Governor Hochul Awards $10 Million Through New York’s Regional School Food Infrastructure Grant Program

Apr 29, 2024

Governor Kathy Hochul today announced that $10 million has been awarded through round one of New York’s Regional School Food Infrastructure Grant Program. Projects in the North Country and in Western New York were awarded $5 million each to improve meal preparation and distribution for Kindergarten through Grade 12 students. First announced in the Governor’s 2023 State of the State, the program will provide $50 million over five years to eligible applicants in all ten regions of New York State to facilitate the on-site processing and preparation of fresh, nutritious meals, increase the use of more healthy, local New York food products, and provide a boost to New York farmers.

“As Governor, I want to make sure that all New Yorkers have fresh, locally grown, nutritious foods to eat,” Governor Hochul said. “The Regional School Food Infrastructure program tackles this challenge head on by ensuring that our schools have the equipment they need to cook from scratch. This is just one great example of how we’re connecting the dots within our food systems, reducing food insecurity while increasing market opportunities for farmers, and strengthening the resiliency of our state’s food system.”

In each round of the program, two regions will be awarded $5 million each. Two additional regions will be awarded $5 million each in subsequent rounds, until all regions are awarded through five rounds. The projects awarded in round one are:

Buffalo City School District (Western New York) is being awarded $5,000,000 to assist in equipping a commissary that provides nutritional support to 97 schools. Grant funds will be used to establish a vegetable preparation and processing area, ingredient room, packing system, and additional infrastructure necessary to establish contracted delivery of products prepared and packaged using New York ingredients. This award will also support community engagement through a test kitchen and chef brigade passing on locally sourced cooking recipes.
Champlain Valley Educational Services (Clinton-Essex-Warren-Washington BOCES) (North Country) is being awarded $5,000,000 to establish a central food hub, two state-of-the-art educational facilities, and retrofit existing school cafeterias in the North Country region. The project will consolidate school food processing and preparation at the new food hub, while also reducing staffing pressures faced by schools and increasing the nutritional value and local focus of the foods served at 16 component school districts and at CVES BOCES.

Administered by the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, the Regional School Food Infrastructure Grant Program is providing the resources schools need to aggregate, store, process, and prepare farm products, and making it possible to cook fresh, nutritious, scratch made meals for school children. The program also encourages workforce development by providing training to schools, communities, and students for culinary arts, food processing, safe food handling and storage, logistics, delivery, and more, based on community need.

State Agriculture Commissioner Richard A. Ball said, “The Regional School Food Infrastructure program is supporting our farmers while ensuring that our children have enough local, fresh meals to fuel them as they learn. Today’s awarded projects are great examples of how we can collaborate to streamline and strengthen our food system here in New York State. I thank Governor Hochul for her support of this program and congratulate the awardees, and I look forward to seeing the impact that these projects will make in our Western New York and North Country communities.”

State Education Commissioner Dr. Betty A. Rosa said, “Connecting local farms to school nutrition is a win-win for our students and New York’s farmers. Consistent, reliable access to nutritious meals is directly linked to improved student performance and to overall health and well-being. We appreciate the ongoing cooperation of the governor and the Department of Agriculture and Markets in ensuring that all students have access to a healthy diet. Through the Regional School Food Infrastructure Grant Program, we will build upon New York’s ongoing efforts to provide all students with access to healthy and nutritious meals made with fresh and local fruits, vegetables, and dairy products.”

Assistant Superintendent of Management Services for Champlain Valley Educational Services Dr. Eric Bell said, “We are thrilled to receive this grant, as it allows us to prioritize child nutrition by providing nutritious, locally sourced meals made from scratch. The grant enables us to establish a centralized food hub, addressing staffing shortages while enhancing meal quality for students regionally. Additionally, we'll expand culinary arts training in Clinton and Essex County to meet workforce demands. This grant propels us toward creating healthier communities, and we're grateful for the opportunity.”

Buffalo Public School Superintendent Dr. Tonja M. Williams said, “The Buffalo Public Schools provide Buffalo students and those in the community with free locally grown fresh foods while at the same time creating a sustainable new marketplace for local socially-economically disadvantaged farmers and growers. I applaud Governor Kathy Hochul and Agricultural Commissioner Richard Ball for providing this $5 million to help reduce food insecurity and ensure our students continue to receive high-quality nutritious meals that enhance their overall health and improve their readiness for learning. Again, this funding will go a long way towards providing our students with fresh and healthy foods when at school.”

The Regional School Food Infrastructure program builds on New York’s many programs that prioritize local foods in schools, including tools to help school districts procure and purchase farm products from local producers, ensuring that New York remains New York’s first and best customer. The FY 2024 Enacted Budget raised the discretionary threshold for food purchasing for schools to $150,000, a significant increase from the previous threshold.

Additionally, the successful Farm-to-School program connects schools with local farms and food producers to strengthen local agriculture, improve student health, and promote regional food systems awareness. Through the program, the Department of Agriculture and Markets provides financial, technical, and promotional assistance to schools, farms, distributors, and other supporting organizations to bring more local, nutritious, seasonally varied meals to New York students.

The 30 Percent New York State Initiative further facilitates the provision of healthy New York sourced food products to children as part of their lunch meal in school. The initiative increases the reimbursement schools receive for lunches from 5.9 cents per meal to 25 cents per meal for any district that ensures their school lunches are made up of at least 30 percent eligible New York produced and processed products. Since the Department of Agriculture and Markets took over administration of the program as part of Governor Hochul’s 2022 State of the State commitment to better connect farms and schools across New York, the program has seen increased participation from school food authorities, with a total of 59 school food authorities approved to receive enhanced reimbursement during this school year, up from 51 approved for reimbursement last year. In total, more than $8 million was spent on New York agricultural products during the 2022-2023 school year by schools applying for the incentive.

Further supporting these programs, Governor Hochul’s 2024 State of the State laid out a plan for New York’s agricultural industry to become stronger, more resilient, and proactive against future threats spanning the health, environment, labor, and education industries. The Governor announced several major proposals to provide a boost to New York’s dairy and agricultural industries, workforce development programs, and youth leadership and education opportunities, including plans of cross-cutting initiatives that will strengthen the industry and promote a more resilient future for our agriculture, food, and forestry sectors.

Source : ny.gov

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”