Governor Cuomo’s 2011-12 Executive Budget Proposal, released last week, includes good news for efforts to protect farmland in New York. Over the past three years, New York’s Environmental Protection Fund has been nearly cut in half and state funding for the Farmland Protection Program had been cut by 83 percent. In his first budget proposal, Governor Cuomo proposed to hold funding for the Environmental Protection Fund steady at $134 million while allocating $12 million for the Farmland Protection Program.
