CREATE AGRIBUSINESS OPPORTUNITY ZONES

Challenge: A primary hurdle to developing the State’s agricultural sector is meeting the job count requirements of the State to trigger state supported financial assistance. Despite the Empire State Development Corporation’s interest in working with the agriculture industry, the agencies current focus is assistance to expanding or developing new food processing plants. Even though a food plant is a large employer, a study from Cornell University demonstrated that for every job created at a food processing plant, 4.72 jobs supporting that job are created down the food chain.  Most of these jobs are distributed throughout our local rural communities in the form of support industries, supply companies and production agriculture jobs.

Today, New York’s agricultural industry earns more than $3 billion at the farm gate and $40 billion when entire food and agriculture system is counted. Despite these numbers, there is significant potential for growth in the production and processing/ manufacturing sector. The State’s rich soil and water resources and its close proximity to New York City positions our agricultural industry strongly.  With assistance in the form of an Agribusiness Opportunity Zone, New York’s potential as a major agricultural economy could be more fully realized.

Create incentives for market expansion for New York agricultural commodities by providing Empire Zone type benefits to companies that purchase raw agricultural commodities produced in New York.

• Design a benefits package for “Agribusiness Opportunity Zones” modeled on the existing Empire Zones structure.
• Qualifying characteristics should include some job creation factors.  More importantly, they should also require the purchase of a substantial portion of their raw agricultural inputs from New York farmers. Benefit levels could be tied to the overall percentage of raw agricultural inputs purchased from New York farmers.

Engage a wide range of industry stakeholders in refining and approving this program, and create a level of visibility that sends an unmistakable signal to state government on the importance of the agricultural industry.