Subject: Re: [permaculture] New York state watershed protection legislation-pontentially progressive
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2009 23:08:36 -0500
Patrick,
Thanks for this post. Indeed great to see farming being considered
for its ecosystem services in the same way as wilderness and working
forests. We are working on a watershed conservation project with a
land trust and a conservation organization and trying to push them to
consider farmlands in regards to proposed economic incentives for
ecological management practices, but they seem pretty centered on
forest ecosystems. If you or anyone else has resources or
information related to the topic, please pass it on.
We need to protect our watersheds up here, but they are going to have
to produce a lot more food than they are now.
Thanks again,
Scott
Scott Vlaun
Moose Pond Arts+Ecology
Design Solutions for a Sustainable Future
http://www.urbanfoodpolicy.com/2009/11/distributed-urban-
agroforestry.html
Monday, November 30, 2009
Distributed Urban Agroforestry
Some 65% of New York’s Hudson River Valley and Catskill Mountain
region are forested, with 85% of this forestland owned by private
individuals, according to Cornell Cooperative Extension. These
privately owned woodlands, if sustainably managed, provide critical
ecosystem services, yet few property owners are aware of how to
manage their land sustainably. Faced with financial obligations and
property taxes, many harvest timber unsustainably or sell their
property piece by piece for home construction. Typical forest
management plans prepared by private foresters or the DEC focus on
cutting and selling timber, even though surveys show that most forest
landowners have much more diverse reasons for buying and keeping
their wooded property.
One strategy for preventing the open space in our region from being
parcelized and developed, particularly the ecologically sensitive
forested land in NYC's watershed, is to offer landowners financially
viable options for keeping their property intact. These options
include enhancing recreational opportunities (e.g., stocking ponds
for fishing, cutting trails for hiking or skiing, and managing the
woods to support wildlife), and sustainable timber harvesting.
Another viable though less common option is agroforestry, the
practice of growing ginseng, mushrooms, or medicinal crops in the
woods, raising livestock among the trees, or tapping maple trees for
syrup.
Legislation introduced by NYS Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman
John McHugh would encourage private landowners to open up their
properties for maple syrup tapping by providing grants to encourage
them to provide access to maple producers. Called the “Maple Tapping
Access Program Act of 2009,” the legislation aims to unleash the
productive capacity of private woodlands, stimulating distributed
agroforestry across regions that have abundant sugar maples. The
potential is huge. Throughout New York State, for example, there are
an estimated 300 million maple trees that can be tapped for their
syrup, some 29 million in New York’s Hudson Valley alone.
The revenue from small-scale, disbursed maple syrup tapping may not
be substantial for any single property owner, but it could help to
pay the taxes on land that would otherwise be a financial burden,
enabling the owner to keep his or her land intact. And for regions
with abundant maple trees, the encouragement of distributed maple
syrup production would be an economic boon. If successful, the model
of distributed agroforestry – using many privately owned wooded
properties to produce food and other agricultural products – can be a
solution to the parcel by parcel destruction of our privately owned
forest land.