The Secret Cornell

If you were to list all the actions that Cornell’s government and Cornell’s policy makers have taken against the rural community: it would be the same as despots and bigots have always used against those they targeted for hate and plundering. Agricultural Law steps beyond any pretense of equality; to treat the existing rural population as interlopers: who [as Cornell’s Cooperative Extension Policy Writer publicly proclaimed]: “don’t deserve to live there.” A lawmaking bias further supported by the New York State’s Commissioner of Agriculture and Markets ability to intimidate or compel local governments to modify anything that “unreasonably restricts farm operations” as well as the power define what is a farm operation: “The New York State Court of Appeals has consistently ruled that these orders are entitled to administrative deference in the interpretation and administration of this important right to farm protection.”

It’s worth noting that New York State [and Tompkins County and the Town of Lansing] uses the word “important” whenever agricultural interests are mentioned. No one and nothing else in the rural community, including the health and well-being of its poor and marginalized people, is ever mentioned as being important.

[I’ve already written of how the Lansing Town Board unilaterally rubber-stamped a Farmers zoning plan to strip the non-farming rural residents of almost every land usage they were traditionally permitted.]

 Hate? The county’s rural residents are vilified repeatedly as the ones who “restrict farming,” destroy farmlands with “rural sprawl,” and deplete natural resources through such actions as using well water.

The facts, however, reveal this to be pure propaganda: Cornell’s own Lansing Agriculture Protection Plan states: “Farming is alive and well in the Town of Lansing.” And mentions no restrictions or any attempts at restricting agriculture by the 200-year old rural community: who are unrepresented, poor, and too powerless to have any affect at all on the actions of farmers.

“Rural sprawl” is a term created by Cornell planners to obfuscate their own agenda of unrestricted “Urban sprawl” development in the town of Lansing.  

And it’s the CAFOs that are destroying the rural landscape and depleting its natural resources – Lansing’s largest CAFO landowner uses more water in a day than 5,000 rural residents – and that’s just one CAFO.

Rural Lansing’s residents pay the same tax rates as other county residents; but get no services. County policy denies us any municipal water [even though CAFOs continue to pollute our wells with nitrates and coliform bacteria], no municipal sewers, no mass transit, and no law enforcement [well, we’re allotted one half of a deputy – he’s shared with another town.]

Land hungry CAFOs, urban sprawl development house pricing, and a “grab-and-go” bedroom community school system have taxed rural residents out of their homes and out of the county. From what was once a stable rural community; whose families could be traced back for generations: I’m frequently hearing; “I’m going to move . . .”

I can’t say Cornell’s rural policies and planning are destroying rural Lansing — because they’ve already destroyed it. All that’s left is the clean-up.

They’ve moved on to another victim they can “help.”