The Bounty That Surrounds Us

When the Community Preservation Fund gets its well-earned accolades for the good it has done for the East End in the past quarter century, the focus often is on the preservation of land, keeping it from being developed and thus protecting the region from becoming too intensely suburban. Without question, that effort to maintain the region’s rural appeal is a significant, historic accomplishment. But sometimes we forget the importance of the CPF in keeping agriculture alive as a major contributor to the region’s agroeconomy, which has quality-of-life benefits of its own for both farmers and those who live among their cultivated acres.

One of the more striking revelations to come out of the recent Express Sessions event held at Inlet Seafood in Montauk, focusing on efforts to bolster the South Fork’s sustainable agriculture, aquaculture and fishing offerings, is a difference between the farms and the fishing community. The CPF was created to protect land, but it changed the economics in a way that benefited farmers. So far, there hasn’t been a similar intervention that’s tilted the playing field in the fishermen’s favor.

As farmland became much more valuable as building lots, the CPF addressed the inequity and created a nurturing environment for new generations to continue, or to take up, farming. The benefits are seen every day on the many farms that continue to provide a bountiful harvest, and in the apprenticeship programs at places like Quail Hill Farm and Amber Waves Farm, and through the Peconic Land Trust. Farming has evolved, but it’s still a very big part of the South Fork’s identity, despite so many economic trends that could have snuffed it out without intervention.

Turn to the commercial fishing industry, and it’s a very different story. New York State has tried but failed to get better treatment via quotas from the federal government, and the result is fishing boats from other states invading waters that would be the livelihood of New York captains, taking the catch and processing it hundreds of miles away. Like farmers, fishing captains face economic headwinds that are existential for many individuals, which puts the whole enterprise at risk. Unlike farmers, there’s been little effort to level the playing field and keep this traditional East End vocation alive and well.

Both Suffolk County and the two towns on the South Fork are examining what can be done; there are some programs designed to use public money to bolster the commercial fishing infrastructure. But unlike farming, simply preserving land isn’t a strategy with much benefit to those working the sea. To accommodate a more robust fishing economy, there needs to be more protection of marinas and docks, something that the towns are looking to do, but there also must be improvements and expansion of processing locally. That’s development, which is not something government is keen to spend public money on.

In the same way the CPF was a lifesaver for East End agriculture, there might be a need for a concerted effort to provide some much-needed support to the commercial fishing community. Some farmers have found a path to survival by becoming more boutique operations, with smaller footprints, higher-value crops and farm-to-table partnerships. Could a similar approach even work for fishing boat captains? Is there room to apply pressure in Albany and Washington, D.C., to lobby for quotas that will allow the region’s fishing industry to thrive rather than just make a “day’s pay”? Those are important questions that local officials have to start asking.

Meanwhile, there is another message from The Express Sessions conversation that must be heard: Residents have a role to play, and it might have a bigger impact than any lobbying effort.

The East End, and the South Fork in particular, enjoys an absolute bounty: The benefit of having such an active farming, fishing and aquaculture community is that a dinner table set with truly local delights is a celebration. It’s important that both residents and visitors alike recognize this, and that the region’s culinary uniqueness becomes an identifying feature. Whether eating out or making dinner for friends, it should be a given that local fish, produce and shellfish are on the menu. That puts some of the responsibility on the consumer to learn more about what they’re buying, and what’s available, and also on the purveyors to be clear and concise, and to make an effort to stock coolers and shelves with delicious offerings that came out of the ground and waters nearly within sight.

This summer, it’s possible that the international tariff uncertainty will start to take a toll, and much of the produce we find in grocery stores will start to get a little pricier. When that happens, it’s an opportunity for a hungry consumer base to dive headfirst into the farm stands and fish markets locally, and add fuel to a growing appreciation for the banquet that surrounds us — and reinvest in the soil and sea, and the men and women among us who make a living from them, as generations did before them. It’s a delicious investment in the past, present and future.