
Chris and Curt Gillette on their farm in the town of Jersualem, Yates County, with Keuka Lake in background.
Governor Cuomo has held the line at $12 million in funding for New York’s Farmland Protection Program in his Executive Budget Proposal for fiscal year 2012-2013. This is the same amount he proposed last year, which was supported by the legislature. Although a far cry from the $30 million the program received in 2008, it is a big improvement. During the height of the budget battles in 2010, the program’s available cash was slashed to a mere $5.2 million—not nearly enough to address the backlog of $70 million in farmland protection funds that had been awarded to 61 farm families. As we head into budget negotiations this month, the project backlog has been reduced to $46 million but we still have a long way to go.
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