Several creative initiatives are taking shape under an innovative new center at Warren County Community College, bringing together industry, academic and public sector leaders to develop new ideas and initiatives aimed at building the agriculture sector in northwest New Jersey.

The Warren County Community College Center for Agriculture and Economic Development (CAED) has taken shape over the last year and begun gaining funding and consolidating new thinking that will bolster agriculture in the state.

“By establishing the Center for Agriculture and Economic Development, Warren County Community College directly supports Northwest New Jersey through development of the workforce compatible with its needs and its resources,” said Joseph D. Labarbera, program director for agriculture and economic development at the college.

The center operates think-tank style committees of volunteers who are formulating the optimal and most pragmatic supply chain designs, while it builds the networks needed to make a supply chain work, he said.

Training is also a key goal of the center, coordinating and supporting new programs at area colleges and trade schools and opportunities for area farmers to learn about the latest techniques and technology that will improve their efficiency and bottom line.

Already CAED has helped secure about $980,000 for a food processing center that will benefit the beef cattle industry by providing processing services nearby, while training students with the skills the sector needs.

Three pieces of legislation have been introduced backed by CAED that will benefit the center and its mission and bolster an industry strapped by limited processing resources.

One bill calls for the development of a pilot program to establish a workforce credential system that provides short-course training in meat cutting, food safety, hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP), sanitation, and plant maintenance.

Meanwhile the Processing Establishment Fast Track Act would “establish an expedited, interagency permit review process for qualifying meat, meat food product, and poultry processing”.

A third bill would provide tax credits of up to $5 million for food processing plants.

The center also provides a platform to network the college’s nationally recognized drone-based precision agriculture program, a new business incubator initiative, and an agriculture strategy committee with representatives from the state legislature, federal land state departments of agriculture, county-level agriculture board and higher education specialists

“This center will coordinate several initiatives that are aimed at helping to build the agriculture sector in the region,” Labarbera said. “It will focus on the latest technology, the newest ideas and a collaborative effort that can create systems and facilities that will train workers and aid farmers. While it is near to rural and small farms, Warren County also is close to large population centers, providing a significant agricultural consumer base.”

Warren President Will Austin said the center’s work is valuable to Warren students, area farmers and cattlemen, the regional economy – and to the public.

“This should be the mission of institutions like ours – to benefit our students, the region, the regional agriculture sector and the local economy and environment,” Austin said. “It will provide our students and the farming community with the latest information and training in food processing and sustainable precision agriculture for now and, we hope, lead the region in exploring other key issues in agriculture in the future.”

The $980,000 federal grant has gone to the development of the food processing facility, the Agricultural Educational and Training Center, currently scheduled to be located on a 22-acre parcel in Oxford owned by Warren County and currently under review to transfer to the College for this sole purpose.

WCCC is working with the Northwest New Jersey Food Processing and Innovation Center (FPIC), a non-profit organization in Oxford, on a plan to create the food processing center. It will serve local farmers and provide a location for training students from community colleges, vocational agriculture schools, and culinary institutes.

In connection with the center, Warren County Community College is developing an Agricultural Processing & Meat Sciences Academy, where 10 students will assist certified professionals at the training center and gain credits and training in a field where workers are desperately needed.

This program is designed initially to provide 10 students with 10-credit certificates and as many as five with 60-credit associate degrees in this field where jobs pay well and are plentiful,” Labarbera said. “It operates as a high-skill, industry-integrated academy modeled loosely on Penn State’s meat sciences approach but scaled for Northwest New Jersey.”

He notes that the center is also intended to support an associate’s degree of business administration in agriculture management which by 2028 would enroll about 40 students.

Labarbera said that center would provide workforce development opportunities, improve access to fresh food, provide food options currently unavailable locally and benefit farms raising cattle, who currently must haul their animals significant distances to Pennsylvania and even as far as Vermont for processing.

“Critical to this effort is infrastructure like the FPIC, This state-of-the-art center will be modeled after a Penn State facility, where the college processes its own food raised from a local farm,” he said

This year the center also played a key role in a forum that brought together industry leaders, higher education experts in the agriculture field and established several paths forward for farming in the region.

Plans call for similar monthly forums for a new agriculture strategy committee that brings together experts from various sectors — and for growth of an incubator platform to help develop new ideas, systems and technologies to aid farmers.

The center will connect farmers to markets, connect producers to retail, and oversee an associate of science in business administration, with certificates in precision agriculture technologies, regenerative land management and/or holistic land management, animal husbandry and meat sciences.