Berkshire County — According to Thomas Matuszko, executive director of the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission (BRPC), the January 19 executive order freeze of funds promulgated by a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant appears to be lifted as of March 18, with those monies serving to support Berkshire County’s food-insecure communities.
The BRPC network unites Berkshire Bounty, Berkshire Grown Inc., and the Southern Berkshire Rural Health Network, entities that partner with other organizations to offer farmers’ markets and ensure that healthy, locally sourced foods reach underserved populations in the Berkshires. The USDA Rural Food System Partnerships (RFSP) grant helps fund this program in which a driver transports a van to fixed sites within Berkshire County, carting fresh products to rural neighborhoods and employing a tiered payment system.
The BRPC submits monthly invoices to the USDA requesting a release of the grant funds as reimbursement for monies spent on partner expenses and staff time coordinating the Berkshire Mobile Farmers’ Market Project.
On January 19, BRPC received a notice from its grant contact that the invoice it submitted seeking reimbursement for funds distributed to food organizations in January “was only able to be paid through January 19,” Matuszko told The Berkshire Edge. In turn, BRPC sent that information to the commission’s partners, warning that “this funding may be at risk.”
“I think yesterday [March 18] we received notification that we could submit invoices [retroactive] to January 19,” Matuszko said.
Without the assistance that was triggered by the March 18 correspondence, he said that “it’s unclear what would happen.” “At the very moment, with a lot of these federal programs, the uncertainty is part of the problem,” Matuszko said. “If this grant were to be canceled, it would be very difficult to continue the mobile food market for this summer year.”
The Berkshire Mobile Farmers’ Market runs from June through October in collaboration with Berkshire Bounty and Berkshire Grown, the main partners of the RFSP grant. With these funds, not only are numerous populations given access to fresh foods they wouldn’t otherwise have but local farmers are provided with a place to sell their products, Matuszko said. But, given the ups and downs of recent federal curtailments, he is not sure the measure will hold. “It’s a very dynamic situation,” Matuszko said, adding he didn’t know why the grant was frozen in the first place.
Berkshire Bounty received about $250,000 from the USDA grant over three years, with this year serving as the grant’s final year, Berkshire Bounty Executive Director Morgan Ovitzky said. The funds are used for personnel, staff time, and equipment to run the mobile farmers’ market, she said.
For Ovitzky, the program would have stalled without the grant freeze being lifted. Her team had already met and put a deadline in place. “If the funds were not lifted by April 16, we were not going to have the program,” she said, adding the grant freeze was lifted briefly post-January 19 and then halted again after less than a month. “It would be a $93,000 loss this year, which is a big hit to us.”
Ovitzky said she is fearful the funds will be unavailable again. “We’re being cautious about how much time we’re putting into the process,” she said. “Luckily this is the third year, so we do have something ironed out.”
With the group in the midst of hiring personnel for the program’s summer months, should the monies be frozen again, “that becomes a real burden on the organization that is hiring staff for this,” she said.
More dire need
Although the USDA’s RFSP program is effective at reducing food insecurity in rural areas, Ovitzky cited another funding cut anticipated to have an even more dire impact on the community.
On March 7, the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) was notified that the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Programs, LFPA25 and LFPA Plus, would end May 31 since it “no longer effectuates federal agency priorities.” This program, funneled through the state, funds groups who buy food from “socially disadvantaged” farms and producers and distributes those products to underserved communities. Over the past three years, these programs saw more than $11 million in funds going to buy local food directly from almost 500 farms and producers and delivered to more than 700 food pantries or similar sites across the Commonwealth.
Working together with $750,000 in LFPA grant funds over 18 months, Berkshire Grown and Berkshire Bounty use that program to buy about $40,000 from local farmers monthly and deliver that food to 24 food pantries. Berkshire Grown purchases the products from farmers while Berkshire Bounty staffers distribute that food to pantries and volunteers. “Every penny of LFPA funding goes to food, there’s no [administrative] money in there,” Berkshire Grown Executive Director Margaret Moulton said.
A second round of funding was doled out in January, but with the third anticipated round nixed, that second round of monies will run out at the end of May. “This is a huge hit to the 24 pantries that we were supplying food to and a huge hit to the local farmers that had a guaranteed revenue,” Ovitzky said. “LFPA funding was about more than just stable dollars going to farmers, or local food going to pantries and other food-access sites. The program supported relationships and partnerships that strengthened the local food system, built resiliency, and supported dignity for farmers and communities served.”
Moulton said she is part of a push within Berkshire County to reinstate the LFPA funding mechanism locally. “We’re not the only organization in the state affected by this,” she said.
A March 6 email from MDAR Commissioner Ashley E. Randle to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins outlines the statewide impact of such a deletion of funds, including the lack of clarity on the part of farmers and other stakeholders “on whether commitments will be honored, or important services will continue.”
“In many cases farmers have made investments in services and capital projects based upon approved grants only to find that they may not be reimbursed as promised,” the correspondence stated. “For some, not being able to count on those resources could be the difference between remaining sustainable and losing their farm.”
A copy of that email can be found here.
Even with other funding sources, Moulton said Berkshire Grown and Berkshire Bounty “will feel that hit” of the LFPA curtailment and the resulting loss of thousands of dollars each month.
Berkshire Bounty has embarked on a fundraising campaign, reaching out to local donors, Ovitzky said. This promotion typically occurs later in the spring, but due to recent events, she said the campaign has been moved up to April 22, with hopes that the efforts will raise $60,000 “so that we can continue to run this program in a reduced fashion.”
The end result
Individuals and agencies involved in serving the area’s underserved populations are unanimous in their concern that these federal funding cuts will only add to the region’s food-insecure community.
Ovitzky fears more possible federal cuts may “overtax an already overtaxed system of food pantries and meal sites that we have that are serving hundreds more families than they were originally set up for.” “The end result is they hit the most vulnerable people in our community the hardest,” she said.
Last year’s slash in Massachusetts’ Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) funds—monies that are spent at farmers’ markets or with farmers directly as part of their Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs—coupled with anticipated cuts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), could spell a gripping change for food-insecure programs and farmers, Moulton said.
“People have less money to spend on food, and more people are going to be going to food pantries,” she said. “And, yet, when they get to that food pantry, what they’re going to see is a lot more shelf-stable food and a lot less really nutrient-dense, locally grown food.”
The Farm at April Hill doesn’t sell its agriculture to the public through farmers’ markets, instead distributing most of its produce through groups that assist food-insecure communities in Berkshire County and to its 17 full-time crew members who take a share. Last year, that number counted a little more than 9,000 pounds of food, said Will Conklin, executive director of Greenagers, who runs the 100-acre South Egremont farm. It employs a band of about 70 paid youth in the summers who work the land within the facility’s regenerative farming technique using hand tools and non-chemical methods.
As with Ovitzky, Conklin believes “these cuts are going to create more food-insecure people.” “The demand for outlets that provide food for folks is going to increase, and that puts pressures on them if it strains local resources,” he said.
Conklin said farming is “a long-term game.” “For food that the farm is going to grow this year, they made that plan in January or December,” he said. “They ordered the seeds in December or January or February. Those seeds are in and they are preparing the beds. For a lot of crops, it’s difficult to pivot, and certainly more difficult to pivot quickly. That’s when we see bureaucrats messing around with food supply, I don’t think they realize this is not a fungible thing.”
April Hill Farm accepts federal funds through the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) that, among other services, aids farm roads, soil analyses, greenhouses, livestock fencing, and waste-management plans for dairy farms. Payments through a conservation program through NRCS have been “iffy,” with a number of funds frozen while others receive payments, Conklin said. His farm hasn’t yet received a grant reimbursement request for $6,000 to $8,000.
Conklin said that scenario has been exacerbated by personnel firings in the federal government sector. “Part of the issue is that there are fewer people to communicate with,” he said. “Everybody’s just in limbo because nobody knows what’s going on.”
Conklin sounded the alarm that, should the AmeriCorps federal program—whose members work with April Hill Farm’s education team to build trails in the community as well as mentor others in resource conservation—close down, he would be forced to cut staff. “Regardless of whether you think the government should be as involved in some of these things as they are, you just can’t pull the rug out from under folks,” he said. “And, it’s pulling the rug out from a lot of folks.”
Conklin appreciates the dichotomy between a farm with a typical business model in this day and age and the Farm at April Hill’s platform that includes philanthropic support. “If you’re in a privileged position to be an educational farm that has a diversified funding stream or if you’re a farm whose business model relies on selling products, especially at farmers’ markets where some of these benefits are being pulled back, and that has worked for years to develop solid relationships with other local and state and federal entities to sort of put the whole puzzle together of a viable farm, it’s a very uncomfortable position to be in,” he said.
Call to action
Both Ovitzky and Conklin are putting out a call to action. Conklin is advocating for Berkshire residents to donate to local organizations if they can or volunteer “to get a better understanding of how these things are affecting folks.” Ovitzky is asking the community to communicate with local and state legislators, asking them to continue to support the funding that currently exists.
Through it all, Ovitzky said her group’s mission remains strong. “We’re committed to continuing to provide food for the emergency food network, and we’re standing behind our value that food is a basic human right,” Ovitzky said.
