New York State Economic Impact
Quick Recap: Prasenjit and I are students at Cornell Tech doing research on building a platform to connect farmers with institutional buyers like hospitals or schools. We want to compare local vs. non-local food on price and food miles. Our goal is to show that by buying directly from local farmers buyers can save on both. I used to be a farmer in Upstate New York.
So far, our adventure has included Qualitative Interviews, exploring the Ag Census, and finding data on the Origin of Every Product. We’re building an algorithm that matches farmers and buyers.
Now, we’re diving deeper into the business case for Empire State of Food.
When I found The Public Plate in New York State report, I felt like a gift had fallen into our laps. They lay out a lot of information about how much local food public institutions in NYS buy, confirmed a lot of my hunches and attach dollar values to all of it. Very exciting stuff.
Our first target market is New York State public institutions. Currently, they only purchase 10% of their food from New York State. This is an information problem — making sure small and mid-scale producers have access to this market requires circumventing the traditional channels using the Empire State of Food platform. Increasing their purchases of “fresh, minimally processed” food from 10% to 25% would have a significant economic impact on New York State.
Public institutions in this context includes emergency food programs, state-operated facilities like prisons and mental health facilities, k-12 schools, public hospitals, public universities, and office for the aging programs. New York State spends more than $957 million to feed approximately 6.6 million people annually. Increasing local food purchasing by 15% would keep $208,357,021 more in New York State, most of that being in Central New York, the Finger Lakes and the Southern Tier where there is more opportunity for small agricultural producers to scale up once they have access to wholesale markets.
New York State public institutions are only the beginning. New York is home to 307 degree granting institutions that educate millions of students every year. The Hotchkiss School has set the standard for institutional sourcing at 60% local food. The economic impact on New York State could be much closer to $500 million dollars annually.
By keeping our food dollars in New York State small and mid-scale agricultural producers will have access to more consistent wholesale markets and room to expand their production. Agricultural service providers will also be impacted with an increase in business for feed mills, veterinarians, processors and consultants supporting this uptick in agricultural activity.
Importantly, it will also make gaps in the local food supply visible. If there is the potential for buyers to be sourcing a product locally, but no one in the network is currently producing it, we will put out the request to the network. This creates opportunities for farmers to diversify the products that they produce, allowing them to have more resilient businesses especially in the face of uncertain commodity prices like the dairy industry.
As a SUNY grad and someone who grew up in Upstate New York, it would be really powerful to bring local food and jobs to more New Yorkers.
