map.
• It’s inconsistent how they define open space.
• Since this document is meant as a vision moving forward that those percentages and numbers
aren’t quite as important as were making them out to be.
• I was impressed with the opening part of this report. The first thing is to preserve the rural small
town character and quality of life. The second is to promote the long term economic liability of
the agricultural community. That is more important as a goal than to worry about the
percentages and numbers.
• Page 111- the future land use, they want to make some of the best farmland to rural residential.
• Page 110- Future land use is totally different from zoning.
• Page 123- Why is 3 acres the minimum residential lot size? I thought we were trying to get away
from that. That gobbles up large pieces of farmland quickly.
• Nearly 1 quarter of total agriculture sales in Tompkins County are generated in the Town of
Dryden. That may have come from the Ag plan.
• There’s nothing in the plan about Dryden’s right to farm law or ag and markets law. Those
should be in there.
• There needs to be an ag district map that’s more accurate in the plan.
• The town says they want to protect farmers, but they’re trying to put a trail through ag land…
• They don’t mention the economic stresses on farmers. They could at least stop putting stresses
on farmers. Help the farmers protect their land.
• There needs to be a map of active farmland.
E Banwell will forward these comments to the Planning Board.
On motion made by E Carpenter, seconded by S Foote, the meeting was adjourned at 9:00 PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Emily Banwell