Arthur Wolcott ’49 went to an auction in Dundee, New York as a Cornell senior, looking for a good deal on a typewriter. Instead, he bought a bankrupt grape juice plant (which, not incidentally, included at least one typewriter). Thus began his collaboration with the food science faculty and experts at Cornell as he grew what would become Seneca Foods from a struggling company with $110,000 in revenue its first year in 1949 to the $1.5 billion publicly traded company it is today.

In recognition of that synergistic 75-year relationship, the Seneca Foods Foundation has announced a $10 million gift to the Cornell Food Venture Center (CFVC) at AgriTech, which helps food producers of all sizes bring their products to market. 

“Since its launch in 1997, the Cornell Food Venture Center has been a catalyst for food and agricultural business development, bringing more than 40,000 food products to market by connecting entrepreneurs with the resources, expertise and innovation they need to succeed,” said Benjamin Houlton, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). “This new chapter in Cornell’s longtime partnership with Seneca Foods will ensure that the center’s purpose-driven science provides even greater benefits for our food economy.”

The largest gift in AgriTech’s history, it will grow the food economy in New York state and beyond, providing new processing and production innovation, regulatory compliance guidance, training, product stability and safety evaluation to the food industry.

“This gift really solidified the partnership that has been ongoing for 75 years between Seneca Foods and Cornell, especially Cornell AgriTech,” said Christine Smart, the Goichman Family Director of Cornell AgriTech and associate dean in CALS.

Half of the gift will endow the CFVC and name its state-of-the-art pilot plant, and the other half will endow a named professorship and director of the CFVC.

“It ensures that we will have outstanding leadership moving into the future,” Smart said, “and will allow companies to look at their processing and packaging to ensure food safety and a quality product. The ability to do things on a small scale in the pilot plant is huge­ – it enables companies to better test the market and predict food trends by trying different things and running sensory panels.”

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This transformational gift comes at a time of explosive new product growth for consumer package goods, as well as a looming regulatory compliance deadline. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Food Safety Modernization Act will soon require many food companies to keep additional records and to share traceability data to more rapidly identify problems such as foodborne illnesses. This means many food companies will have to employ a raft of new technologies.

“A gift like this ensures that new food products will meet the expectations of consumers, and that products will be safe and in compliance with new regulations, which keep changing over time,” said Olga Padilla-Zakour, professor of food processing in the Department of Food Science and the director of the Cornell Food Venture Center. 

She spoke of traditional thermal technologies used in food processing to keep foods safe and stable, as well as newer nonthermal technologies that employ high pressure processing to kill microorganisms, or the use of short, high-voltage electric pulses, or membrane separation technologies such as ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis, and an array of other technologies that have been introduced. 

“This gift gives us a solid foundation in perpetuity to continue support for entrepreneurs,” Padilla-Zakour said. 

Paul Palmby, the current president and chief executive officer of Seneca Foods, said that Wolcott initially turned to Cornell for manufacturing advice and guidance on best practices.

“In the early days, Art worked with Cornell in establishing some of the processing techniques he used in his businesses and that were instrumental to our early success. We always thought it would be great to someday use our foundation to support Cornell and when we raised the idea to Kraig Kayser, who was CEO from 1993 until 2020, he was very supportive,” Palmby said. “I started with Seneca in 1987 and have seen a lot in the food industry, and quite honestly, when I visited the Cornell Food Venture Center, I was blown away.”

Kayser, MBA ’84, is now chair of the Cornell Board of Trustees.

The work undertaken at CFVC covers a broad spectrum of the food industry, with potential impacts far beyond Seneca Foods, Palmby said. “The food industry is so large, and we all have our little area of it.”

But he said it is via new science and collaborative research efforts that the U.S. continues to have the safest food supply in the world. 

“We are always looking for the next new technology,” he said, “and Cornell Food Venture Center at AgriTech is key to that.”

Michael Wolcott, Seneca’s chief financial officer, says the pilot plant will help both entrepreneurs and established companies alike test new formulas and products. 

“I expect it will spark new business opportunities in the region like it did for Seneca Foods 75 years ago,” he said.