Brothers Behind NY Chips Protect Farmland
The Marquart family has completed a significant farmland protection project on lands in Orangeville and Wethersfield, placing four conservation agreements on their land in partnership with Genesee Valley Conservancy.
These agreements require that the land remains open and available for farming, forever into the future. Covering over these soil resources with commercial, residential and industrial structures is no longer an option on this ground.
Two generations of brothers are behind the Marquart Brothers Farm protection project. The third generation of brothers Thomas and Edward Marquart and the fourth generation brothers of Adam, Aaron and Alex Marquart.
A total of 1,208 acres in the towns of Wethersfield and Orangeville, Wyoming County, are now protected by conservation agreements. The protected farmland is comprised of 60% USDA Prime soil and 27% NY State Important soils.
NY Chips
The Marquart brothers are the farmers behind NY Chips, a brand found on grocery store shelves in the region. Their flavors are unique among the chip aisle, featuring Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, Anchor Bar, and Weber’s mustard to name some of their local flavor partnerships.
Farm History
Herbert and Dimira Marquart moved to the area from Buffalo in 1943, starting the farm on 80 acres of land, milking 12 cows. The next generation took over operations in 1965 and expanded the herd to 120 cows. In the 70’s, the family grew their first potato, using a 1 row planter. Fifty acres were hand-picked this first season.
The farm quickly saw the vision of specializing in a potato crop, adding potato storage in the late 70’s that would hold up to 6 million potatoes. The farm operation grew over time, still maintaining a dairy component to this day, but potatoes remain a unique aspect of their crop production. In the early 2000’s, the family decided to make a major decision and double-down on their focus on potatoes by upgrading their food-safe storage facility and processing area to handle over 50 million pounds of potatoes annually. This kind of investment in the business requires a families full support and sets the direction of the business for decades to come. As you can imagine, the farm is no longer hand-planting their potato crop. They operate several tractors specialized to plant and harvest these crops to ensure the potato is not damaged and can be cleaned and stored until processing into chips (NY Chips) or French fries (NY Spuds). Their NY Spuds brand consists of packaged potatoes sold directly to restaurants across New York and out-of-State for making French fries.
While potatoes are the star of the show because they benefit from the direct-to-consumer aspect of the chips that result, the farm operates similarly to other farms, rotating crops amongst their fields and producing a variety of cash-crops that go to market. Crop rotation helps achieve some business diversity while also best utilizing and returning nutrients into the soils to allow the fields to continually produce crops year in and year out. Rotating in and out of potatoes, along with other crops, makes for the right balance that keeps this farm operating at a high level with quality crops and high yields.
Summary
This conservation project involved accepting four conservation easements, including the Conservancy’s 165th in its 35-year history, as well as the first in both the towns of Wethersfield and Orangeville.
This project was the result of a collaboration between Genesee Valley Conservancy, Wyoming County Board of Supervisors, Wyoming County Agricultural and Farmland Protection Board, Town of Wethersfield, Town of Orangeville and New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets.
To-date, the farmland protection program of Genesee Valley Conservancy has resulted in over $53 million being invested in protecting over 28,200 acres of some of the State’s most productive agricultural lands, right here in the Genesee Valley.
Genesee Valley Conservancy works throughout the Genesee River watershed to protect high quality habitat, open space and farmland for the community. The Conservancy now oversees the protection of 39,766 acres.
Landowners in the Genesee River watershed interested in pursuing conservation options for their property, be it farmland, habitat, or a potential public nature preserve, should contact Genesee Valley Conservancy for more information.
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Genesee Valley Conservancy is a nationally accredited non-profit conservation organization working to protect the habitat, open space and farmland in the Genesee River watershed. Over 39,766 acres of natural habitat and productive farm and forest land have been conserved by Genesee Valley Conservancy in partnership with private landowners. The organization also owns nature preserves open to the public for recreation and education. For more information visit www.geneseevalleyconservancy.org