A food hub that would link Upstate farmers to New York City markets may be in the works for the former Guilford Mills plant.
Empire State Development is providing a $50,000 grant for a feasibility study for the hub, according to Don Smyers.
Mr. Smyers, executive director of Cornell Cooperative Extension Schoharie and Otsego Counties, said he’ll meet with officials from Green Recycling Solutions International, which owns the Guilford plant, today, Wednesday.
A food hub would be a collection point for food from the Mohawk Valley and beyond and a distribution center to ship goods Downstate and to other metropolitan areas.
“The idea is food aggregation, or a food hub,” said David Cox, Extension’s ag program leader and the facilitator for the study.
The idea sounds like a giant warehouse, but that’s not the case, Mr. Cox said.
“This is scaling up to a level nobody in this area is used to,” he added. “It’s meant to move food, not store it.”
That’s why Cobleskill is a prime location, Mr. Cox added.
“Schoharie County is very central to Syracuse, Boston, Montreal, New York City,” he said. “We’re well-situated.”
A food hub would fit with GRSI’s proposed plans for Guilford, Barbara Acuff, GRSI’s chief financial officer, said last week.
Although the study hasn’t even started, the food hub already has a name: The Cobleskill Regional Food and Agriculture Enterprise Center.
Expected to take about four months, the feasibility study would have three parts:
•Seeing whether farms in the region have the present and future capacity to supply Downstate.
•Determining if Guilford would have enough additional space for ag processing.
•Develop a procedure for establishing other food hubs in New York.
“The study should show a lot of vitality in the local food system,” Mr. Smyers said.
“The capacity will be here to have the sustainability that can compete in the Downstate market. That’s what I think it’s going to find.”
Because much of Guilford is in the START-UP NY program, a food hub would likely qualify for tax breaks, according to Jason Evans, who directs SUNY Cobleskill’s START-UP program.
So if the study finds that Guilford is the perfect site for a food hub, who’ll run the hub?
It would probably be a private operator or a public-private entity, Mr. Cox said.
And because food hubs exist elsewhere in the US, the operator would likely be experienced.
“They would have to be experienced,” Mr. Cox said, “and experienced in profitability.”