Your browser doesn't support audio playback.
Rural areas in the United States are known for their vast expanses. But community access to that land is an issue in those same places.
Jason Tartt is the co-founder of Economic Development Greater East (EDGE), an agricultural workforce development program in McDowell County that “prioritizes health, place, livelihood, and nutrition to lead land and community reclamation in Appalachia.”
He said in McDowell County — one of the poorest counties in the country — 70% of the land is owned by corporations and largely sits unused.
“If the people here had access to the land, this would not be the third poorest county in the country,” Tartt said. “It’s resourcefully rich. We know what can be done here.”
On 350 acres of formerly logged land, participants in EDGE are supported as they learn and grow agribusinesses ranging from meat goats and mountain range chickens to honeybees and fruit orchards.
That made EDGE a great candidate for the Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access program from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The program targeted projects that address land access issues facing underrepresented groups — including veterans, Black farmers and Indigenous farmers.
“Out of all the grants we’ve worked on, this was the one that I was most excited about when it was first presented to us, because it addressed all the things that we have had challenges around,” Tartt said.
But at the end of March, the Trump administration suddenly cut the $300 million program, with termination letters from the USDA including claims of quote “discriminatory preferences based on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and wasteful spending.”
‘The worst possible time’
Tartt said the cut came as a shock to EDGE’s partners, like a poultry producer that was poised to expand his business with processing equipment.
“He’s talking to customers. He’s lining things up. He’s getting everything ready to go,” Tartt said. “Two weeks before that resource is supposed to get here, that happens.”
EDGE’s Executive Director Amelia Bandy criticized the cancellation for its lack of vision.
“With the USDA in particular, what is the plan to move agriculture forward, if it’s not something like this?” she said.
Approaching almost a decade in operation, Bandy said the loss of funding won’t stop EDGE’s work, but it significantly slows them down.
“It disrupts producers who are responsible for feeding their communities,” she said. “It disrupts it at the worst possible time, because, you know, we’re in growing season right now.”
Megan Govindan is the research scientist and director of the Nourish West Virginia initiative at West Virginia University, which was administering the state’s $8.5 million from the program. She said the funding was on the cusp of unlocking a statewide network connecting food and health care.
“It brought me to my knees,” Govindan said. “This is decades of community organizing and uplifting community needs and finding ways to be able to work together across the aisle.”
Govindan said her office was working towards building out a network of food producers and health care providers to establish a “food as medicine” system in West Virginia — where nutritious, whole foods are used to prevent, manage and treat chronic diseases while promoting overall health.
“When you think about some of the chronic health disparities that we see in the state, embracing agriculture is a solution to a lot of those,” she said. “When we think about food insecurity and being able to access local, fresh, healthy foods, our farmers are a lifeline in our communities, particularly when we think about food deserts and how we support each other in Appalachia.”
West Virginia, along with Kentucky and Tennessee, have some of the highest percentages of family-owned farms in the country. Govindan said those producers were poised to become the front line in the Mountain state’s food as medicine approach.
“We have chickens that are raised that we can’t process, right? We have investments into infrastructure that we can’t pay, that we’ve already done all the legwork for this,” she said. “Really, this impacts West Virginia’s agriculture system in so many ways, and we have to find a way forward.”
WVU and 42 of the other 49 terminated programs submitted appeals to the USDA. But Govindan said the agency recently determined those decisions cannot be challenged, leaving the courts as their only recourse.
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU Public Radio in Kentucky, and NPR. Sign up for the weekly Porch Light newsletter here for news from around the region.