Ohio Valley farmers have received more than $100 million so far in federal relief payments to offset the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic, with potentially more payments on the way.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Coronavirus Food Assistance program plans to distribute up to $16 billion in direct payments to farmers, with farmers able to apply for relief through August. USDA data released Monday show 220,280 farmers across the country have already received $2,895,127,039 in total.
Kentucky farmers have received $73,460,020, Ohio farmers have received $45,904,465, and West Virginia farmers have received $4,461,751. The Ohio Valley has generated 18,377 applications out of 274,678 applications nationwide so far.
These relief payments follow $616,287,779 in payments Ohio Valley farmers received through a separate federal program, the Market Facilitation Program, to offset economic losses caused by retaliatory tariffs on farm commodities by China and other countries. The Market Facilitation Program received criticism for some farmers receiving substantial payouts — 12 farms in Ohio and Kentucky received at least $500,000 — and for payments going to applicants who weren’t farmers at all.
Even with ongoing federal coronavirus relief payments,, a recent report published by the Food and Agricultural Policy Institute at the University of Missouri showed U.S. farm income could sharply drop by 12 percent next year, due to stagnant demand for commodities including soybeans and corn if more federal relief payments aren’t provided.
A new federal program is buying more than $1 billion in farm products such as dairy, produce and meat unable to be sold due to the pandemic’s disruptions to the food supply and send “food boxes” to needy families. But some anti-hunger advocates worry that parts of the Ohio Valley may be overlooked in getting this aid.
The Farmers to Families Food Box Program, through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, awarded approximately 200 companies across the country contracts to purchase food and then distribute it to local nonprofits and food pantries. Kentucky and West Virginia were among 12 states where no companies were awarded contracts. Contracts awarded to Ohio companies are located near Cleveland, apart from Appalachia.
“By and large, Kentucky was really left behind. We’re not really going to benefit on the supply side of Kentucky producers being able to provide their products,” said Tamara Sandberg, executive director for Feeding Kentucky, a nonprofit network of food banks in the state. “We’re definitely not going to benefit on the consumer side because we’ve not been named in any of the winning bids.”
Sandberg said she is aware of some organizations in Kentucky receiving food boxes. Dare to Care Food Bank in Louisville is receiving boxes with poultry and dairy products, for example. But she’s still concerned large swaths of the state are being left out of the program.
She also said several Kentucky food banks had reached out to New York-based Tasty Brands, a school food supplier who was awarded several contracts, about receiving food boxes but were told all their food boxes were already being delivered elsewhere. Sandberg said the specter of receiving little of this aid is especially worrisome, given the Ohio Valley has recently ranked among states with the highest rates of food insecurity among some age groups.
“There has been a 40 percent increase in the people served by the food bank network, and a third of those people have never come to a food bank for help before,” Sandberg said. “The need for this food assistance amid this pandemic has increased exponentially.”
Cynthia Kirkhart leads the Facing Hunger Food Bank in Huntington, West Virginia. She said despite several local companies applying for contracts through this program, none of those companies received contracts. Kirkhart said her organization wasn’t sure if they were going to receive aid until an out-of-state company from Pittsburgh that was awarded a contract reached out to her food bank. She said she’s expecting food boxes to be received Thursday.
“We’ll do what we need to, to access these food resources and see what happens,” Kirkhart said. “This had to happen really quick with a certain level of uncertainty, but we’re happy to have the product.”
A spokesperson with the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service said in a statement that because the program is new, some adjustments may be made in coming weeks, and that USDA was working to try to expand the program to underserved regions of the country.
Some Democrats in the U.S. House Agriculture Committee, including Marcia Fudge of Ohio, have also questioned the USDA on the reported lack of experience some contract awardees have in distributing food. Contracts were awarded to major meatpacking companies including Cargill, and an event planning company. The program runs through June 30.
When you think of some of West Virginia’s biggest economic drivers, extractive industries like coal or natural gas are likely the first things that often come to mind. But agriculture has been a fixture in West Virginia’s economy for hundreds of years. Yet today, farmers struggle to keep their business afloat. Take apple farming, for example. West Virginia has been producing apples since the late 1800s, even exporting them out of state. Now, as the cider industry expands, there’s an increasing demand for local apples. And some people think this is one economic development opportunity the state is overlooking.
Most of the apples grown in West Virginia are in the Eastern Panhandle. Katy Orr-Dove’s farm is one of the largest orchards in the state.
“70 percent of our business is wholesale, which is going to grocery stores up and down the east coast,” Orr-Dove said. Her family has managed to hang on to this property and their farm business for three generations.
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Katy Orr-Dove, market manager of Orr’s Farm Market in Martinsburg, W.Va.
“I think there’s always been challenges. And I just think it’s the nature of farming that people overcome them. And you adapt and go to the new trend, or you go out of business and sell your farm,” Orr-Dove said.
And though Orr’s Farm is going strong, many farmers across the state are looking to sell their businesses. West Virginia produces about 110 million pounds of apples every year, just a third of what we used to grow in 1979, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Despite Increasing Demand, Some Small W.Va. Apple Farmers Struggle
Apples grown in West Virginia have traditionally been sold as eating apples, or for apple juice or applesauce. Sweet varieties, like Golden Delicious apples, are good for those uses. But there’s a growing demand for apples that can be used to make alcoholic cider, an industry that is on the rise across the country, and here in West Virginia.
West Virginia now has two craft cideries that both use West Virginia apples, Swilled Dog in Pendleton County, and Hawk Knob in Lewisburg. Hawk Knob owner Josh Bennett buys about 80 tons of apples every year to make into cider and mead.
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Golden delicious apples were developed in West Virginia. They are a sweeter apple, better for eating than for making apple cider.
“And there’s huge demand for those apples. So it’s kind of sad to see that that there’s not more of that going on in West Virginia when we’re sitting in such a nice Apple growing climate and such a cultural heritage in Apple growing,” Bennett said.
Apples grow best in climates with moderate summers, and places with distinct seasons, and some cold in the winter.
This year, Bennett began buying his apples from Orr’s orchard, over 200 miles away, because his main source of apples sold their farm.
“We were sourcing everything within about 30 miles of the facility at Morgan Orchard. And that orchard sold last year, and it didn’t sell to another orchard. It actually closed that sold to a turkey farming company. So, at a personal level, I would say that was it was really sad to see that was one of the last commercial orchards in southern West Virginia.”
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Josh Bennett, owner at Hawk Knob Cider and Mead in Greenbrier County, W.Va.
Morgan Orchard was a 100-year-old orchard in Monroe county. The owners tried to find a buyer who would keep the property operating as an orchard, but they sold the property to Aviagen Turkeys.
The farmers who sold Morgan Orchard did not respond to a request for an interview, and neither did the owners of Aviagen Turkeys, who bulldozed the 100-year-old heirloom apple trees.
Dead apple trees are all that remain of what was once Morgan Orchard in Monroe County Credit Photo Roxy Todd/ WVPB
When West Virginia Public Broadcasting visited in December 2019, the dead trees were still visible, tossed on top of each other in what looked like a massive timber pile, ready to be burned.
Residents in Monroe and Greenbrier Counties who spoke with West Virginia Public Broadcasting said they were frustrated to hear the orchard had closed.
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The land that was formerly operated as Morgan Orchard sold to a new buyer, Aviagen Turkeys, who cleared the land and bulldozed the 100-year-old apple trees.
Suzanne Williams has a small business making jams, which she sells in shops across the state. She used to get peaches and apples from Morgan Orchard to make into some of her best selling products, like rhubarb and apple jam.
“Morgan Orchard was one of my absolute favorite places to go as a as a jam maker,” Williams said, “just walking amongst all the trees and being able to see the fruit ripening and see heirloom apple trees, It was just… a wondrous experience.”
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Apples growing at Orr’s Orchard in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
Now Williams travels to the Eastern Panhandle to get her fruits and apples.
“But I’ve had up my prices a little bit because of the time and travel and gas involved. So that’s unfortunate.”
She’s concerned that there simply aren’t enough farmers left in southern West Virginia who can keep going, and make a profit.
“I don’t know that the Department of Agriculture can offer some kind of incentive for people starting up orchards. I just don’t know if that possibility exists. I just know it’s tough. It’s a tough business.”
Brian Wickline is a WVU extension agent in Monroe County. He tried to find a buyer who would keep Morgan Orchard open; he even contacted agriculture schools and universities out of state.
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Farm workers at Orr’s Orchard in Martinsburg, W.Va.
“We had some local folks who were interested in the orchard, but just really never could come up with the funding to purchase it.”
Wickline said the story of what happened to Morgan Orchard should be a wake up call. The reasons they couldn’t is kind of emblematic of the struggles most farmers in West Virginia are facing.
“I mean, we’ve got young folks that want to come back to the farm. Those young folks have to come back and they have to worry about their health insurance. How are they going to pay that?” he wondered. “They’re concerned with how are they gonna come up with enough money for retirement. So those are huge additional costs, where if they were employed in another job, that would be taken care of.”
In addition to being an extension agent, Brian Wickline is also a beef and dairy farmer. It’s a lot of work. The cows have to be milked twice a day.
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Dairy cows at Brian Wickline’s farm.
Small farms like his make up the majority of agricultural businesses across the state. Costs are rising, but profits are not. Because most farmers are operating at a small scale, there just is no way for them to earn enough money without drastically raising the price of food. And consumers aren’t willing to do that. Increasingly, more of our food comes from large industrial farms.
“If we’re able to keep those funds here locally, a larger amount of those dollars would stay in the local economy, Wickline said.”
Wickline said state lawmakers could help by making it easier for small farmers to sell their products, at a profit, to customers locally. For example, helping farmers to sell to school systems.
And they could also help farmers advertise niche products, like heirloom apples, to build up the brand for foods that are unique and special to the mountain state.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting reporter Liz McCormick contributed to this story.
Wharncliffe is a tiny community deep in the hills of Mingo County, in a rural corner of southern West Virginia. The road there is narrow with the signature hairpin curves of this region.
A Jeep SUV stocked with enough food to feed 50 kids makes the hour-long round trip five days a week from the nearby community center, over the mountain, to the local fire hall here.
One recent morning kids are laughing and doing crafts on pink plastic tablecloths before lunch. Janet Gibson, one of the volunteers, grew up right across the road.
“I’ve watched these kids grow up. Just want to make sure they’ve got something to eat. We’ve got a lot of parents doing foster care here, and a lot of kids don’t know what it is to get a hot meal,” she said.
These kids are getting lunch at the Wharncliffe Volunteer Fire Departmentthrough the West Virginia Department of Education’s summer food program, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. One in five children in West Virginia experiences food insecurity, and the state has earned high marks for feeding kids during the school year. But only a fraction use the summer food program, a historically underused system nationwide.
Experts say transportation is one of the largest barriers to summer meal participation in urban and rural areas, and about three years ago, West Virginia was the focus of extra scrutiny. Samantha Snuffer-Reeves from the state’s Office of Child Nutrition said the state “[was] kind of a target area” for the USDA because of its especially low participation compared with other states.
“But once they came here,” she said, “they really understood that you don’t go from county to county in 20 minutes.”
The Office of Child Nutrition oversees about 450 summer feeding sites across West Virginia: Summer schools, community centers, vacation Bible schools and at programs like Energy Express. The state served 600,000 meals and gave out nearly $1.8 million in federal funds as reimbursements to those sponsors last year.
West Virginia topped all other states for school breakfast participation among low-income children, according to the Food Research and Action Center, but the Washington, D.C., nonprofit ranked its summer food program 44th in the nation.
Crystal FitzSimons, FRAC’s Director of School and Out-of-School Time Programs, said the state feeds about 10,000 children through the summer nutrition program, far less than the 130,000 kids who eat school lunch during the school year.
“West Virginia is very committed to making sure that their kids do not go hungry,” she said. “Unfortunately, [it’s] a rural state, and it can be hard to run the summer nutrition programs in rural areas.”
Cheryl Mitchem knows the struggle well. She’s the executive director of the Larry Joe Harless Community Center in Gilbert, which runs the feeding site in Wharncliffe. Last year, she rounded up a team of volunteer drivers to make the trips, sometimes taking her own car to deliver food.
While riding to one of her remote feeding sites, Mitchem reflected on the challenge of getting around in one of the state’s most isolated places.
“We’re gonna travel 45 minutes to take food to children that attend Gilbert Elementary, which is one mile from our center,” she said. “So, I think that tells you alone, not only distance, but commute time is so heavy a burden for parents.”
The Harless Center got an $18,000 grant in May from the Washington D.C. nonprofit No Kid Hungry for the Jeep that it dedicated to the summer food program. She also added another, even more rural site, where they’re feeding more than 40 kids. Volunteers still help deliver, but Mitchem has been able to reassign some to other needs. Residents at Crossroads Recovery Center, a substance abuse recovery home for women, deliver food to one site twice a week.
There are fewer summer food sponsors in Mingo, Wyoming and McDowell counties, all in the southern coalfields, than in other parts of West Virginia. The child nutrition office isn’t really sure why, but it recently honored Mitchem for her work to reach some of Mingo’s most vulnerable children.
“They go into the hollers of West Virginia, they deliver the food to these kids. Those are the type of programs we see being effective,” Snuffer-Reeves said.
There’s at least one spot outside the southern coalfields where a summer food sponsor found a creative way to reach kids. Lewis County officials rehabbed an old yellow school bus three years ago, creating a lunch-counter style interior on one side with booths from old school bus seats on the other. Laminate flooring gives it a mobile café feel.
On a hot recent weekday at the Lewis County Park in Weston, kids lined up at back of the bus for pigs-in-a-blanket, cheese and milk, and staff handed out free books.
“When you pull in, the kids are waiting for you, and that’s a good thing. They know you’re coming,” said Julie Williams, a secretary for the school system’s food service director.
A pilot program from the USDA gives public assistance cards to kids in six states and two Native American reservations during the summer. West Virginia isn’t one them, but FRAC says such programs have helped to reduce food insecurity.
Back in Mingo County, the Harless Center team plans to expand its reach even further next year.
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.
The summer break from school can be really tough for some children whose parents can’t always afford to buy food. Summer lunch programs across the country try to help feed those children- but lots of children still go without because they can’t get to the school to eat.
Renieca Harris is the head cook at AB Combs Elementary School in Hazard Kentucky. This year her local school district has sent its summer lunch program on the road. Every week day, Harris loads hundreds of meals into a bright van and delivers the food to low income children throughout Perry County.
It’s midday at the community park in Hazard,Kentucky. Kids are splashing in the pool. Others are waiting at the side of the parking lot. A truck comes down the road- it’s shaped like an ice cream truck, except colorful illustrations of fruits and vegetables decorate the sides. Within minutes, Renieca Harris is leaning out of the food truck with a glowing smile, handing out lunch to four children.
Perry County’s Summer Feeding Van
“We come over here and let them play and get some food. It helps. I watch three different kids every day, so any little bit helps,” said Christy Tolson, whose son David is getting lunch. Tolson says she’s recently started bringing him here every day for lunch, along with three of her nieces and nephews.
David is noticeably excited to find a red apple in his lunch sack today. The program tries to include fresh produce in each meal. Schools here would like to buy more local vegetables and fruit to serve the kids, but the season doesn’t really pick up for farmers here until the middle of the summer.
They’re hoping to purchase local watermelon and tomatoes to feed the children sometime in the next few weeks. Today, they’re serving a hotdog, and Chips, cookie, grapes, apple and orange.
Renieca Harris is the head cook at one of the local elementary schools in Hazard. Most of the kids recognize her from school, so they call her the lunch lady. “One kids says, ‘It’s the bite bite truck.’ When they see us coming he says it’s the bite bite truck. So that makes you feel good. They know when you come they’re gonna get something to eat, something good,” said Harris.
Harris worked most of her life in the sewing industry until the local factory she worked at here closed down a few years ago. She loves her job now working in the local schools, even though there is one thing that never gets easy for her: “When you work with the school system and you see the kids all year long, and you worry. You make sure that everybody’s being fed. And so I worry, even on weekends I worry.”
Summer lunch programs aren’t anything new- they’ve been around since the late 60s They’re funded by the USDA, but at most of them children go to a community center or a school to eat. But one of the main struggles for many Appalachian children is they live in more remote areas, usually without public transportation. So their parents have a more difficult time getting them to schools so they can have their free meal.
But in recent years, more and more summer school districts and community centers across the country have been doing mobile meal programs. This June, Jefferson County in West Virginia has begun delivering summer meals with school buses.
And this summer, Perry County schools in Kentucky were able to purchase a truck so they could deliver those meals in neighborhoods and parks to children who otherwise might not have enough to eat. The truck delivers meals to at least 160 children a day.
After the Hazard park, Harris’ next stop is a low income housing development called Cherokee Hills. Harris drives the truck across a misty four lane road, and along a hillside draped thick with kudzu. Actually, the food truck already made one stop at Cherokee Hills today, but Harris said they were flooded with 75 children, and ran out of lunches. So they went back to the school to restock.
Each weekday the Perry County Summer Feeding Van gives away at least 160 meals to children.
At the Cherokee Hills neighborhood, five kids run out of their apartments. Kayla Chandler’s two children wave excitedly at Harris’s van. “The kids loved it. I loved seeing the smile on their face when it pulls up. They wait for it every morning. They’ve got it down pat when it comes and they know. They watch for it,” said Chandler.
“There’s just so many little kids around here, a lot of them doesn’t get fed like they need to be fed, and if it wasn’t for the truck they’d go hungry.”
Maryann Pheldner lives in a nearby apartment and her grandson eats from the food truck every day. “They really enjoy it. They really do. The little young’ns really need that. It’s pitiful. You know I thank God for that woman, bringing that food, I really do.”
Pheldner is sitting in a living room decorated with dried flowers. Burgundy shades cast the room in a warm glow. Phelder has an oxygen tank to help her breathe. She’s raising her fifteen year old grandson, Jared, who sits across from us on the couch.
“Well we get low on the end of the month, you know? I guess everybody does,” said Pheldner. “We’re on low income. And it helps a big lot here. It really does. And I really appreciate all they do for us. It really does warm my heart. People really do care for you, you know? But every day gets a little harder for us, don’t it.”
Pheldner says at first she wasn’t sure how she felt about letting her grandson take the free food. She says it was Harris’ warm personality that made her feel comfortable with the idea.
“But she makes us feel real welcome about it.”
Harris tells people like Pheldner there’s no shame in asking for help if it helps your child get the food they need.
“Everybody needs help. So don’t be ashamed, just come get it. Hey, I’m a parent. I raised kids. So I wish I knew this when mine were little,” said Harris.
Harris’ son Brandon is now an adult and works as a sub cook at the school. This summer, he’s working with his mother as she makes her deliveries to neighborhoods throughout Perry County.
