Apple trees barren from the recent winter frost span miles of backroad in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle. In a few months, the trees will flower; come autumn, they will bear local growers bushels of ripe fruit.
Blossoming apple trees are a familiar sight for the region and play a key role in the local agriculture industry. But federal and state officials say market woes have placed the future of West Virginia’s orchards at risk.
That is a reality Don Dove, general manager for Orr’s Farm Market in Martinsburg, has felt first hand.
Dove says demand for his apple supply has waned. One-third of the apples his team grows go toward food processing, but processing companies have requested fewer and fewer apples since 2023. That year, about 20 percent of his total apple crop went unclaimed, he said.
“It added a real big stress onto our crop there, right off the bat, as soon as we started picking,” he said. “That’s when we knew we had a problem.”
Orchards remain in jeopardy
Dove is not alone. The importation of apples and apple concentrates for food processing from countries with lower labor costs has widely displaced domestic growers.
In early 2024, retail prices for apples grown in the United States fell to a three-year low, according to Catharine Weber, agricultural economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service.
Weber delivered data on the current state of the U.S. apple industry through a prerecorded video presentation at a regional forum Thursday. The event was hosted by the Farmlink Project, a nonprofit that helps domestic farmers redistribute excess produce to eliminate food waste.
Farmlink invited apple growers from across Appalachia to the event. The afternoon forum followed a tri-state meeting that morning, which aimed to familiarize Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia farmers with various forms of state and federal aid available to agriculture businesses in Appalachia.
Farmlink organizers used the second meeting to inform Appalachian growers like Dove about the state of the apple industry and solicit feedback over how to best support their business needs.
“These are wonderful farming families from wonderful communities that have got the most nutritious produce item we could have — and that is the apple — to improve food insecurity and nutrition health in our country,” said Mike Meyer, head of farmer advocacy for Farmlink.
At his orchard, Dove said the fallout from West Virginia’s apple market issues has not been as severe as it could have been. That is because orchards like Orr’s Farm Market found support from the state and federal government and their work with Farmlink.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
When the state stepped in
In 2023, the USDA allocated $10 million to the West Virginia Department of Agriculture (WVDA) through the Agricultural Adjustment Act, a 1933 law that allows the government to subsidize agricultural oversupply. The USDA provided a subsequent $3.1 million in 2024.
The WVDA allocated this funding to nonprofits like Farmlink, which coordinated the distribution of extra apples to food banks and hunger relief programs nationwide, while paying farmers for the produce.
Between September and December 2024, Farmlink distributed 18 million pounds of West Virginia-grown apples to food insecurity charities, Meyer said. 3.3 million pounds of apples were sent to recipients within the state, including 49 charities.
“We hope to grow the program,” Meyer said. “We’ve been successful in West Virginia for two years. It’s a large, team effort.”
Jody Sims works for Kitchen’s Farm Market, an apple and produce business based in the Berkeley County community of Falling Waters. Last year marked her first time working with Farmlink, and she said the redistribution process was a boon for business.
“They have been amazing. They help with finding food banks that are willing to take the loads,” she said. “20, 30 minutes later, they’re calling you back: ‘Hey, I got a truck coming. How many loads you got?’”
Meyer said Farmlink hopes to model its work in surrounding states around its partnership with West Virginia state officials. This could help regional apple growers through a tough spot, he said.
But the future of efforts like these depends on a renewal of government funding. With new elected officials being inaugurated on both the state and federal levels this month, Meyer said Farmlink is reaching out to new administrations to keep programs like these going.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
An uncertain season ahead
Meyer said it is unlikely for demand issues in the apple industry to end soon.
“When I think about 2025, I think it will be a similar supply situation to 2023 and 2024,” Meyer said. “I think, unfortunately, some of these markets are gone for good — particularly in the eastern United States.”
Federal officials with the USDA are currently looking into long-term solutions, but Meyer and the team at Farmlink are hoping a new slate of elected officials will renew shorter-term forms of aid in the interim.
Amie Minor-Richard serves as assistant commissioner of the WVDA, under recently reelected Commissioner Kent Leonhardt. She said there is no “one direct program” that will solve issues in the industry, but that the WVDA hopes state and federal representatives will provide farmers broad support.
Minor-Richard said the WVDA’s is advocating for a reexamination of policies surrounding apple importation to ensure that domestic farmers “are on a level playing field.”
“We don’t want to lose our apple orchards here in the United States, because then we’ll have to depend on foreign countries to provide us our nutrition,” she said. “That’s a scary, scary idea.”
The WVDA is advocating for a higher tax credit for farmers donating excess produce, in addition to a renewal of redistribution support for the state’s apple growers, Minor-Richard said.
But funding for redistribution support from groups like Farmlink has previously come from budget appropriations on the federal level. In the past two years, former Sen. Joe Manchin led the effort to secure this funding.
With Manchin’s seat now filled by the state’s former governor, Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., Minor-Richard said the WVDA intends to discuss the program with the Justice administration.
While Minor-Richard said Justice was supportive of agriculture in the past, his delayed inauguration meant these conversations are yet to take place. She added that WVDA have also reached out to the office of incumbent Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., regarding federal forms of aid.
“We hope to have those conversations in February,” Minor-Richard said.
In the meantime, farmers like Dove are bracing for a season of uncertainty ahead. Without financial support from the government, he worries that the Eastern Panhandle’s apple industry could face serious risk.
“It really could fold up quickly without the proper funding and proper safety net,” he said.
This story was distributed by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKYU in Kentucky and NPR.
