Grading and packing guidelines are now available for 18 commonly grown specialty crops in NYS: romaine lettuce, acorn squash, broccoli crowns, Brussels sprouts, sweet corn, green peppers, cucumbers, green cabbage, red cabbage, savoy cabbage, cauliflower, eggplant, green beans, jalapenos, poblanos, Hungarian hot peppers, summer squash, and zucchini.

This is one of two narrated PowerPoint presentations investigating farmers experience with and attitudes towards wholesaling. The project, Assessing Barriers to Wholesaling for Small-Scale Produce Growers: Case Study, ran from 2016-2018. We investigated how some produce growers have fared well with wholesaling and how they got started; while others have been stumbling and have misconceptions about what makes wholesaling successful. A farmer survey was developed and results of the 199 survey respondents are presented in this presentation.

This is the second of two narrated PowerPoint presentations providing further findings from a USDA-AMA funded project, Assessing Barriers to Wholesaling for Small-Scale Produce Growers: Case Study. In this presentation, we provide more information found by diving deeper into the barriers of wholesaling for New York produce growers. The previous video provided information on a large grower survey whereas this video provides more in-depth findings from 8 individual farms selected from 3 focus groups. The farms agreed to provide more details about their marketing experiences, issues, and/or needs. These 8 farms became our 8 case studies; some of the case study farms had wholesaling experience while other farms had no wholesaling experience but were considering moving into that market.

Produce auctions in New York State have been formed so that produce growers have a way of marketing their product to quality minded buyers through open competitive bidding. A map of produce auction locations across the state is provided along with auction days, times, and contact information.

Currently, there are 8 produce auctions in New York State. These auctions are aggregation points that allow local farmers to sell their produce in wholesale lots to buyers from across the region. To document the economic impact of produce auctions on agriculture, local businesses, family farms, and produce buyers, the Cornell Vegetable Program worked with Harvest New York to survey top sellers and buyers.

A new Cornell Vegetable Program video shares general information about produce auctions, how buyers and sellers use the auctions to expand their businesses, and how local communities benefit from them.

To further assist farmers looking to sell into the wholesale markets, the Cornell Vegetable Program has put together some helpful tools. The tools provided here consist of a color photo guide highlighting the grades of some of the most common vegetables grown for wholesale market in WNY. To aid in the visualization of the grading sizes, the templates are available here for you to print off. These are scaled to size and can be used to create sizing templates to be used by workers on the wash and pack lines.