Cornell Cooperative Extension

This past year, Cornell Cooperative Extension's new staff writer and photographer, was privileged to travel across New York state chronicling the important  work of CCE's great educators and associations.This slideshow represents a few of the moments captured along the way. Thank you to everybody across the CCE system for a great 2016. We look forward to catching up with everybody in 2017.

Malting barley is an essential ingredient for brewing beer. And since its very recent reintroduction to New York agriculture after several decades of prohibition- and disease-induced dormancy, it has also been very challenging to grow to market grade. Those challenges, paired with the rising demands of the state’s three-year old farm brewery law, dominated discussion at the recent Southern Tier Farm Brewery Summit hosted by CCE of Broome County.

“Excellent extension and research programming is not possible without grower involvement and that is where Eden Valley Growers comes into the picture,” said Cornell Cooperative Extension Director Chris Watkins as he awarded  the 50-year old western New York farm cooperative CCE's 2016 Friend of Extension award. “Their member farms are key in connecting university research to real-world farm utility.”

Like hundreds of other school districts in New York, the Buffalo City School District (BCSD) has faced plenty of hurdles with its newly adopted farm-to-school program. From finding suitable partner farms to encouraging student consumption of fruits and vegetables, districts like BCSD are encountering growing pains with beefed up farm-to-school programs.