New York state has expanded its Grown & Certified agricultural program to dairy products, and chose a longtime supporter of local farms for the rollout Thursday.
Stewart’s Shops will begin featuring the NYS Certified label on certain products on its shelves in July. The Saratoga County-based company hosted the announcement by Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul at its store on Clifton Park Center Road on Thursday morning.
New York State Grown & Certified was conceived in 2015 and launched in 2016 with fruits and vegetables. Fifty four fruit and vegetable producers farming 34,204 now participate in the program. The inclusion of dairy products is part of an expansion to all agricultural products, said Richard Ball, state commissioner of agriculture and markets.
For dairy consumers, he explained Thursday, it says three things:
The product was produced on a local farm.
Food safety guidelines were followed in its production.
The farm where it originated follows good practices of environmental stewardship.
It is both promotional and educational.
“The certified program is a way to talk to our customers, whether they be consumers, grocery stores, restaurants, wholesalers or retailers,” said Ball, himself a farmer.
Stewart’s Shops President Gary Dake said the program is a natural fit for the company.
“This isn’t really a change for us in how we process,” he said. “We’ve always been committed to local agriculture — milk from local farms, eggs from local farms.
“It’s a symbiotic relationship we have with the state of New York where they’re trying to promote the same things we are. It’s nice to see that public private partnership work so well.”
The Dake family has been in the dairy business since 1917. They began commercial ice cream production in 1921, and the first Stewart’s Shop opened in Ballston in 1945. Today, the company is headquartered in Malta, has its production facility in Greenfield, and operates more than 335 shops in New York and Vermont. Its more than 4,500 employees own nearly 40 percent of the company through a stock ownership program.
Dake said the company buys all its milk from within a 50-mile radius, where the bulk of the farms are small family-owned operations, as opposed to the massive dairy operations in the Midwest.
“By buying local, we’re helping keep those people in business and everything doesn’t go out to the big flat states,” he said.
Stewart’s gets its eggs from Thomas Poultry Farm through a longstanding relationship that predates the entry of Gary Dake and Brian and Jennifer Thomas into their respective companies.
“It’s wonderful to be able to partner with a local Saratoga County farm,” Dake said. “We pick up the eggs at the farm every day, bring them back to our warehouse, then ship them out to stores the next day. So the egg you get in a Stewart’s store is days out of a chicken instead of potentially weeks or even months if it comes from out of state.”
Dake said Stewart’s doesn’t expect to add or drop any suppliers as it starts using the NYS Certified label on milk, ice cream and eggs.
Source: The Daily Gazette
Link: https://dailygazette.com/article/2017/06/08/state-boosts-dairy-farmers-with-certification-program