The Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation, Big Y Foods in Springfield, Massachusetts, and two other organizations awarded 47 farmers from the Berkshires to the Pioneer Valley $2,500 each to make physical infrastructure improvements to their farms. The goal of the Local Farmer Awards is to strengthen farmers’ ability to compete in the marketplace.
Along with the generous support of sponsors, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation and MGM Springfield, farmers already have put to use the award for projects for farm improvements. This represents a 42 percent increase in awards from the 2015 inaugural year.
A winner from 2015 and 2016, Julia Coffey of Mycoterra Farm in Westhampton, Massachusetts, said, “We are thrilled to be a Local Farmer Award recipient. The projects that these awards have helped fund are making our farm more viable.”
This year, Coffey is purchasing equipment required for outfitting a commercial kitchen that will allow the farm to manufacture value-added food products with unsold fresh mushrooms.
Jennifer Salinetti, owner of Woven Roots Farm in Tyringham, Massachusetts, will be installing a permanent vegetable wash station that will directly impact the farm’s productivity; and Gideon Porth of Atlas Farm in Deerfield, Massachusetts, will be installing a pump system for a new well to increase the supply of potable water for the farm’s packing house and greenhouses, which will double its current watering abilities.
Harold Grinspoon, founder of the Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation who launched the Local Farmer Awards in 2015, said, “Farmers don’t typically ask for help. They are genuinely appreciative of these awards and use the money in creative ways for projects to help their businesses.”
Charlie D’Amour, president and COO of Big Y, added, “Through our partnership with the Grinspoon Foundation we are providing one more way to help local growers thrive in our community.”
