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Congressman Michael Arcuri (left) and Frank TurekCongressman Michael Arcuri was in town Tuesday as part of a tour of eastern Fingerlakes farms and wineries.  Arcuri visits local businesses during the course of the year to find out first hand what challenges they face and to ask them what Congress can do to help make New York businesses more competitive.  Stops included Fessenden Dairy in King Ferry, Standing Stone Vineyards in Hector, and Dickman Farms Greenhouses and Garden Center in Auburn.  The first stop was King Ferry's Turek Farms, a large family-owned business that provides produce to major grocery chains here and abroad.

Arcuri arrived Tuesday morning to talk with Frank and Jason Turek, along with Cornell Cooperative Extension and New York Farm Bureau representatives.  The Tureks showed Arcuri pictures of their operation, which includes over 4,000 acres of farm land in Cayuga and Tompkins counties devoted to sweet corn, green beans, cabbage, squash, fall ornamentals, and pumpkins.


Frank Turek told Arcuri that food quality standards need to be uniform for large and small farms alike, and that a better USDA presence is needed in upstate New York.  He said that the high cost of doing business in New York State puts local farmers at a competitive disadvantage, and noted that estate tax laws threaten family farms' ability to stay in business.  Arcuri said that he is a member of the 'Blue Dog' coalition of conservative congressmen from largely rural areas that has been pushing reform of estate taxes to help keep family farms open.

The Tureks told Arcuri that today's government regulations mean assigning one person full time to deal with forms and paperwork.

"They're taking the farming out of farming," Jason Turek said.

The discussion was followed by a brief tour of the farm, which included packing/processing areas and a ride through a squash field.  Turek Farms packages its produce directly into crates that are delivered to stores like Wegmans or Walmart.  Food trucked from the farm to locations including New York City are literally farm fresh, coming from the field to the store, sometimes within a day's time.

A 4-wheel drive ride through squash and caulifower fields gave Arcuri a chance to see some of the 150 or so migrant laborers the farm employs, picking, washing, and packaging produce in the field.  Jason Turek told the Congressman that the farm is forced to hire migrant laborers for the very hard seasonal work that he says local unemployed people aren't interested in doing.  He noted that the work is physically difficult, and that he hires the same proven workers year after year.  But some crops were left to rot in the field because there is not enough labor to harvest them.


Arcuri saw another group of workers inside a building used for cleaning and packaging, asking questions about the process, and getting a sense of the costs and weather challenges modern upstate farmers face.

The ride through the muddy, water-soaked field highlighted a challenge New York farmers face, with changeable weather and lots of rain.  But Arcuri said that as California faces growing water shortages and water rights fights, New York will have an advantage in the produce market because of its abundance of water.

"When we become the Empire State again it will be because of water," he said.

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