Across New York, growers are awaiting word on grant applications from the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities fund, and the nonprofits that guide them are unsure how to help. Smith-Brubaker says she has no idea when or if the money her organization was promised—$3 million—will ever be disbursed.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has told her that the administration has placed a temporary suspension on the grant. For weeks, Smith-Brubaker has not received any reimbursements.
“I don’t anticipate that we will be able to pay [staff] beyond more than a month or so if they were involved in climate-smart at this rate,” Smith-Brubaker said in early March. “At that point, all of our services provided through that program would likely come to an end.”
She plans to furlough 60 staff members if the money doesn’t come through by then.
According to a 2021 government survey, New York has 1,407 certified organic farms and is one of four states in the country with more than 1,000 organic farms. Many of them are family-run and sell their products at local farmers markets. Finding money for infrastructure projects for small farms is often limited by their slim profit margins. The grants, several farmers said, were pivotal for growth and investment.
“It’s typical in business to assume that businesses have access to capital, either through a bank or other means,” said Eric Shatt, who owns a 35-acre organic farm in the Finger Lakes. “But a lot of times with agriculture, since we engage in such a risky business, it’s not easy to get a loan, even if there’s guaranteed payback with some kind of a grant. Getting the money up front is a game changer.”
Shatt was slated to receive up to $30,000 to integrate alley cropping into his sheep pasture. This practice involves planting rows of trees on crop fields and pastures to make the soil healthier and provide habitats for wildlife. Through the climate-smart fund, Pasa Sustainable Agriculture was poised to send Shatt 75 percent of his requested money.
Shatt had placed a down payment of $1,400 on the fruit trees he wanted for the project. Now, he believes that he is unlikely to see any federal help and will have to eat the cost of the deposit.
“It hurts, especially for a small family farm,” Shatt said. “It’s a missed opportunity, and it’s a setback in an industry that’s already struggling.”
On March 19, Pasa Sustainable Agriculture signed onto a lawsuit filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Public Rights Project to restore federal farming funds. Multiple cities including Columbus, Ohio, and Nashville, Tenn., have joined the lawsuit as well as nonprofits like the Bronx River Alliance and the Sustainability Institute in South Carolina.
Initial Hope for the Farming Community
In 2022, the Biden-Harris Administration allocated $3.1 billion to the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. The funds were to help farmers pursue climate-smart practices and to allow them access to new markets. There was also funding for researchers exploring sustainable practices.
Pasa Sustainable Agriculture counseled the farmers and contracted with the New York chapter of the Northeast Organic Farmer Association for technical advisers. Before the freeze, Smith-Brubaker said her nonprofit received timely reimbursements as well as advance payments in anticipation of quarterly fiscal costs, including salaries.
The technical support was crucial for farmers, she said. Staff could evaluate farms and advise on conservation practices.
Sustainable farming requires growers to consider the natural world when making decisions. This includes allowing crop lands to lie fallow or pursuing innovations such as, in some cases, adding nutrient-rich rock dust from nearby mining operations to the soil. Benjamin Houlton, the dean of Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, researches soil resiliency and knows that farmers are eager to enhance the vitality of their fields.
“I came to the community four and a half years ago,” Houlton said. “I have never been around a more dedicated group of farmers and producers who want to make sure we have a clean and healthy environment.”
Cornell’s agricultural school received $10.5 million in federal funds that were distributed through the New York Climate Connects program. Houlton said no funds have been paused—yet—though his institution is waiting with some apprehension.
“It’s a wait-and-see kind of situation, because it seems like things are changing day by day,” Houlton said. “We’re just hopeful because these programs are so important for our farmers and our rural communities, that they will continue.”
Shatt, the farmer in the Finger Lakes, had already received some money for smaller projects, including mulching and rotational grazing—the periodic movement of livestock to different pastures to ensure vegetation regrowth. Shatt said he received around $5,000 for these projects, which required extensive fencing and labor.
“Any grant program that assists farming in this country is money well spent,” Shatt said. “From the angle of national food security, from the angle of water purification through land filtration, from the angle of carbon sequestration—there’s so many different ways that building up agriculture in this country is a win-win for everybody.”
Reeling from the Freeze
Kia-Beth Bennett comes from a family of organic farmers in St. Lawrence County. Bennett operates a 116-acre farm with sheep, pigs, chickens and cows as well as fields of potatoes. For Bennett, the natural world is a priority—so much so that the farm, called the Bittersweet-Milkweed Collective, adapts its planting schedule to accommodate bird migrations.
“When I go to prepare my ground and plant my crops, I look and make sure that I know when the killdeer are migrating, so that my garden has open ground for the killdeer,” Bennett said. “They can nest in my garden, and then I just work around them.”
Bennett also does not till the fields, which involves the creation of ditches and subsurface pipe networks to drain water from the land. Tilling can lead to erosion of the soil, and delivers large amounts of phosphorus and nitrate to local waterways, which degrades water quality.
Instead, Bennett uses the historical streams and channels that have populated Bittersweet-Milkweed for decades, allowing the hydrology of the area to take its course.
With Pasa Sustainable Agriculture’s help, Bennett was applying for a climate-smart grant to add fencing that would improve the rotational grazing of sheep and enhance a nearby stream to flow from protected wetlands into a farm pond.
Click here to see more...