There’s No Ducking What Curbed Long Island Farms

The agricultural history of the gentrified East End of Long Island is preserved in spots today through pricey row crops and vineyards that were not part of the early 20th century action. Back then, the big harvest was potatoes and there were plenty of local dairies and duck farms. This week’s edition of Dan’s Papers out of Southampton has a solid retrospective on that last sort of agriculture–or more precisely, aquaculture. As the article notes, it was the fouling (fowling?) of local waters that greatly spelled the near-demise of the once-famous local duck trade. Nostalgia for the old days, before incoming urban wealth displaced so much of what shaped the East End from the 1970s, sometimes masks what were real problems then. Pollution of the marvelous bays and ponds didn’t begin with the suburban septic tank (an odd manifestation of today’s greatly-unsewered Suffolk County). Likewise, the crude farm-labor practices of that era–briefly mentioned in Dan’s Papers–would not survive today’s scrutiny. Yes, rapidly escalating land prices (and their tax implications for family farms) had much to do with depleting the region’s agricultural base–on the waterfronts more than anywhere else. But most duck and other farmers of the 1950s could not have handled the environmental and workforce cost structures that exist today. That’s why “farmland preservation” efforts are mostly for token effect, even if their visuals are a nice reminder. (Here’s a recent article that describes the circumstances of Hamptons farming and its “$30 berries.”) –Sept. 7, 2025

Ghosts of the Past: What Happened to Long Island’s Duck Farms?