The 2011 Census of Agriculture by Statistics Canada reveals the past five years have seen a 10 percent reduction in the number of farms in our northern neighbor’s inventory.

But the average farm size has increased by about seven percent. In one province, the number of farms is down 17 percent, while the average farm size is up 15 percent.

What’s up with that?

To find out, I visited with the Adams County, Pennsylvania, Ag Land Preservation Board Director Ellen Dayhoff  and GIS Analyst /Preservation Specialist Mark Clowney.

In 2007, the average size of a preserved farm in Pennsylvania was 123 acres, Clowney said, but the average size of an actual farming operation was 500 acres. The difference?

A preserved farm may not actually be in production. If it is, it may not be the landowner doing the farming. While an urban dweller may think a whole acre to be a large area, 123 acres of farmland will support only a few cattle or a hay, corn, or soybean field. Chances are profits will be slim, if they exist at all.

“If they were making money – a profit – they’d want to stay in it (active farming),” Dayhoff commented.

Instead, they sell or lease the land to other, larger producers, who, although they also may own as few as 123 acres, actually control hundreds, sometimes thousands more.

Hence, as noted in the Canadian study, the number of farms decreases while the number of acres farmed increases.

It is a picture I have seen, and written about, elsewhere. In 1998 I moved to a newspaper in South-Central Pennsylvania, the Gettysburg Times, and began writing about many of the same issues I had written about in Central Maine, my previous home. Farmers were selling out, cashing in their retirement accounts because their kids, if they had any, we’re not interested in working so hard for so little return.

The decision to sell, especially for those with a couple hundred acres, was made easier by land speculators and developers knocking at the gate offering, in many cases, more than 10 times what the land was worth as farmland. Home buyers were able to buy new homes in rural areas for prices they thought were a bargain, but which local young residents – and many older residents – could not afford.

The prices were so attractive that the new buyers found it economical to commute two hours or more between their jobs and their new homes.

And it was a period when county farmland preservation programs were clamoring for taxpayer funding so they could buy development rights – roughly the difference between what land was worth as farmland and what it would be worth growing houses.

They might not keep a farmer farming, but with an easement prohibiting development they would at least keep a developer from paving over the cornfield. Often, the owner of a small preserved parcel – in that average 123-acre category – would sell or lease the land to a working farmer, who will use it to increase overall production, and profits.

Adams county has preserved nearly 20,000 acres of farmland since it was established in 1990.

The decision to quit farming usually is the result of a math problem: too high cost and too little profit. The rising cost of oil, for instance, adds to the cost of operating machinery, as well as the cost of feed and fertilizer.

“A lot of them work off the farm,” Mark Clowney said of younger farmers need for medical insurance and other benefits.

About 80 percent of beginning farmers and their spouses find work in other industries to supplement the benefits they cannot afford in their primary endeavor.

“Little guys are in niche markets such as organic growing – or (the land) is going to a bigger guy,” Clowney said.

Diversification is the profit watchword. Operations such as the Wilkinsons, Clowneys, and Hesses have multiple generations, milk at least hundreds of cows, and farm 500 to 4,000 acres. Some raise corn, pumpkins, hay, and soybeans. In many cases, they produce milk and also harvest and some haul hay and straw to mushroom growers in other states.

A few miles from my home, Mason-Dixon Farm’s 2,200 dairy cows virtually milk themselves in an automated system, methane generates electricity the farm sells to utilities, and farmers from around the globe visit to learn innovative methods of feeding hungry consumers.

The traditionally depicted family farm – with a few head of dairy cows, or a farm stand selling fresh produce to passers-by – looked for awhile as though it was on the endangered species list, but it may be staging a comeback. A new generation of growers is bringing with it computers and collaborations, such as Young Growers Alliance, their ancestors only two generations ago would have considered anathematic to the agricultural way of life.

They are cooperating in promoting shared farmers markets, and trucking fresh produce to big city restaurants. “Locally Grown,” to those eateries, has come to mean the food was picked this morning, maybe last night, and is being served this evening, and this new crop of growers is capitalizing on the demand.

A growing interest in food sources has raised the demand for unprocessed milk, as well as enticed small producers to make ice cream and goat cheese and raise heirloom tomatoes and kiwis. Community gardens are proliferating, including in places one hardly thinks of as rural – rooftops in New York City, for instance.

“If they were making money – a profit – they’d want to stay in it,” Dayhoff said of farmers who were leaving the life.

Consumer demand for a variety of fresh, safe, tasteful, food may turn around the numbers – giving us more, smaller, and more specialized farms.

That can only be good.

Photo by Runner Jenny

By Patti Howell

I truly believe it is easier to fight City Hall than it is to fight the Central Dauphin school district!  They make their own rules and run their schools like a dictatorship.  Their word is law and no one has the right to question it.  They don’t need proof, they don’t need evidence, and they make decisions that affect these kids’ lives with unfounded accusations, conjecture, and hear-say.  Their motto appears to be “Guilty until proven innocent!”  To hell with due-process … and fairness be damned!   The arrogance with which they rule their schools is unbelievable and in my opinion unacceptable.

Here is the scenario:  Sixteen high school kids took a limo to their senior prom on a recent Friday evening. There was a discussion between them all prior to the event that NO ONE was to bring alcohol to the prom.  Unfortunately, when you have so many kids, you can usually be assured that someone is going to screw up.  Well, apparently at least two individuals that we know of did!  There were a few bottles of alcohol found in a couple of duffle bags on the limo and it appeared that some of it had been consumed.  To most of the kids in that limo, the fact that alcohol was brought out was a complete surprise and many of them insist that they did not take part in any drinking. To my knowledge one student took responsibility for bringing the alcohol on the limo.

The police were called (as is appropriate in this situation) and they interviewed and gave breathalyzer tests to 8 of the 16 kids, 2 fled the scene on foot, and the other 6 were never pulled from the prom and were able to continue dancing and enjoying themselves.  Many of the kids blew 0.0 on the breathalyzers and were released by the police with NO consequences.  Now we all know that there is no leniency by the authorities these days when it comes to underage drinking.  And who is more qualified to determine if there is any reason to administer punishment than the police?  Well… evidently the CD School District is.

On the following Monday morning, their “investigation” began.  One in which they badgered and interrogated each of the students and tried to pit one against another with insinuations and hollow threats. This so called investigation took two days after which 10 of the 16 students were given 3-10 days suspension from school, with an informal hearing during the 3^rd day at which time it would be decided if the term of the suspension would go further.  To no one’s surprise each student was then given the 10 day suspension.  This is excessive to say the least, especially without a shred of evidence.

Now, for most of these kids, especially those who know they are innocent of any wrong-doing, they just got themselves a nice little extra Spring-Break.  They still have to keep up with their school work, but can do it while lying by the pool if they like.  However, two of them happen to be athletes on the track team, both seniors, one of which had already qualified to compete in Districts, the other who was one jump away from qualifying.  For these two, who coincidently blew 0.0 BAC results, and adamantly deny use of any alcohol that night – this has ENDED their track careers.  Due to the timing they missed the Cedar Cliff Relays; the Mid-Penn’s, and now, due to the 10-day suspension, will not be back in school in time to compete in Districts.

Most of us who played any sports in high school realize that at this time in your life, competing at a District or State level is not only quite an honor but also one of the most exciting accomplishments for any athlete.  So, with no proof and no evidence, these two boys are paying a MUCH higher price than even the individual who admitted bringing the alcohol or the ones that fled the scene.

I and many of the other parents involved have made pleas to the Principal(s) and to the Assistant to the Superintendent to be fair and to see that they have NOTHING to hold against many of these kids.  We begged them, particularly in my son’s case and that of the other athlete to take into consideration how a 10 day suspension would affect these kids’ lives – all of our efforts fell on deaf ears.  We contacted lawyers, only to find that somehow CD School District reigns supreme.  There is virtually nothing that can be done about this injustice.  And that is exactly what it is…AN INJUSTICE!

How does this happen?  When did the school districts get more power than our law enforcement and justice system?   When did these so-called “educators” go from trying to help our kids to becoming tyrants and bullies?  At this point the only thing I can do is to make this public and let everyone know that if they have a child who will be or is part of the CD School system, they had better be prepared for the tyrannical way in which they run their schools as well as their blatant disregard for an individuals right to be “innocent until proven guilty.”

In speaking with many of my friends, co-workers and family, many who are in or familiar with other school districts in this area, I have heard numerous times that they are not surprised one bit.  Evidently CD has quite a bad reputation for excessive punishments and for running their schools like tyrants.

I hope no one has to go through this with any of their children and I wish I would have known years ago about the unfriendly climate that exists at Central Dauphin.  I used to be a “Proud Parent of a CD Student.”  I am now still VERY proud of my Student, but cannot say the same for the school from which he will graduate.

Photo by nist6ss

While some of our politicians and fossil fuel barons try, with varying success, to convince us we’re not digging up enough coal, oil or natural gas, the folks who we are told are selling us our oil are busy building a city that doesn’t need it.

For the first time in more than a half-century, the U.S. exports more fuel than it imports. We still are the world’s largest importer of crude oil, but a huge portion of the imported crude becomes exported product, including fuels.

Even within our borders, we are producing more oil than we were just a few years ago, and we are building railroad lines to move coal from the midwest to California so it can be shipped to China and India. We’re selling natural gas to Europe, and the driving reason Big Oil wants the Keystone XL pipeline expanded is so it can receive Canadian oil and process it into product saleable to Asian nations.

“So much for our dire need for energy independence,” Jacob Nells commented to the weekly coffee shop gathering of the Java Philosophical Society.

“Yes, but the companies are just looking out for the rest of us,” said Mickey Strasbaugh, the group’s tycoon at large. “They want to make sure people have jobs and gas to drive to them.”

“Remember a year ago all the hullabaloo about General Electric making $14 billion profit?” Jacob asked no one in particular. “And it not only paid no federal taxes, We The People paid it $3.2 billion.”

“GE must have provided a ton of jobs that year,” he said.

“There was a quote in the news when that was reported,” Mickey recalled. “The company said it ‘pays what it owes under the law and is scrupulous about its compliance with tax obligations in all jurisdictions.’”

“I could use some of that on my cornfields,” said Nells. “That’s like the Marcellus drillers saying they’re complying with all permits and regulations.

“Trouble is, they spend a spreader load of money making sure there are no regulations,” he said.

“Aye,” said business owner Brian MacDougal, who mentioned a March 2011 news report that said GE spent $200 million lobbying congress in the previous decade.

When the company’s tax team head successfully begged U.S. House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel, D-NY, for extension of some about to expire tax breaks, New York City schools received a $30 million gift.

“Coincidence, I’m sure,” said Nells, “But imagine the profits when a company can give away a $30 million Christmas present to get out of paying taxes.”

“Obviously, there is a lot more money in providing jobs than actually filling them,” said recently laid off middle school teacher Kate Nunemaker. “The company laid off 21,000 American workers and closed 20 factories in the couple of years before 2010. More than half of its workforce – and more than $9 billion of those 2010 profits – were, and are, overseas.”

“Profits and workers aren’t all GE has going on elsewhere, Brian commented, then took a long sip of his favorite morning libation to let the suggestion sink in. “The company is helping build, from scratch, the world’s first carbon-neutral city – Welcome to Masdar City, Abu Dhabi. No cars, no carbon emissions, and 50,000 residents.”

“Why can’t they do that here?” Nells asked.

“Because the marketplace doesn’t want it here,” Strasbaugh piped in.

He pointed out the U.S. House of Representatives voted recently to restore planned cuts to defense spending, cut social service spending to pay for it, and agreed to continue billions of dollars worth of fossil fuel subsidies to Big Oil.

“You want gasoline, we’ll make gasoline,” Strasbaugh said. “They don’t have cars in Masdar, so they don’t need gasoline – and they use wind, solar, and other sources to run their televisions and computers without heating up the planet.”

“What other companies are involved in Masdar?”

MacDougal pulled a folded page from his pocket, a printout of a page from the Masdar website. It showed the city was wholly owned by Abu Dhabi, which had agreements with such “partners” as GE, Credit Suisse, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and several other internationally known entities.

“I wonder if they’ve got any teaching jobs over there,” Kate asked.

Photo by arwcheek

Pennsylvania: 29.7%

Sources:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Childhood Obesity Facts.”
Childhood Obesity Action Network. State Obesity Profiles, 2009.
National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality, Child Policy Research Center, and Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative.
Photo by malias

Wind power, a Pennsylvania state politician recently said, is accomplishing one thing: spending taxpayer money.

But there is growing evidence it is doing other, more positive things, such as creating jobs and supplying the electrical grid – with considerably less risk than the Keystone State’s other burgeoning energy source.

“I am 100 percent for alternative energy,” state Rep. Dan Moul, R-91, said recently, “as long as the private sector pays for it.”

He pointed many Pennsylvanians have benefited from programs that use government money to subsidize private installation of solar electric and hot water systems, which then provide essentially free energy to homeowners, businesses and some government users.

And system owners then may sell to the grid any electricity their system generates in excess of what they need to run their television and air conditioner.

Solar power will take off among free-marketers when BP, ExxonMobil and Chevron, et. al. find a way to gather all those individual government, business and private solar collectors under their corporate roof. Currently, it is difficult for a utility to rake in profits from solar power once it – or a small business – has sold and installed its own solar array.

Solar system customers would qualify for a rebate under the Pennsylvania Sunshine Solar Program – if the program had any money. Unfortunately, there is no money to pay the rebates. The federally-sourced rebates have run out of money, and likely will not be funded again.

Government subsidies, in the form, mostly, of cash investment, have been going to wind energy investors, – large companies, mostly, although individual wind-energy users have received some of the money. And the government subsidies have attracted other investors.

A Texas-based company called TriEagle Energy offers 100 percent wind-generated electricity to commercial consumers in Pennsylvania, at rates it claims are lower then other energy sources. Other companies offer wind-generated electricity, as well. A website of the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission – PaPowerSwitch.com – allows users to choose from a list of companies, providing electricity generated by several sources. Wind is not always least expensive, but some of it is close, and getting closer.

I brought up the subject to the Daily Java Philosophical Society during a morning meeting at the coffee shop this week.

“Sometimes, We The People pick up the tab for research,” said Jacob Nells, a farmer, forester, and corn and soybean grower. “We needed tiny stuff for the space program, and people like Steve Jobs got very wealthy refining the technology into mp3 players and tablet computers.”

“Developing big wind farms and solar energy sites takes huge amounts of money,” said Nells. “I certainly don’t have it, and I’ve got 400 acres of producing crop land.”

“Of course, they’d have to cover most of it with solar panels to make enough electricity to power the town,” he added. “But that’s not as bad as what they’re doing to our state forests, and solar cells will get smaller and more efficient.”

“Have you seen the forests where they’re doing the fracking?” Nells asked. “Couple-acre well pads connected by a spider web of roads and pipeline paths where, until the past couple years, there were only snowmobile and deer trails. And that’s only to get the gas to collection points where it can be transported by even bigger pipes.”

“And too many of the wells, when they’re completed, blow tons of methane into the air. There are several credible studies showing that air pollution from natural gas production is worse than all the cars and trucks in the same areas.”

“You cut access roads to erect wind turbines, but not whole forests” Nells said, “And if there’s an accident with a wind turbine, the worst it does is fall over and take out some trees. You get a blowout in a natural gas line, you’ve got gas on the wind from here to Massachusetts.”

Nells said Pennsylvania and other states need to come up with better safety regulations for fracking – the process of pumping toxic chemicals into the wells at high pressure to break up the shale and release the gas.

“I’m not completely opposed to natural gas, or even oil,” Nells said. “We’re converting coal-fired electricity generators to natural gas, and that’s cleaner, but it will take awhile to replace all the gasoline-powered cars and trucks.”

“But our state’s environmental regulations are not exactly confidence inspiring,” Nells said, taking another swig of that other black fluid on which the nation runs.”

“For instance, wells have to be set back 300 feet from wetlands or an existing building. But that assumes all the danger happens on the surface The wells, on the other hand. often extend more than two miles horizontally, under the buildings and features they have to avoid on the surface.”

“You have to wonder,” he said, “if you bust up enough of that deep shale, how unstable are you making the ground above it. And who will pay when a chemical accident makes Susquehanna River water undrinkable?”

“I say we need to make those wind and solar generators more efficient, not shut them down. That takes money most small companies don’t have, and companies that have it are chasing gas and oil.

And it’s not like We The People haven’t already given money to energy industries. Pennsylvanians still give nearly $3 billion a year to Big Oil.”

Whereupon, there being no further discussion before the members, the DJPS adjourned.

Photo by SandTDesign

Governor Tom tells tall tales. And the number one pick for Tom’s Top 12 Tall Tales is –  I am going to change the culture of Harrisburg.

Actually, tall tale number one is true, Gov. Corbett has changed the culture of Harrisburg -from bad to worse.

Gov. Corbett’s first cabinet appointment was coal baron C. Alan Walker, CEO of Bradford Energy, to be Secretary of Community and Economic Development. The Commonwealth had to go after Walker and his company to clean up more than 150 million gallons of polluted water from the mines it owned.  As you can see from Tom’s Top Twelve Tall Tales number 2, Coal baron C. Alan Walker gave $80,000 to Gov. Corbett’s campaign.

Another of Gov. Corbett’s earliest appointments was Roger Nutt as CEO of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. Roger’s son Brian just happened to be Corbett’s political campaign manager.

The 30 member Marcellus Shale Commission was charged with overseeing “… how we can build around this new industry and how we can make certain we do this while protecting our lands, our drinking water, our air, and our communities, all the while growing our workforce. The commission was stacked 21 with commissioners with ties to the gas and oil interests and only 7 environmentalists. To my knowledge no one on the commission had any knowledge of water issues.

The Federal Environmental Protection Agency has had to step in to monitor the gas drilling.

Remember transparency in government? There was no transparency in the budget process that proposed over half a billion dollars in basic education funding and a 50% cut in money for public universities. The only thing Republicans seem to tout was that they had finished before the deadline.

Remember transparency in government and fairness? There was no transparency in the redistricting process. They just hauled it out a few days before they passed it and Gov. Corbett signed it.

Remember fairness? Legislative districts were gerrymandered to help Republican insiders like Jeff Piccola get re-elected and then re-gerrymandered when Piccola decided to quit because someone challenged his motives. They even threw one of their own, Sen. Mike Folmer of Lebanon under the bus by connecting his district with Harrisburg. Folmer was the lone Republican to vote against the gerrymander. Gov. Corbett signed the bill.

Legislative districts were gerrymandered to help Republicans keep power in Congress. Again, Gov. Corbett signed the changes.

Knowing that President Obama is likely to win Pennsylvania, Gov. Corbett and the Republicans are designing legislation to change the allocation of Pennsylvania’s Presidential electors.

Even though there has never been a problem with voter fraud, Gov. Corbett wants require voters to have a driver’s license ID in order to vote in the upcoming election. The result will be to suppress the votes of older people who do not drive, poorer people who cannot afford a card, urban people who rely more on public transportation, college students who come to Pennsylvania from out of state in order to get a great education, minorities who for any of the above reasons and other, who do not own a car. Can you guess how these constituencies tend to vote?

Tom tells tall tales. Welcome to life in a red state.

Eric Epstein, a redisent of the Central Dauphin School District, offered the following testimony on Monday, May7, 2012. The Board unanimously approved  – by a 9-0, vote – an “unannounced agenda” item to furlough 84 District employees including 74 teachers.

A “moral hazard” is an economic term. It is a hazard that comes from insulating a person, board or corporation from being held accountable for bad decisions or poor planning.

The risk – or “moral hazard” – is that you insulate decision makers  from failure. By doing so, they will never learn from their mistakes and take bigger or costlier risks in the future.

One educational example is grade inflation.

A more immediate “moral hazard” is penalizing teachers and students for problems that management helped to create or failed to anticipate.

There are real and measurable impacts to firing 84 District employees.

These are not just numbers. These are real people with real bills and real kids and a real impact on current students and future citizens.

There are real consequences and pain associated with mass layoffs.

If you think 84 holes in the classrooms will have “0” impact on educating our kids than you are 100% wrong.

Take a step back and ask yourselves three questions:

1. If there was an 84 inch hole in a roof atop one of our schools,  would you lay off the roofers?
2. If there were 84 kids without lunch money, would you increase the price of a hot meal?
3. If there was an 84 inch gap in our football team’s offense line, would  you dismantle the team?

This year’s “involuntary separations” may be as high as 84.

Last year it was a 130 bus drivers.

In two years you have balanced the budget by eliminating 214 positions and selling off a bus fleet.

The price to balance the budget should also be paid by those who helped to dig the hole. Back to “educational moral hazards”: How many administrators have been held accountable for making bad decisions or poor planning?

You can furlough 84 human beings to fill a hole this year, but you can not back fill the gap in a child’s educational experience.

Last month, the EPA announced new regulations that will require natural gas drillers to capture the methane they ordinarily allow to escape before they cap their well. The new rules take effect in 2015.

Last week, the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, announced proposed regulations that would require drillers to tell us what chemicals they are pumping into the ground – and sometimes spilling onto the ground and into our waters – to release natural gas by fracturing shale thousands of feet underground.

The EPA standards were proposed last summer in response to pressure from citizen and environmental groups complaining about real and anticipated health and pollution problems. Industry groups said the new standards would cost too much money and slow the currently ever-increasing rate of production of natural gas.

Methane often is allowed to leak out of new-fracked wells, in much the way movies in the early part of the last century once depicted black gold blasting out of Texas oil wells. But the the gushing oil, released when the drill punctures an oil pocket, merely makes a mess.

Unfortunately, it turns out methane is about 20 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than oft-mentioned carbon dioxide – the latter a by-product of burning fossil fuels – such as natural gas.

Gina McCarthy, head of the EPA’s office of air and radiation, pointed out some companies already are capturing the gas, and some states (not Pennsylvania) already require it be done. Still, the agency decided to give industry until January 2015 to comply with the new rules.

Clearly, there is no need to act precipitously to obstruct industry efforts to drill thousands of new wells, and dump tons of methane into the air, before the regulations actually take effect.

“The proposed (BLM) rule would require public disclosure of chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing after fracturing operations have been completed,” the bureau said in a press release. (Italics are mine.)

Yes sir, that’s what it said.

After the proposed rules are published in the Federal Register (I cannot find any mention that they have yet been), and after a 60-day public comment period, and after some more months of negotiations to decide how to modify the proposal and put it into effect, and worst of all…

after the fracturing operations have been completed and whatever chemicals are used already have been pumped into the ground and maybe spilled upon it, drillers will have to tell us what they used.

Maybe.

The BLM regulation would apply only to operations on about 756 million acres of federal and Indian lands.

Also, BLM notes, the proposed rules are consistent with those some states have enacted requiring operators to publicly disclose what chemicals are being used on state-owned lands.

Pennsylvania is not one of the states requiring public disclosure.

Many industries, natural gas producers among them, proudly proclaim they are complying with all permits and regulations. BLM notes the proposed new rules would update a reg written long before natural gas could be obtained by drilling a hole a mile and-a-half down, then a couple miles sideways, and then pumping a toxic soup at high pressure into the shale to bust it up and release the gas.

For instance, the current rule says frackers need only notify BLM of planned “nonroutine” operations. Unfortunately, the 30-year-old regulation fails to define “routine” and “nonroutine” operations. The fracking industry undoubtedly considers the majority of its operations “routine,” since BLM estimates it only has been notified of about 20 percent of all drilling and fracking operations.

In the proposed rule, there are no “routine” or “nonroutine” fracking operations; all must be reported.

Since its well-documented meetings with then-Vice-president Dick Cheney, the fracking industry has maintained its recipes are proprietary. If they became public, all companies would benefit unfairly from knowing what chemicals the others are using, drillers claim.

And as with the complaints against the EPA regs, the industry says it will lose money if it has to tell everyone what it’s using to kill them, er, release the gas.

So for the next two years, count on the shale gas industry to speed up drilling new wells in an effort to get them in before the new rules take effect.

And two more years of spewing pollutants into the air and across the ground. Two more years of trusting that we all will come out of this alive.

Sometimes late really is not better than never.

National Rate: 35.7%
Pennsylvania: 28.6% (#15)

For adults, overweight and obesity ranges are determined by using weight and height to calculate a number called the “body mass index” (BMI). BMI is used because, for most people, it correlates with their amount of body fat.

• An adult who has a BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight.

• An adult who has a BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese.

Source: Center for Disease Control & Prevention (2010), Defining Obseity

Photo by Tobyotter