National Young Farmers Coalition, Inc.

In a state as large as New York, a steady stream of smart, innovative work is coming from NYHealth grantees and non-grantees alike that is relevant to NYHealth’s priority areas of Building Healthy Communities and Empowering Health Care Consumers and its focus area on Veterans’ Health.

These organizations should be elevating their work and informing key stakeholders at regional, statewide, and national conferences, meetings, and other convenings. Yet, because of a lack of resources, they are often unable to do so. To address this issue, NYHealth awarded grants through its Sponsoring Conference Participation in Support of Healthy Communities, Consumer Empowerment, and Veterans’ Health Request for Proposals (RFP). Through this RFP, NYHealth sponsored low-resource organizations to attend and present at local, State, and national conferences related to these areas. In 2017, NYHealth awarded the National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC) a grant to participate in this initiative as part of its efforts to support healthy communities.

With NYHealth funding, one NYFC staff member attended the 2017 annual National Association of State Departments of Agriculture meeting. The staff member learned more about food and agricultural policies, as well as shared NYFC’s knowledge about issues critical to its work, including farmland conservation, farmer grants, and WIC/SNAP promotion The NYFC staff member also had the opportunity to cultivate contacts with other agriculture organizations, ensuring that young farmers’ voices are heard and included in agricultural policy recommendations.

View a complete list of conference participation grantees.