Is Ulster an important county for farming, at least by New York State standards? It is and it isn’t. Farming, humanity’s main occupation throughout history and once essential to economic survival, has become but a minuscule part of a broader food economy in Ulster County as elsewhere. Less than a half of one per cent of New Yorkers make their living by farming. In Ulster County, about seven times as many people work in food-related industries as in actual farming, census data shows.
New York is a state with a lot of “land in farms” but very few farmers. Almost a quarter of the state, about 7.2 million acres, is classified by the federal Department of Agriculture as farmland. According to the federal Department of Labor, however, only 33,000 people were employed in New York agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting in the third quarter of 2017 — meaning that in this enviable state of nature each farmer, forester, fisherperson and hunter had 218 acres of land to himself or herself.
The truth is that only a small fraction of “land in farms” is cultivated. We live in a post-farming landscape. The farms are gone, but the farmland, like the Cheshire cat’s grin in “Alice in Wonderland,” remains.
Even as farming has disappeared from our wallets, it remains strong in our hearts. Very few residents would disagree with the nostalgic role of agriculture found on the Ulster County government’s website. “Abundant farmlands provide Ulster communities with access to fresh local food and economic diversity, preserve the county’s heritage, and offer a beautiful landscape for the enjoyment of residents and visitors alike,” the website says. “Orchards, vineyards, cornfields and pastures of grazing livestock help define Ulster County’s unique sense of place.” Indeed.
The federal Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) offers detailed employment and wage numbers for all industries at the county level for as recently as the third quarter of 2017. The 2013 federal Agricultural Census provides data on the farming universe. The federal government is now germinating the results of the 2017 census. The crop will start dribbling out later this year.
About three out of every hundred employed workers in Ulster County in September 2017 had jobs in agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting. Practically all of this subset worked in agriculture, according to the statistics. Those 1489 agricultural workers earned an average third-quarter weekly wage of $610.
Remember that we’re talking here about September, a peak harvest month in Ulster County. Average annual agricultural employment in Ulster County was 991 in 2017 — about two per cent of the work force — up from 938 in 2013.
What do those folks do? Last September, 1135 worked in fruit (mostly apple) orchards, vineyards (grapes) and field crops (berries), while 152 worked mostly in animal production, 118 growing vegetables and melons, and 44 labored to support animal production. A final 37 people were employed at nurseries and in horticulture.
To get a better idea of the diminished role of agriculture in our society, consider four other Ulster County job numbers from the same QWEC data base. QWEC provides the number of food-related jobs pervading the entire economy. Our estimate, as mentioned above, is that farmers constitute about one-seventh of the food work force.
The first number is 570, the number of workers employed in food and beverage manufacturing in Ulster County last September. Of these, 274 worked in beverage-making (including 68 in wineries and 33 in breweries), 244 in bakeries and breadmaking, 31 in confectionary manufacture and 21 in making fruit and vegetable preserves. A sixth of Ulster County’s 3373 manufacturing workers are employed in food manufacturing.
The second number is 664, the employees of grocery and related product wholesalers in Ulster County.
The third number is 1862, the employees of Ulster County grocery stores. This number is an estimate. On the one hand, the substantial number of employees who work with non-food items are wrongly included in it. On the other hand, employees who sell foods and beverages in such places as baked goods, beverage and health-food stores plus gas stations and pharmacies are not included.
The fourth and final number is 4359, the total workers employed by Ulster County restaurants last September. The data shows that 2629 persons held down jobs in full-service restaurants, as did 1430 in limited-service restaurants and 300 at places selling snacks and non-alcoholic drinks.
What kind of picture do these numbers draw? The food business only starts with agriculture. Most of the jobs are in manufacturing food products, in distributing or selling food, or in cooking or serving it in restaurants. That’s the world we live in.
Four geographic agricultural districts encompass ten percent of Ulster County’s acreage, or 71,000 acres. About 43,000 acres of land in agricultural districts are in the southeastern quadrant of the county east of the Shawangunks. Much of the rest is in the Route 209 corridor and the fertile Esopus Valley.
State government, which keeps track of such things, ranks Ulster County lower in its proportion of land in farms than most other upstate counties. A very high proportion of farmland in most New York State ag districts is not used for agricultural production or even for inactive pastureland, however. In Ulster, it is. It’s more closely integrated into the overall cultural environment, which perhaps is one reason why we value it more highly.
The 2000 acres added to the Ulster County agricultural districts in the past five years does not signal an upsurge in agricultural activity, however. “Land that helps keep the region’s agricultural industry viable, even if there are no plans to farm it,” the state regulations say, “can be eligible for inclusion into an agricultural district, too.”
Most of the counties which claim a lot of agricultural land pay very few people to work in agriculture. Only six New York counties recorded more than 1000 persons getting wages for work in agriculture last September. Ulster County was one of them.
Orleans (1818 workers), Wayne (3329) and Onondaga (1108) counties are in western New York, Orange (1442) and Ulster (1489) counties are in the Hudson Valley, and Suffolk (2915) is on Long Island.
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