State Agriculture Commissioner Richard A. Ball today announced that $1 million is now available for farm and food businesses to purchase equipment for processing, packing, aggregating, storing, and distributing of New York grown or produced food products through the Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) Grant Program. The funding announced today is the second of two grant programs announced last year as part of a cooperative agreement between New York State and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service to expand middle of the supply chain work to create a more resilient food system in New York State.
New York State Agriculture Commissioner Richard A. Ball said, “These equipment-only grants are the second round of funding in the RFSI program, aimed at strengthening and investing in New York’s food systems.
Purchasing critical new equipment will be a game changer for so many farm and food businesses and will allow them to connect more New Yorkers to fresh, local foods. I thank all our partners for their work moving this progressive programming forward and look forward to seeing the impact these projects have on our communities.”