Agriculture in New York suffered a huge setback last month when the U.S. Senate failed to act on immigration reform.

After weeks of back and forth negotiations, in early July they voted against moving forward.

I should quickly point out that both Sen. Chuck Schumer and Sen. Hillary Clinton voted in favor of reform, which included an AgJobs provision.

We’re back to the drawing board on an issue that is of critical importance to farming here in New York.

Our remaining hope is that Congress takes up AgJobs as a stand-alone measure. Sen. Schumer promised as much in June when he visited John Radliff’s dairy farm in Cobleskill.

We all know that this issue is of crisis proportions. As the mass exodus of workers flees Upstate New York, our industry will be even more dependant on a migrant labor workforce in the future—a legal one.

As Congress failed last month, a bellwether of sorts on this issue was announced.

Computer giant Microsoft said that they'll be building a software development plant in Canada because they can't get the visas they need for skilled high tech workers in the U.S., and Canada is less restrictive on immigration.

We’ll continue to lobby hard on this issue and try to keep it on the front burner.

Meanwhile, Gov. Spitzer last month signed the expander bill for the Environmental Protection Fund. Great news! This program pays for much of our agricultural non-point source abatement programs and farmland protection efforts. We thank Sen. Marcellino and Assemblyman Sweeney for their work on the bill.

Some exciting news out of Albany last month. The governor announced that workers' compensation rates were just decreased by 20 percent.

If you recall, Governor Spitzer and the Legislature passed landmark reform this winter. Rates were expected to decrease— but 20 percent was beyond expectations.

This is a great step forward towards improving New York's business environment, but there is still a lot of work to do.

A report was recently issued by the Empire State Development Corp. on ways to revitalize Upstate New York. Shockingly, New York agriculture was not included as a significant industry to assist to revitalize Upstate.

This comes after NYFB testified at a senate hearing in June on this topic. We hope to meet with ESDC Chairman Gunderson shortly to discuss the importance of the ag industry to all sectors of New York's economy, environment, and consumers.