By Charlie Elrod, NEAFA President
February 4th was a bright cold morning as leaders from ag organizations across the state gathered for their annual Council of Agricultural Organizations lobby day. This followed on two days of preparatory work reviewing, debating and editing the 70 different policies which make up the Council’s Legislative Recommendations for 2026. In case you’ve never paid much attention to it, CAO is a group of 29 different ag commodity groups covering everything from grapes to hops, dairy producers to veterinarians and everything in between. Herding the 29 groups to accomplish all this is, of course, Sue Van Amburgh, without whom it would certainly be a more difficult undertaking. Thank you, Sue!!
Lobbying together, with each team representing three to four different organizations, feels like a very powerful tool to demonstrate the strength and breadth of agriculture in New York State. For a policy to be included in the 55-page legislative priorities book, it has to be unanimously agreed to by the member groups. Knowing that those policies have the support of thousands of growers, producers and other ag professionals lends a lot of credence to the conversations with legislators and their staffers.
Bonnie Bargstedt and I joined 17 others in attending 41 different legislators across the day. Most of our attention and discussions focused on a few key items:
• Support the Cornell CALS request for $5M in operational and $5M in capital funding to keep Cornell’s array of research farms functional and relevant for all of us.
• Supporting increased funding for PRO-Dairy to $2.6M which includes five new positions and funding for applied research and extension support.
• Supporting, as the Governor did in her budget, an extension to the refundable investment tax credit to 2033. This request went hand-in-hand with making farmworker housing eligible for the investment tax credit and increasing the cap on funding for farmworker housing projects from $200K to $400K.
• While we opposed the proposed Temperature Extreme Mitigation Plan (TEMP) Act, we supported full-funding for the NY Center for Ag Medicine and Health which provides on-farm, science-based training for appropriate heat abatement. We prefer an educational approach rather than a regulatory approach to keeping farm workers safe.
• In the energy sector, we strongly supported the protection of prime farmland from solar project development. We also supported the low carbon fuel standard which will provide a NY-based market for biofuels produced on NY farms.
Of the legislators and staffers that we met with, I felt that we heard a lot of support for our positions. Revisiting some of the downstate legislators that we had met with in NYC back in December, really helped build the relationship and reinforce the idea that in order for their constituents to eat nutritious, local ag products, they need farmers to thrive in the Northeast. Working together with all the other member groups of the CAO provides a very strong message that we are unified in supplying the Northeast, the U.S. and beyond with the highest quality, safest food supply in the world.