§ 244. Statement of policy and application of article. 1. This article is enacted in the exercise of the police power of the state and its purposes generally are to suppress and prevent unfair and fraudulent practices in the marketing within this state of farm products produced therein and to safeguard the producers and dealers of this state in certain marketing transactions relative to such farm products. This article shall apply only to transactions concerning farm products produced within this state, or concerning livestock produced outside the state when such transactions are either entered into or attempted within the state, and where such transactions involve a dealer doing business within this state. Farm products shipped from a point within this state shall be presumed to have been produced within the state. 2. (a) This article shall not apply to the sale of farm products at auction held at the premises of the owner of said farm products and where said sales do not exceed one sale a year, nor to any agricultural cooperative corporation as defined in subdivision (a) of section one hundred eleven of the cooperative corporations law when receiving, processing, and marketing farm products of its producer members, nor to persons required to file and maintain a mandatory surety under the federal packers and stockyards act with respect to their transactions regulated under that act.

(b) The licensing, bonding and stated grape price provisions of this article shall not apply to: (i) any person whose annual dealings in farm products do not exceed the sum of twenty thousand dollars; or (ii) any agricultural cooperative with respect to the receipt, processing and marketing of grapes or grape products of its producer members or non-members of such cooperative on the basis of their patronage, provided, however, that the annual purchase of grape or grape products from non-members of such cooperative shall not exceed the sum of one hundred thousand dollars; or (iii) a charitable not-for-profit organization which receives for distribution donated farm salvage, as defined in section two hundred seventeen of this chapter.