By Kate Hill

Staff Writer

On Oct. 22, Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) of Madison County held its 103rd Annual Meeting via Zoom.

In addition to programming highlights, awards, and a short business meeting, the event also featured comments from Richard Ball, commissioner of agriculture for the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets.

Ball, who has served as commissioner since 2014, discussed NYS agriculture through the lens of COVID-19.

Ball began his remarks with a recap of his recent participation in the Tri-National Agricultural Accord, which took place virtually from Oct. 20 to Oct. 22. The accord represents a longstanding commitment among the senior state and provincial agricultural officials of the United States, Canada and Mexico to work together on agricultural trade and development issues.

“[These are] unprecedented times here,” said Ball. “Disruptions to our work lives, disruptions to our social lives [and] our personal lives, and disruptions to the food supply chain, frankly in all three countries. Part of the time we spent talking about COVID-19 and how we all dealt with that, and there were some lessons to be learned there.”

The commissioner then thanked CCE of Madison County for being part of a community he refers to as “food responders.”

“As you well know and you’ve demonstrated, agriculture was not postponed, it was not canceled,” he said. “Your work went on and it was even more critical. Your role in the ag community was vital and I want to thank you for that . . . With all the additional roles that we took on in this challenging time, the everyday work still had to be done, and you kept doing that, and I appreciate that very much. We all do.”

Ball next discussed some of the work his department has done since the start of the pandemic.

According to the commissioner, the department’s food safety, animal and plant health, and dairy divisions worked seven days a week for a long stretch of time to ensure that the state’s food supply was safe to consume.

“Instead of the department of ag and markets, I felt like we were the department of ag and guidance,” Ball said. “We were asked daily by the executive chamber, the governor’s office, to work with the department of health and the other agencies to develop guidance for how we went forward, how we did things, how we could keep things going.”

Ball noted that his department’s principle focus was on the food supply chain, which had been impacted at both ends — farmers had lost 50 percent of their market, while consumers struggled to locate food on a consistent basis.

The department’s first big challenge, Ball said, was keeping the state’s processing plants running so they could continue to take products from NYS farmers.

“I think it wasn’t a food supply challenge, it was that the food was in one place and it needed to be in another place. . .” Ball said.

The commissioner described the first three weeks of the pandemic as a “whiplash.”

When grocery store shelves started to empty, the governor’s office began questioning the department of ag and markets about the food supply.

“We knew we had supply. . .” Ball said. “I was talking to one of our larger [dairy] co-ops in those [first] weeks. The very first week after the pandemic hit us, they had to redirect over 300 trailer-loads of raw milk away from going to a powder plant or to a cheese plant and back to a fluid milk plant to be put into half gallons and gallons and into the grocery stores. The second week, they had to do the same thing again, [but this time with] 100 trailer-loads. The third week, they were dumping milk . . . It was a whiplash to the fruit world and the vegetable world as well.”

When Ball informed the governor of the milk situation, he was advised to start buying up the surplus milk.

According to Ball, his conversation with the governor marked the genesis of Nourish New York — an initiative that helps people who are food insecure to access the nourishment that they need, while providing a market for farmers to sell their products.

The program provides $25 million in funding to New York’s network of food banks for the purchase of agricultural food products such as produce, meat, eggs, seafood, and dairy products from NYS farms and processors.

“It has been an unqualified success,” said Ball. “I get a report every night on what we’ve done to date — how many pounds of milk, how many pounds of vegetables, how many pounds of fruit — and I can tell you tonight that we are at $19.8 million worth of food that New York State has helped facilitate through the food bank system . . . We took a food community that saw half of their market disappear [and helped them] suddenly find another home. We saw food responders all over the state step up, volunteer, and deliver food, and the work goes on. I can assure you that the lessons we’ve learned and the relationships that we’ve leaned on and developed are going to go on.”

Ball concluded his remarks by discussing a potential silver lining of the pandemic.

The commissioner said he hopes New Yorkers have come to realize the importance of the food supply chain and the importance of the state’s agricultural community.

“I think the farmers and our producers in New York realize who their customers are, and that we need to know each other and we need to be able to rely on each other,” Ball said. “When we face an event like this, we need to not rely on a foreign country or another state or another transportation system, or even the federal government; we need to rely on New York and make sure we can answer the call . . .”

CCE is a network of independent associations with offices located in every county across the state. CCE translates the latest evidence-based findings generated at Cornell University into practical knowledge that is delivered through research-based programs and services to some two million New Yorkers each year. The breadth of CCE outreach includes youth and family programs, farm programs, support services for military veterans and their families, small business development programs, environmental programs, community partnerships, and the 4-H youth development program.

For more information on CCE of Madison County, visit madisoncountycce.org.

View the entire 2020 CCE of Madison County Annual Meeting at youtube.com/watch?v=016Bs-m_65U&feature=emb_logo.