Developing a sustainable economy using our region’s resources

By BILL CHAISSON
How do we continue to build a new and sustainable economy in the Twin State Valley? First, you have to take a look at what you have and figure out what you can do with it. 

 I lived in the Ithaca, New York area for 15 years. The city of 30,000 people is at the southern end of Cayuga Lake, one of the 11 Finger Lakes. These long, narrow bodies of water are incised into the Allegheny Plateau, which one of two plateaus on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains (the Cumberland Plateau of Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama is more famous).

The economy of Ithaca is based on education and the service economy that supports it. Ithaca College (7,000 students) is a little bigger than Dartmouth (6.400 students), but Cornell University is enormous (23,000 students). Outside of Ithaca, the university and the college’s influence begins to fall off quickly in some ways, but those institutions employ a large number of people with middle-class incomes and they serve as the basis of the service economy in the region.

Tourism is an increasingly big deal in the Finger Lakes region. There are two main attractions: the natural landscape and the wine industry. The abundant waterfalls are often enshrined in state parks. Compared to New Hampshire, there is relatively little forested land and quite a lot of active agricultural land. On the steep slopes that dive down to the lakes, the agriculture is often in the form of vineyards.

There is some dairy left in the Finger Lakes and some beef cattle, so there is land given over to growing food for livestock. But there are a growing number of fruit and vegetable farms and an increasing number of these are operated as community-supported agriculture (CSAs).

Most CSAs do not ask their members to work on the farm anymore, as citified volunteers tended to be more trouble than they were worth. But for the price of membership, members get a weekly allotment of fruits and vegetables, the composition of which changes through the growing season. A number of farms run a “winter CSA” that consists of root vegetables and greens grown in hoop houses, so that you are getting fresh vegetables nearly year round.

The latest phase of the agricultural revival is the addition of what are called “value-added products.” These can range from making preserves from fruit to making whiskey from wheat. 

Local breweries and brew-pubs are more and more often entering into agreements with local growers of malt and hops as well.

Claremont resembles Ithaca in that it is an urban center in the middle of a rural area. It would therefore serve the old function of “market town” for this ag revival. This is already underway in the form of the farmers’ market and the locavore store on Pleasant Street.

Unlike Ithaca, Claremont has a relatively small college population. Using the faculty size as a proxy for the whole staff, there are about 2,500 professors and instructors in Ithaca and about 120 at River Valley Community College. Academics are often the kind of people who use their income locally based on a political principle (“it’s the right thing to do”) and in Claremont, you don’t have that huge population that you can depend on, so you are going to have to look elsewhere. 

Sullivan County has more manufacturing jobs per capita than any other county in New Hampshire. Although certainly not what they used to be, the centers of Bellows Falls, Springfield, and Windsor, Vermont have held on to some manufacturing and therefore some well-paying jobs.

But regions that depend on colleges for their middle-class populations have a distinct advantages over those who depend on the business community. Colleges are much more insulated from economic downturns than most businesses. 

During the Great Recession, Cornell stopped all construction projects and laid off 900 employees. The region was shocked; no one could remember this ever happening before. But this was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. And through it all housing prices in the region continued to rise …

One advantage that the Twin State Valley has over the central Finger Lakes is its heritage of precision manufacturing. The Claremont Makerspace was established because its founder knew that people liked to make things with their hands in this region and that they were good at it. 

If you are building an economy based on local resources, the skills of the people are an important factor. This part of New England has a long history of building things out of metal and wood.

Why? The rivers that run down out of the Green Mountains and the New Hampshire uplands are many, steep and they run all year. They therefore supported the growth of mills and factories through the 19th century and into the 20th.

In contrast, the rivers of the Finger Lakes aren’t even rivers; they are creeks and a lot of them slow to a trickle in the summer. Consequently, even close to waterfalls there wasn’t enough power in most places to operate a large manufactory.

Local manufacturing has changed though. Where New England factories once made everyday items like textiles that everyone could afford, that is now done in the developing world. Instead we must embrace artisan manufacturing, ideally using materials that are derived locally or not transported long distances. And, aside from food stuffs, nearly all of what is made here should be “durable goods,” which is to say things that you pay good money for and you keep for a long time. 

It will be important to pull together the agricultural and the manufacturing communities. The amount of arable land can re-expand as long as there are value-added products to be made locally that make use of what is grown here. 

The American consumer has changed. The long post-war focus on developing markets with enormous distribution areas is over. It was based on transportation using cheap fossil fuels. Americans are redeveloping a sense of place. They are perhaps more interested in something made in New Hampshire than simply made in the USA.

 

Bill Chaisson is the editor of the Eagle Times and he does not even have a vegetable garden.

Byron York is on vacation this week and his column will return on Aug. 30.