ANTHR 1160 Final Project, James Rice Award

Land Use in Central New York Survival of the fittest?

S Emad Masroor 5/15/14 ANTHR 1160: Progress and

Collapse in the Past and Future

Emad Masroor ANTHR 1160

Final Paper: 05/15/14 While a constantly changing landscape is a hallmark of most settled regions in the world, the changes

that have taken place in the landscape of Central New York are particularly interesting because they do

not fit into the overall picture of continuous ‘development’ in the United States during the nineteenth

and twentieth centuries. As evidenced by the expansion of both urban and rural settlements all across

the world during this period, ‘development’ usually involves a change in the landscape from natural to

anthropogenic. Central New York, however, seems to have undergone the reverse – its landscape

changed from largely human to largely natural. While not uncommon, this process does challenge

conventional notions about economic development.

In this paper, I will examine the changes in land use of Central New York over the past 150 years. In the

mid-nineteenth century, this region had all the trappings of an agricultural utopia, and was intensively

farmed as much as was physically possible. Today this region is largely a forest– a remarkable

transformation. How and why did this change occur?

Empirical data documenting the Decline of Farming

For the purposes of this paper, I have focused on what is described as the ‘Central Plateau’ region of

New York State, according to Agricultural Regions of New York State (Conklin and Hardy 1963),

particularly the counties closest to the Finger Lakes region. During the late nineteenth century, this

region was intensively farmed, with almost one hundred percent of the land area of some counties

being used for cultivation.

In three of the counties representative of this region – Tioga, Tompkins and Cortland – the extent of

cultivated land has without a doubt fallen drastically over the past 150 years. Figure 1 documents this


Final Paper: 05/15/14 steep decline, from about 300,000 acres in 1880 in each county to approximately 100,000 acres today.

Figure 2, in turn, shows the proportion of land that was under cultivation over this period, which

perhaps better captures the scale of loss in this region: from an almost hundred percent utilization in

1880, Tioga County’s percentage of cultivated land had fallen to 30% by 2007.

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Figure 1: Aggregate Farm Acreage over time

Cortland Tioga Tompkins

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Figure 2: Proportion of each County's land under cultivation(Source: Social Explorer)

Percentage of Cortland County area Percentage of Tioga County Area Percentage of Tompkins County


Final Paper: 05/15/14 It should be recognized that these trends capture what was essentially a State-wide phenomenon.

Figure 3 shows that New York State as a whole, too, was experiencing a loss in cultivated area over the

same time period.

From 1880 to 1930, a total of 5.8 million acres of farm land was abandoned from New York farms (Croft

1932: 46). According to Croft, the rate of abandonment of farm land was only increasing at that time

(i.e. 1932), which seemed to have prompted many stakeholders to try and find a solution to “The Land

Problem in the State of New York” (Croft 1932: 45). All three of the counties I have considered lost at

least 11%-25% of their farmland over this 50-year period. Croft also stated that Dr. George F. Warren,

then head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at the New York State College of Agriculture,

estimated in 1932 that “the peak of this disappearance of farm land will be reached during the next

decade (1940s) if it has not already been passed,” and that “at least 3 million more acres of farm land

will be discarded from crop use before the readjustment reaches a stabilized condition.” Figure 3 shows

that in hindsight, both of these turned out to be highly conservative estimates because even after 1930,

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Figure 3: State of New York (Source: Social Explorer)


Final Paper: 05/15/14 10 million acres of farmland were lost in New York State before stabilizing at about 7 million acres in the

final decade of the twentieth century.

Figure 4 shows that the decline of cultivated land cannot be explained simply by a United States – wide

trend. New York State had been an important contributor to the agricultural needs of the country during

the nineteenth century, but the share of the central plateau region in particular declined over time.

Tioga, Tompkins and Cortland counties together comprised a .25 percent share of the total cultivated

area of the United States in 1870, which by 1980 had fallen to about .05 percent, a fivefold decrease.

While these percentages are quite small, the sharp downward trend is still indicative of the declining

importance of agriculture in Central New York.

It is interesting to note, however, that throughout this period of abandonment, the productivity of the

remaining farmland in Central New York was never at risk. It appears that there seems to have been no

dent in the prosperity of the lucky farms that survived. “The per acre and total yield of the principal crop

produced in the State are higher to-day than ever before,” wrote Croft in 1932. “This is possibly due to

the application of scientific methods in crop production and the adjustment of much of the farm land to

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figure 4: Percentage of total cultivated area in the U.S. held by Tompkins, Tioga and Cortland

counties (Source: Social Explorer)


Final Paper: 05/15/14 its most efficient use” (Croft 1932: 49). The productivity of land – in Central New York as much as

throughout the State – was on a constant rise throughout the time during which cultivated area fell

drastically, which of course meant that overall output of goods from the Central New York does not

show a downward trend during this period. As Frank Walrath stated in 1927 about the farmers of a

generation before his time, “A regular day’s work in harvest time was the cradling of 3 acres of grain…

Today the average Tompkins County farmer cuts and binds 8 to 10 acres per day” (Walrath 1927: 204).

Enter the Forests

It is quite clear, through casual observation, that most of the land that was abandoned is today covered

in forests. Tompkins, Tioga and Cortland counties alone are home to no less than 38 State Forests –

lands that the State acquired at some time in the 20th century in order to plant with forests. Figure 5

shows the dramatic rise in the forested area of Tompkins County, from 19.4 percent in 1900 to 50.7

percent in 1980 (B. E. Smith et al, 1993: Table 1 p. 234).

Governmental role in the re-emergence of forests

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Figure 5: Percentage of Forest Cover in Tompkins County (Smith. B.E. 1993)


Final Paper: 05/15/14 The growth of forests in formerly-cultivated areas was a carefully-planned process that was

implemented by the New York State government over several decades. For example, in 1894, Article VII,

7 of the constitution of the State of New York (Department of State, NY: 2014, XIV: 1) was amended to

include that:

‘The lands of the State, now owned or hereinafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve as

fixed by law, shall forever be kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased sold or

exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or private, nor shall the timber thereon be

sold, removed, or destroyed.’

At the same time, the government seems to have encouraged the growth of forests on privately-owned

land, as well. For example, a 1912 legislation “provided a 35-year property tax exemption” for private

landowners who planted up to a hundred acres of forests.

What incentive did the Government have to increase forest cover in Central New York? The

documentation for one of the State forests in the region, Shindagin Hollow State Forest, gives us some

reasons officially posited by the government.

‘In order to reduce soil erosion, protect water quality, provide forest products and recreational

opportunities, the State of New York began acquiring property for reforestation during the

1930's under the auspices of the State Reforestation Law of 1929 and the Hewitt Amendment of

1931. These laws allowed the Conservation Department to acquire land, by gift or purchase, for

reforestation.’ (Department of Environmental Conservation, NY http://www.dec.ny.gov)

Both of these factors – legislation and the encouragement of private forests – must have contributed to

the growth of forests in New York State starting in the first half of the twentieth century. As far as

growing forests with no economic value was a worthy objective, these policies and practices seem to


Final Paper: 05/15/14 have had considerable success. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the ‘Forest Preserve’ of New York

State grew from 685,259 acres in 1883 to 2,193,627 acres in 1930 (Croft 1932: 67). Today, 18.9 million

acres of New York State is forested, a growth pattern similar to that of Central New York (Croft 1932:

67).

A ‘natural’ transformation or a contrived one?

I believe that there can be two ways of analyzing these changes. The first mirrors the views of Frank

Josiah Walrath, who in 1927 noted that:

‘Agriculture has passed through an evolution. As the agriculture of the county changed, rural life

changed. The change has been from a country filled with farm people leading a simple life to a

country sparsely peopled. Economic pressure has wrought this change. Fewer people produce

more than the people of a generation or two ago. More people are free to go to the city. Soil

depletion has lowered yields until much land is no longer economically used. It has passed out of

agriculture. The best lands produce more than ever before under modern methods of

cultivation. The poor lands produce less than ever. It requires a long time to convince owners of

the poorer land that their efforts will always be poorly repaid and that they should give up the

tilling of the poor land for a better region or for employment in the ever-growing industry of our

villages and cities.’ (Walrath, Frank J. 1927: 265)

Walrath espouses the view that these changes were the inevitable result of the mechanization of farm

labor and the increasing attraction of cities. He claims that in places where a lot of soil depletion took

place, the land just did not have the fertility required by commercial agriculture. According to Walrath,

the owners of poorer land will always be poorly repaid, and this increasing economic pressure was what

forced people to give up much of the land.


Final Paper: 05/15/14 According to this view, the State then began to step in as land was being abandoned, in an attempt to

regularize – and, perhaps, justify – the depopulation of what had been declared ‘sub-marginal’ lands. It

was in this backdrop that much of the legislation about forests in New York State came about; people

were worried about all the abandoned land, and the State philanthropically decided to acquire it in

order to forest this land for the common good.

Evidence of state manipulation

However, there can be another construal of the same events which defined the transition from an

agrarian to a forest landscape. Maps produced by the State during the period of most rapid

abandonment – such as Economic Viability of Farm Areas (1969) by Howard E Conklin and Robert E

Linton – classified land according to its ‘viability’ for farming. The following series of images serve to

show that, as far as Central New York was concerned, the State wished to encourage the trend of

abandonment.


Final Paper: 05/15/14

Figure 6 (Nobe, K.C. et al 1960 and Conklin H.E. et al 1969)


Final Paper: 05/15/14 Figure 6 shows two sets of maps. Those on the right are part of the State-produced Economic Viability of

Farm Areas, while those on the left are actual agricultural survey maps. The former, produced by the

‘Office of Planning Coordination’ in the State of New York, has areas of ‘high viability’ that correspond

more or less exactly with the regions of intensive commercial farming as shown in the latter. The blue

lines encircle these areas of interest.

I believe that the correspondence between these maps shows that the reforestation of Central New

York was not necessarily a natural product of prevailing conditions. In fact, this reforestation and land-

abandonment may well have been caused by the policies of the state. By using language such as ‘high,

medium or low viability’ of farm areas, the State clearly reveals its bias in favor of farm abandonment in

this part of New York even up to the 1960s.

Moreover, in some parts of Central New York, the government proceeded to carry out its reforestation

program without regard to the condition of the land’s inhabitants. While it was common for scholars

such as Frank Walrath to question the agrarian use of ‘sub-marginal’ lands, there are many documented

instances of this classification being applied to entirely healthy farmsteads. Inside what is now the Finger

Lakes National Forest of Schuyler County, it has been found that in nine out of eighteen farms studied by

archaeologists (Wurst and Ridarsky 2014: 227), costly capital improvements were still occurring well into

the twentieth century. This casts doubt on the official narrative that reforestation was carried out only

in areas that were abandoned by the farmers themselves. Wurst and Ridarsky have found evidence not

only of house construction a few years before farms were purchased by the government, but also of a

vast array of consumer good being used by the residents of these farms. Even more significantly, Wurst

found that a house which was valued under the 1930 census at $4,000 was in 1935 evaluated at just

$300 (Wurst 2014: 233), no doubt to speed up the process of reforestation.



Social Darwinism?

It cannot be emphasized enough here that the contraction of cultivated land is an act that is far from

being limited to the re-drawing of maps. It involves the displacement and relocation of people, many of

whom were tied to the land and would have had nowhere else to turn to for work except for the

overcrowded cities of the United States. Croft’s statements, for example, that “it requires a long time to

convince owners of the poorer land that their efforts will always be poorly repaid” and that “they should

give up the tilling of the poor land for a better region or for employment in … industry” clearly show a

complete disregard for those who would be most affected by the decisions about reforestation. By

offering financial incentives to farmers who planted forests (instead of cultivating the land), and by

promoting the classification of certain parts of New York as being ‘unviable’ for farming, the State

actively helped bring about the collapse of a way of life for thousands of people.

The reforestation of Central New York clearly favored large commercial farms over smaller, less

profitable farms in a process that can only be called social Darwinism. Those who found their property

to be suddenly worthless as a result of the government classifying their land as ‘sub-marginal’ or

‘unviable’ are the unsung victims of the region’s Reforestation programs. It seems that the state went to

great lengths to discourage extensive farming to the benefit of the larger commercial farms that

remained, with less successful farms being sacrificed to create artificial forests that would provide

marginal benefits to the remaining farms.

As Croft noted in 1932,

‘If Conservation may be defined as ‘wise use’, it follows naturally that from the point of view of

utilization, a forest cannot be left completely to the forces of nature and be expected to

produce the greatest public benefits, however useful it may be for protection and recreation,



such a policy seems more likely to serve the purposes of a very exclusive and restricted

minority.’

Conclusion

While natural factors such as a decline in productivity may certainly have played a part in the change

from farms to forests in Central New York, I think that the above pieces of evidence are sufficient to

prove that the state was an active participant in this process. It is unclear whether the government was

an orchestrator of these changes or simply a facilitator, but the more important question is why the

state would consider this change of land use to be a goal worth pursuing in the first place.

Foresting a previously-farmed area does not make economic sense for those who till the soil, no matter

how much an economist would tell the farmer otherwise. It only benefits those who live off the newly-

created forests, because they can then enjoy their recreational use as well as other spillover benefits,

such as improved drainage and soil protection. While more investigative work needs to be done in the

rest of Central New York before the conclusions of Schuyler, Tioga, Tompkins and Cortland Counties can

be generalized to the whole region, I believe that the state was certainly trying to ‘serve the purposes of

a very exclusive and restricted minority’ through reforestation programs.



References Cited

Walrath, Frank J.

1927 A History of the Agriculture of Tompkins County, New York. A thesis presented to

the faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Croft, Alfred R.

1932 Some Aspects of the Reforestation Problem in the State of New York. A thesis

presented to the faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

U.S. Census Bureau

1790-2000 Social Explorer; Michael R. Haines. Historical, Demographic, Economic, and

Social Data: The United States

Nobe, K.C., Hardy, E.E. and Conklin, H.E.

1960 The Extent and Intensity of Farming in Western New York State, An Extension

Publication of the New York StateCollege of Agriculture.

Conklin, Howard E. and Linton, Robert E.

1969 Economic Viability of Farm Areas, State of New York, Office of Planning

Coordination.


Final Paper: 05/15/14 U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census

1860 – 2007 Census of Agriculture

1860 – 2010 Census of Population and Housing

Smith, Bryce E., Marks, P.L. and Gardescu, Sana

1993 Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, Vol. 120, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1993), pp. 229-

247: Two Hundred Years of Forest Cover Changes in Tompkins County, New

York

Wurst, LouAnn and Ridarsky, Christina L.

2014 International Journal of Historical Archaeology Vol. 18 No. 2 (Jun. 2014) pp. 224-

241 The Second time as Farce: Archaeological Reflections on the New Deal.

Documents

ANTHR 1160 Final Project, James Rice Award