CY Farms is a multi-generation, family-owned operation located in western NY between Buffalo and Rochester. What started as a 25 cow dairy in 1951, has grown into a 6,500 acre diversified crop farm.

Started by Carl Yunker as a small dairy farm, CY Farms was formed when his oldest son, Craig returned home to the farm from college. Carl and Craig built a milking parlor, a free-stall barn, and the 1st bunker silo in New York State and grew the milking herd to 350 cows by 1985.    In 1986 Craig and Carl decided to put in a high bid through a government program designed to shrink the U.S. dairy herd and they found themselves out of the dairy business.

Over the next 20 years, the farm went through rapid growth. Throughout the years, CY Farms has grown processing tomatoes, thousands of acres of snap beans and operated a custom snap bean and green pea harvesting business.  Craig's son, Christian, returned to the farm in 2008 after spending 6 years working as a Loan Officer for Farm Credit in New Jersey.  He became a partner in the businesses in 2010. 

Currently Craig, Christian and 5 managers run CY Farms/ Batavia Turf/ CY Heifer farm with a staff of 42.  Today the farm grows 6,500 acres of field crops and vegetables.  Corn, wheat, soybeans, and alfalfa are rotated with onions, green peas and spinach. The farm continues to grow and change every year, experimenting with new practices and new crops.

Diversification

CY Heifer Farm, a sister company of CY Farms, was formed in 2004 with the purchase of a 3,000 head dairy replacement facility from the former Agway Cooperative.  Agway originally built the facility in 1998 on CY real estate with a forage and nutrient management contract. This operation provides custom dairy heifer raising services for 4 area dairy farms and has a staff of 6 people. The addition of nutrients from manure, as well as adding alfalfa into our rotation is a great benefit to the soils of our intensive vegetable rotation operation.

Commercial sod production and marketing began in 1996 when CY purchased Batavia Turf Farms.  Batavia Turf Farms was established in 1960 and is one of the oldest sod farms in New York.  A sister company to CY Farms, Batavia Turf now has 300 acres in sod production and sells to the residential, commercial and sports fields markets.  Batavia Turf also sells baseball infield-mix, conditioners, warning track mix and drying agents.  Batavia Turf is managed by Craig and Christian with a staff of 10 employees.