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The 800 pound butter sculpture of a scene off the farm (seen here on the World Dairy Business Blog) is usually the headliner at the Dairy Building of the New York State Fair.But people wait in a long line for another hot item being used to promote New York’s dairy industry: a cup of milk that costs a quarter at the dairy bar.That includes a young James Moore, who says "It’s the best chocolate milk and white milk I’ve ever tasted in my life." "The Chocolate is more chocolaty and it’s nice and cold."The milk is all whole milk, which probably helps. Chocolate milk rules overall. The milk bar serves five cups of chocolate for every cup of plain milk.Mary Ellen Chesbro, agricultural manager for the fair says the total cups served goes up every year. This year, she's hoping the milk bar will top 400,000 cups of milk out this year.The whole operation is run by a task force of volunteers from the dairy industry, from farmers to distributors. The goal is to promote New York dairy – the state’s biggest agricultural product.Seventeen-year old Dale Durant, who serves milk to fairgoers says it can get pretty busy at the counter."Really nice days there’s a lot of people here. Weekends we get really busy."So to get a taste, go when it’s raining.And keep an eye out for the other smart entrepreneurial move in the Dairy building - the Syracuse bakery selling cookies next to the milk bar.

New York's looking at you, Pennsylvania!

Visiting New Yorkers meet a farmer with a well. Front and center, Pennsylvania dairy farmer Carolyn Knapp is wearing and seeing red.
Emma Jacobs
/
WSKG
Visiting New Yorkers meet a farmer with a well. Front and center, Pennsylvania dairy farmer Carolyn Knapp is wearing and seeing red.

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/national/local-national-961957.mp3

Dan Fitzsimmons has a beautiful view. That has to do with natural gas drilling drilling because the hills of his property a few miles south of Binghamton now mostly reclaimed by scrub.

Fitsimmons used to farm here, but his operation has been locked in a slow decline for decades as he has struggled to cover investments, his taxes, and his $6,000 winter heating bill. 

Fitzsimmons has sold equipment piece by piece. "Next thing you know you start selling lots,” he says.

A possible reprieve

However, under Fitzsimmons land there’s much sought after Marcellus Shale gas. Fitzsimmons hasn’t signed a lease yet because of the moratorium on, 'fracking,' the process used to extract the gas in New York State, but he hopes he’ll be able to use the royalties to bring back his farm like he’s seen in Pennsylvania.

New York isn't extracting too much gas from the Marcellus Shale, but Pennsylvania is drilling, and New Yorkers like Fitzsimmons are watching. 

“You see orchards going in,” he says. “Those are brand new baby trees that people are putting in.  You see truck farming going in now. People are putting in crops."

Taking to the road

Alot of people are heading south. Elected officials, concerned citizens, the chief of Ithaca’s Fire Department have all traveled to Northern Pennsylvania to try and understand what natural gas drilling could mean for the region.

On a hot, late summer afternoon, three visitors from Ithaca pile into a pickup with two Pennsylvania dairy farmers. Carolyn Knapp is piloting the truck down a rural road when there’s suddenly a commotion in the car.

An enormous mound rises up just a few feet behind three small homes. The raised area is an impoundment pond, a lined artificial basin that stores water the drillers use in an extraction process called ‘fracking’.

“That is something!” exclaims one of the visitors. Knapp agrees.

“Isn’t that close.”

Knapp pulls over on the property. Both of the farmers know the owner. They say he is beside himself over the pond. He was promised by the lease negotiator that it would go across the road, but once the contract was signed, Chesapeake Energy, a gas firm, started building in the backyard. Knapp says her first conversation with him lasted two and a half hours.

“This was one of the aha moments for [fellow guide] Carol and I,” Knapp says. “We stopped one day because we just said what would possess families to put it in their backyard. And it wasn’t that.”

The pond went up even though the landowner had taken his contract to a lawyer before signing. Tour guide, Carolyn Knapp did not have the same foresight. She signed a lease years ago with a local company, before the value of gas was well known. She got $85 an acre. Today, she would get $5000 or $6000.

“You do find there are a lot of people don’t open up to you until you tell them you’ve made a big mistake, “Knapp observes. “Because they don’t want to be the first person to say, we screwed up. You know. Because we’re all in it together.”

The Pennsylvania farmers have been trying to organize landowners to write better contracts and get better compensation for their land. But Knapp is cautious. After years now, people still don’t spot potential problems in contracts, and the pace of drilling is picking up.

Fitzsimmons: I've taken precautions

North of the border, landowner, Dan Fitzsimmons says he sees aggressive landmen and faulty leases. But he thinks he knows enough now to avoid the mistakes others have made.

He’s taken precautions, he says. “To have it be the best that I can have it be.”

“I can go out in the dark and I can find my way around and know exactly where I am,” Fitzsimmons says of his property. “I know all the trees all the rocks. I know everything. And I would never be able to go someplace, buy any other land and do that again in my life.”

For now, Pennsylvania is still New York’s guinea pig. The outcome of the experiment is still uncertain.

More reading:

Pennsylvania farmers look to other states for guidance in a story from Time from 2008.

Former WRVO/Central New York reporter for the Innovation Trail.
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