AEM Award Winners
We award two farms with the Agricultural Environmental Management (AEM) Award a year at the Niagara County Fair Farmer's Breakfast. Award winners a given a building plaque to hang at their farms with pride.
AEM is a program for advancing voluntary conservation on farms. Our office provides assessments, planning, and technical services to farms to assist them with efforts to protect the environment. We develop conservation plans and design best management practices to be implemented by the farm.
The AEM program helps farms continue to support our economy, protect our natural resources, provide open space and wildlife habitat, and a quality of life we all can enjoy.
2025 Award Winners
The 2025 awardees were Smith Farms in the Town of Royalton and Robinson Farms in the Town of Cambria.
Robinson Farms installed an agri-chemical handling facility to limit the potential of soil and water contamination while filling sprayers. The building gives them a fully contained concrete pad that collects any spills during storage, mixing and filling operations at the farm to protect both surface water and groundwater in the sandy soils at the farm. The farm also plants cover crops each year to protect the soil from erosion, prevent nitrogen leaching in the sandy soil and to improve soil health on the farm. We have also worked with on field drainage and designing tile systems to improve the drainage and ultimately the yields on their farmland.
Steve Smith has utilized the districts inter-seeder to plant cover crops into his field corn. He participated in a NYS Ag non-point source pollution abatement grant and planted over 450 acres of a cover crop mix of rye, clover, and radish. The cover crops reduce erosion, fix nitrogen, increase organic matter, improve infiltration and reduce nutrient loss through the winter months. He also participated in a Penn State research grant on the use of cover crops to improve soil health.
Pictured are our 2025 AEM Farm of the Year Winners with District staff.
Greg Robinson, Mark Seider, Steve Smith, and Dave Reckahn
2024 Award Winners
The 2024 awardees were Lakeshore Dairy in the Town of Wilson and Freatman Farms in the Town of Cambria.
Freatman Farms installed an agri-chemical handling facility to limit the potential of soil and water contamination while filling sprayers. The facility gives them a fully contained concrete pad that collects any spills during storage, mixing and filling operations at the farm. The facility was constructed on three feet of fill to protect it from inundation from future storm events like the one we had in July 2021 and it protects the groundwater in the sandy soils located at the farm. The farm also plants 70 acres of cover crops each year to protect the soil from erosion and improve soil health on the farm.
Lakeshore Dairy has implemented many projects over the years but the last two involved the collection and treatment of silage leachate from the bunk silos at the farm. They are currently installing a bunk silo and have installed a system to collect, contain and store any concentrated leachate running off the feed storage area along with a vegetated treatment area to treat runoff during storm events. They also have installed a concrete low flow collection channel on their existing bunk silo to make the maintenance and operation of the collection system easier to maintain and more efficient in the collection of leachate.
Pictured are our 2024 AEM Farm of the Year Winners with District staff.
Ross Kain, Mark Seider, and Jeff Freatman
2023 Award Winners
2023 awardees were Goodman Farms in the Town of Wilson and Chaffee Farms in the Town of Somerset.
Goodman Farms installed an agri-chemical handling facility to limit the potential of soil and water contamination while filling sprayers, upgraded their petroleum storage facility to provide secondary containment on their storage tanks, installed a roof water management system to convey clean roof water clean to a drainage channel without picking up sediments from driveways and storage areas, installed three high tunnels, planted field borders and have planted cover crops to improve soil health for several years.
Chaffee Farms installed silage leachate collection systems and vegetated treatment areas to treat the runoff from their bunk silos, installed concrete walls along animal walkways to prevent manure laden runoff from the heavy use areas, increased their waste storage capacity to allow the farm to apply the nutrients from the liquid manure at the most opportune times for uptake by the field crops and have planted cover crops on the farm each year to improve soil health.
Pictured are our 2024 AEM Farm of the Year Winners with District staff.
Dave Reckahn, Brendan Monaco, and Mark Seider
2009 Award Winners
Three farms were awarded in 2009. They were Gasport View Dairy, Atwater Dairy Farm, and McCollum Farms.
The three farms implemented barnyard runoff management systems and silage leachate management systems at their farms to help protect our streams. The practices installed reduce sedimentation and nutrients getting to the creeks by containing and storing contaminated runoff from storm events. The runoff is stored until it can be spread at more opportune times of the year or is treated through vegetated treatment areas.
Pictured are our 2009 AEM Farm of the Year Winners with District staff.
Ben Atwater, Roger White, Mark Seider, and Dave McCollum
