United States Department of Agriculture Story Archives

Another Apple Surplus Prompts Search For Long-Term Solutions

Fall in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle means apple season. Visitors from near and far visit Reddington’s Farm & Orchard in Harpers Ferry to pick their own apples — a way to get fresh produce, and also a fun family activity.

This year, owner Tina Reddington said her main concern has been the weather. The region experienced a severe drought in July and August, followed by a sudden tropical storm.

“We’re in a funky spot where, when the storms come through, they kind of go around our farm,” she said. Still, “We’ve been affected by the drought, so we have less apples than we usually do.”

Across the state, local orchards might have a normal season ahead. Or, like Reddington’s, they might even be slightly behind on apple output.

But the situation is vastly different on larger, commercial farms, which grow apples specially to be processed into packaged products like applesauce and apple concentrate.

Many of these orchards are found in West Virginia. And, despite the weather woes, many of these orchards currently cannot find buyers for all of their apples.

Nowhere to sell

“Imports in the apple ingredient community have greatly diminished the opportunity for the American farmer to sell a perfectly good apple into the apple processing world,” said Mike Meyer, head of farmer advocacy at FarmLink. His nonprofit helps connect farmers experiencing oversupply with food banks and hunger relief programs.

“This has most directly impacted the farmers in West Virginia, but they’re not alone,” he said.

According to Meyer, the country’s increased dependence on imported goods reduces sales for American farmers. Plus, apple exports fell during the pandemic, and haven’t fully recovered.

Apple trees blossom in the springtime at Shanholtz Orchards, located on the outskirts of the Hampshire County town of Romney.

*Photo Credit: Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Problems like these in the apple industry aren’t new. Last year, tens of millions of pounds in West Virginia-grown apples didn’t have an immediate buyer. Many farmers were unsure how to proceed.

“It is fair to say that the apple processing market and those communities have all but disappeared,” Meyer said. “What is remaining is of so little economic benefit to the farmer that the farmer has to decide if it’s better to not even harvest their apple at all and just let it go to waste.”

A federal intervention

Then the federal government stepped in. In 2023, the state received $10 million in United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) funding through the Agricultural Adjustment Act, a 1935 law allowing the government to subsidize agricultural oversupply.

Officials with the West Virginia Department of Agriculture used this funding to subsidize millions of pounds of apples. Then, through nonprofits like FarmLink, the 16 million pounds of produce were donated to food banks and hunger relief programs nationwide.

This year, West Virginia will repeat that process. In late August, Sen. Joe Manchin announced that the USDA would provide West Virginia $3.1 million this year to help growers sell off their surplus.

One West Virginia business that participated in the program in 2023 is Appalachian Orchard Company, a family farm in Berkeley County. The company was one of many that experienced apple oversupply last year.

“A lot of them went bad in storage and they lost money on them,” said sales team member Christopher Daniel. “They haven’t been able to recuperate from everything.”

Daniel said federal support saved last season’s harvest. While the conditions causing the oversupply this year persist, he said Appalachian Orchard Company feels better knowing the fund redistribution program can offer additional support.

“I think this is going to help a lot of growers who didn’t have an outlet at all because they grow primarily processing apples,” Daniel said. “It’s going to give them somewhere to ship their apples where they would’ve just had to let them fall on the ground.”

Patriot Guardians, a Kanawha County-based agricultural education program for veterans and military service members, grows apples to be turned into ciders.

*Photo Credit: Briana Heaney/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

The bigger picture

Still, some state and federal officials worry that recurring supply problems could mark a long-term issue for the industry.

Manchin, who Meyer said played a key role in securing the 2023 and 2024 USDA funding, recently pushed for a USDA study on the apple surplus in West Virginia.

The bill was passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee, and aims to better understand the issues affecting the state’s apple market, namely difficulties preserving and selling surplus produce.

“This study will examine the limited refrigerated storage capacity within processing facilities, particularly in West Virginia and the broader region where these facilities are located,” a representative from Manchin’s office wrote in an email to West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

The study will also explore “whether there has been a significant increase in foreign apple imports, including apple concentrate, which may be displacing local apples in the market,” the email read.

Meyer agreed that struggles in the apple industry extend beyond a single year’s harvest. But, at the same time, he thinks part of the problem for farmers is simply not knowing where to send produce.

According to the USDA, about 14 percent of U.S. households faced food insecurity in 2023.

Meanwhile, the USDA has also found up to 40 percent of the nation’s food supply goes to waste. That is more than 133 billion pounds of food.

Meyer says supporting American farmers and reducing food waste could go hand in hand. It’s just a matter of connecting extra produce with people and communities in need.

And this year, FarmLink will help reroute trade networks once again, packing millions of pounds of apples into trucks for redistribution.

“Fresh produce is a much lower-cost alternative to prepared foods to combat food insecurity.” Meyer said. “But fresh produce requires a completely different handling system. So it’s not the end-all solution, but it can get us a long way there.”

Abandoned Mine Turns Apple Orchard With Help Of National Guard

A long winding road, once frequented by coal trucks, leads to the top of what used to be a mountain. At its end are flat fields filled with budding apple trees.

Major General Bill Crane said this apple orchard was an abandoned mine seven years ago.

“We’ve got about 20,000 apple trees in the ground,” Crane said. “It’s an experimentation site that we work with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).”

This is one way the National Guard is taking on climate change and pollution. The Guard has teamed up with scientists from the USDA and West Virginia University (WVU) to find ways to grow apple trees on land that was previously thought to be somewhat of a waste land.

First they had to tackle one major problem: No topsoil. The solution: Chicken poop from pastures in the state.

“The nice thing we’re doing here is we’re bringing chicken manure from the Eastern Panhandle, we bring it here to help make the soil better,” Crane said.

Chris Dardick, a scientist with the USDA, said taking the chicken manure from the Eastern Panhandle to the orchard helps mitigate farming runoff into rivers. He said nitrogen from animal waste has been running into rivers, and creating algae blooms, which cause other aquatic life to die.

“Much of [chicken manure] contains nitrogen,” Dardick said. “Bringing it out here, out of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and using it to amend the soils for apple production or other crops, that’s sort of a win-win.”

Tracy Leskey works with Dardick at the USDA as the research leader for this project and said the trees absorb another climate changing element — carbon.

“One of the things that we recognized a few years ago is this opportunity for apple trees to sequester carbon from the atmosphere,” Leskey said.

Trees take in carbon, and store it in their trunks and roots, or deliver it to the ground. The process is known as carbon sequestering and is one tool for fighting climate change.

And where the land had carbon removed from the soil in the form of coal, Leskey said the soil can now hold, or sequester, more carbon than the typical soil can.

But this project isn’t only aimed at helping the earth. Melissa Stewart, director of Patriot Guardens, hopes this project will also help the mental health of both active and retired service members.

“When they come back home from a deployment, and maybe they have seen some things that they don’t want to remember, they can’t have a conversation with somebody to get that out of their mind?” Stewart said.

She hopes that service members can create a “side hustle” and learn a hobby that brings peace and healing.

“Through agriculture, they can work with their hands, in an atmosphere like this,” Stewart said.

This is one of many projects the National Guard is working on to produce food like peaches, strawberries and arugula in the state. These projects are aimed at combating food insecurity in West Virginia where one in seven children experience hunger. Stewart says this is where the farming work takes on a special meaning for service members who are transitioning out of the service.

“To take that need to serve and give it purpose as they come out a uniform, being able to illustrate that they’re still serving our state as they transition into more of a civilian status by helping grow the food that helps feed our families helps feed our state,” Stewart said.

25 Projects Support Rural W.Va. Communities

Twenty-five communities in West Virginia will receive money from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development program to lower energy costs, improve basic infrastructure and strengthen resilience.

USDA Rural Development State Director Ryan Thorn said the program is investing more than $8.7 million in the state.

“Whether it’s helping a rural small business cut utility costs or helping a rural community provide clean and reliable drinking water, modern infrastructure creates good-paying jobs and supports opportunities for rural West Virginians to build brighter futures,” Thorn said. “Helping our rural communities and small businesses grow and prosper is what we’re all about at Rural Development, and the investments announced today are a testament to that commitment.”

The investments announced Thursday are made available through the USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), Water and Waste Disposal Loan and Grant Program, and the Community Facilities Direct Loan and Grant Program.

In total, Rural Development is investing $8,753,907 in 25 projects across West Virginia. A few examples include:

River Riders, an adventure resort in Jefferson County, will use a $201,658 REAP grant to purchase and install an 84 kilowatt (kW) solar array. The project annually is expected to save the business $3,587 per year and will replace 97,022 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year, enough electricity to power eight homes.

In Mingo County, the City of Williamson will use a $4.9 million low-interest loan through the Water and Waste Disposal Program to upgrade its water treatment, storage, and distribution systems. This project will benefit approximately 3,191 rural West Virginians.

The Southern Appalachian Labor School, in Fayette County, will use a $24,720 Community Facilities Grant to repair the roofs for two of its community center facilities. The organization owns and operates two 911/Red Cross Emergency Shelters located at the historic Oak Hill School and Beards Fork School.

Funding for these programs is made possible, in part, by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

For more information about USDA Rural Development in West Virginia, visit www.rd.usda.gov/wv or contact your local Rural Development office.

USDA Offices Reopening After Closure Due to Security Threat

The Agriculture Department says all its offices will be open Thursday after facilities in five states were briefly closed due to an unspecified email threat.

USDA spokesman Matthew Herrick says offices in Hamden, Connecticut, and Leetown, West Virginia, will reopen Thursday with security enhancements. Offices in Colorado, Maryland, North Carolina and Kearneysville, West Virginia, reopened Wednesday after being closed Tuesday.

Herrick said Tuesday that several USDA employees had received an email that raised concerns about the safety of personnel and facilities.

He says the department is continuing to work with the FBI and other law enforcement to investigate the threat.

The facilities that were closed include offices for eight USDA agencies, including the Forest Service and the Food Safety and Inspection Service.

USDA Closes 2 W.Va. Offices, 4 Others after Threats

Updated at 4:00 p.m. Tuesday, August 30:

Six U. S. Department of Agriculture offices were closed Tuesday after receiving anonymous threats. Two of those six facilities are located in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department first got the news about the threats Monday afternoon. Jefferson County Sheriff Pete Dougherty says the threats were made through email, but did not release any more information about those threats. Dougherty did say it was clear that the person who sent the email intended to do bodily harm to personnel at the six USDA facilities.

One of the six is a fruit research center in Kearneysville, West Virginia, just outside of Shepherdstown. It’s down the street from both the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and a state police detachment.

“It’s probably as safe a facility from a law enforcement standpoint as any – if anything started, it would take us about 15 seconds to be there,” Dougherty said.

Employees at a USDA building in Leetown, just down the road, were also threatened Monday.

Both West Virginia facilities are part of the Agriculture Research Service. The FBI is investigating the credibility of the threats, and the buildings remain closed until further notice.

Original Post:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has closed six offices nationwide, including two in West Virginia, after receiving anonymous threats Monday.

USDA Director of Communications Matt Herrick said in a statement the offices in five states will be closed until further notice after concerns for the safety of agency personnel.

Those offices are located in Kearneysville and Leetown, West Virginia; Fort Collins, Colorado; Hamden, Connecticut; Beltsville, Maryland; and Raleigh, North Carolina.

Herrick said the USDA is working closely with the Federal Bureau for Investigations and other federal and local law enforcement to determine whether the threats are credible.

The closures affect the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), Forest Service (FS), National Agricultural Library (NAL), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Office of the Inspector General, and USDA Departmental Management.

Summer Program Brings Free, Nutritious Meals to Children

During the fall and spring school sessions, thousands of West Virginia schoolchildren are fed both breakfast and lunch as part of the School Breakfast and National School Lunch Programs. But when school is out for the summer, these meals end. This is why the West Virginia Department of Education’s Office of Child Nutrition started their Summer Food Service Program.

At the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in Charleston, twenty-five children attended the first day of this year’s Summer Food Service Program, a program that, according to summer food coordinator, Amy Burner, ensures children eighteen years and under in lower-income areas continue to receive free, nutritious meals during the summer months.

“The program is designed to help families be able to find a summer feeding site,” said Burner, “where a child can receive a breakfast and a lunch, or a lunch and a snack, so that the parents don’t have to worry about where that meal is going to be coming from.”

Four of the twenty-five children who attended the celebration, proudly show their participation on the Summer Food Service Program promotional brochures.

Feeding sites can include schools, churches, pools, parks, housing complexes, and summer camps, but Burner says that just about anywhere could be a summer feeding site, and she hopes the program keeps expanding.

The kick-off celebration featured three guest speakers, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, Reverend James Patterson, and Diana Limbacher, a representative from the United States Department of Agriculture.