Lieutenant governor gets inside look at Franklin County food system

A day after Gov. Maura Healey signed the fiscal year 2027 state budget, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll hit the road to see some of the state’s past investments in local food systems in action.

Outside the Franklin County Community Development Corporation’s Western Massachusetts Food Processing Center in Greenfield on Friday, Director of Operations Liz Buxton broke down its role in the region. The team at the center packs and stores products for local farms and small businesses, and provides the training and space for entrepreneurs in the food industry to fine-tune their recipes and launch their businesses.

“We feel we’re a pretty important cog in the whole food system,” Buxton told the crowd of city and state officials before the group headed inside.

The crowd then got an inside look at the process behind the center’s products as they watched employees process garlic pesto. Around the corner, Ash Overbeek, founder and owner of Pearle Caviar, explained the start of her creation.

While working in the luxury event business at art galleries, she noticed a gap in the menu: plant-based caviar.

“I think it’s a wonderful way to make an event feel special and elevate the food, but I saw videos of how caviar was produced, and that didn’t really sit right with me,” Overbeek said.

Fifty test recipes later, she settled on a mix of seaweed, soy sauce and tomato.

“The only place that was willing to take a chance on this totally new culinary innovation was here at the Western Mass Food Processing Center,” Overbeek said. “I don’t think this product would exist without the CDC.”

After the tour, the group got a chance to taste Overbeek’s idea for themselves as Franklin County CDC Executive Director John Waite mentioned the state support that has strengthened the Western Massachusetts Food Processing Center, including the Massachusetts Food Trust Program that aims to spread access to healthy food at an affordable price.

Driscoll described the center as an agile “hub that’s driving the local economy.”

“We see food and agriculture as such an important industry in Massachusetts, particularly in western Massachusetts,” Driscoll continued. “This is a necessary part of the scaffolding in that whole food system.”

Next, Driscoll and her team drove to Clarkdale Fruit Farms in Deerfield to hear from owner Ben Clark and taste a few more Franklin County offerings.

While sipping on the farm’s apple cider, Clark stressed the importance of the state continuing its support for the farm as it navigates unexpected challenges like the overnight frost in April that hit their signature peach crops. After heavy rains flooded farms in 2023, the Healey-Driscoll administration established the Farm Resiliency Fund and distributed $20 million in disaster relief to help farmers recover.

“The Healey-Driscoll administration really stepped up for farms,” Clark said.

As farms continue to fuel local economies, he described these investments as “mutually beneficial” for farmers like him and the state.

For Clark, Driscoll’s visit allowed him and his family to share the impact of the state’s help for their crops, along with “the reasons for continuing to sustain farms and the value that farms bring to the commonwealth and the residents.”

“It’s great to see the food processing, of course, but the heart of what we’re able to do in terms of food delivery services and a big part of the regional economy here in western Mass., and particularly Franklin County, is agriculture. It’s not easy being a farmer … so Gov. Healey and I feel strongly that our family-owned farms in particular need to have a strong partner in the State House,” Driscoll said. “[Farmers are] putting food on all of our tables — in the restaurant you go to, somebody actually grew that produce — and it’s great to see it firsthand and to see the family that’s tending to it with a lot of devotion.”