30 Years of Supporting New York
Farms & Food Businesses

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Emerging Markets Training

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CADE is providing training for institutions to receive free professional development and training for staff, including customized support to work with institutions' existing budgets to procure more local food. We have a dynamic group of partners on this project and intend to complement our technical assistance and educational components with matchmaking and marketing support to gain traction in the Farm to Institution market – potentially for your business or institution.

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Farm to School (F2S)

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With 1.7 million lunches served to K-12 students, 180 times a year, this equates to a potential yearly expenditure of $58 million to support healthy food for children and agricultural production, processing, and distribution. This market is currently underutilized.

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Our Goal: CADE’s Farm to School (F2S) work will provide market opportunities for local farm and food businesses to participate in the F2S Supply Chain.

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We believe we must take a systems approach to significantly increase the number of schools capable of procuring locally sourced food by creating a model for closing gaps in the food supply chain, unlocking the potential of NY’s F2S law.

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CADE's USDA funded F2S report will showcase a stakeholder-informed model to close gaps in the regional food supply chain and pave pathways for NY Farmers and school systems to meet the 30% threshold. Come back soon for our report!

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Farm to Pantry (F2P)

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CADE launched in 2020 a Farm to Pantry (F2P) Program with generous funding and community partnership in Otsego County. The program allows pantries to "sign on" to CADE's program where they could then order from a multi-farm aggregator, 607 CSA, to purchase local products for their pantry. CADE facilitates the ordering, handles invoicing and coordinates delivery so that local food ordered by pantries can be purchased with ease. 

 

For several years CADE has been working on advancing partnerships between Farms and Institutions to spur local food sales. As a response to COVID-19 and abundant food insecurity that was highlighted throughout the pandemic, CADE launched in 2020 a Farm to Pantry (F2P) Program with generous funding and community partnership in Otsego County. The program allows pantries to "sign on" to CADE's program where they could then order from a multi-farm aggregator, 607 CSA, to purchase local products for their pantry. CADE facilitates the ordering, handles invoicing and coordinates delivery so that local food ordered by pantries can be purchased with ease. The products ordered from pantries are paid for by community funding, to support a win-win of local fresh food to pantries and a stable market for struggling farm and food businesses. This program and local food is of no cost to pantries, with the hope that relationships with farms would continue beyond the scope of the project. Launching mid-June in 2021, thanks to funding support from the Hunger Coalition of Otsego County, CADE will continue this important work of fresh food security and supporting small farms and food businesses.

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ripeCommunity

 

ripeCommunity is an online Farm to Institution matchmaking platform designed to help bring more local food to communities across New York by connecting institutions, like schools and hospitals, with local farm and food businesses. It aggregates NY’s farms and food suppliers into a single, searchable database of comprehensive profiles, where institutions can conduct targeted searches, filtering based on their specific needs. Farms, food businesses, K-12 schools, hospitals, nursing homes, correctional facilities, food banks, universities and other institutions are invited to create a profile today to start connecting.

 

Created by ripe.io and the Center for Agricultural Development and Entrepreneurship (CADE), ripeCommunity is free and profiles can be viewed by anyone who visits the website, including consumers seeking fresh, local food options.

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CADE's Past Work in F2I

CADE has historically worked in identifying gaps in our local and regional food supply chains and identifying new markets for producers, farmers and food businesses. Related and past projects in this field include:

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• Farm to Institution: Report on research conducted by the Center for Agricultural Development and Entrepreneurship for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Oneida County and the Mohawk Valley Food Policy Advisory Council identified Market Size and Purchasing Behavior in Farm to Institution Supply Chain. The complete report can be found here;

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• Published research in partnership with Farm Catskills and local public schools in Delaware County--“Right Time, Ripe Place: The State of Farm to School in Delaware County, New York”--on closing the gaps in F2S procurement. The project is now moving into a strategic planning phase with CCE-Delaware, Food and Health Network of South Central NY, among others;

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• Conducted a milk market research analysis in 2015 on local capacity for processing and packaging local milk for local schools;

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• In conjunction with CADE’s Sustainability values, CADE assisted in a contract development and campaign to improve public safety by growing market demand for safer antibiotic stewardship. CADE worked intentionally leveraged the incentive of Farm to School subsidies to allow schools to prioritize low-antibiotic use bids in an effort to support more sustainable agriculture .

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If you are interested in getting involved in the Farm to Institution supply chain in the Southern Tier and Mohawk Valley we’d love to hear from you!

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For more information, please contact:

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Kaitlyn Sirna, Senior Program Manager

kaitlyn@cadefarms.org 

Office: 607.433.2545