Coalfield programs struggle as USDA cuts $8.5M in grant funding; cites DEI

By Matthew Young | Charleston Gazette-Mail

This article was originally published by Charleston Gazette-Mail, a major, independent, award-winning news service based in Charleston.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture last week pulled the plug on a $300 million national grant program intended to improve access to land and other resources for disadvantaged farmers in high poverty areas, including West Virginia’s southern coalfields. 

A USDA official cited “DEI preferences” as the reason for the termination.

Established by the USDA in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, the Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access grant program–otherwise known as the “ILA” program–committed funding to 50 select projects for a period of five years. Awardees from West Virginia, as well as 39 different states and U.S. territories were selected in June, 2023, accounting for $300 million of the $550 million appropriated to the program.

Through a letter sent by the USDA’s Farm Service Agency dated March 23, all but one of the award recipients were notified that their funding had been terminated, with an effective date of last Thursday. 

The Working Lands of Central Appalachia Program

Spearheading a cooperative to leverage the ILA program in service of five Appalachian states, including West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, was the West Virginia University Institute for Community and Rural Health. Through the Working Lands of Central Appalachia program, WVU and its partners focused on assisting “underserved veteran, limited resource, beginning, and socially disadvantaged farmers.” 

Specific project objectives of the Working Lands of Central Appalachia program included:

• Increasing the total acreage available for agricultural production through public and private land audit, leases and farmland ownership opportunities.
• The creation of a Farm Link program in West Virginia to increase knowledge and use of available USDA programs that support land, capital, and market access across the region.
• The development of an anchor collaborative of universities and health care systems to increase market and capital access across Central Appalachia.

As the project lead, WVU’s Megan Govindan, along with five additional research associates, facilitated the division of the primary award amount of $8.5 million over five years into seven sub-awards.

“As we’re building those pathways, we’ll also be engaging a number of West Virginia organizations that will help coordinate training activities to get the support we need for land, capital and market access,” Govindan said, through a press release dated April 4, 2024.

Sub-awards included, among others, $200,000 for various farmers markets, $200,000 for the West Virginia Military Authority, $500,000 for the West Virginia Department of Agriculture, and $1.1 million for the Economic Development Greater East (EDGE) program, which facilitates land reclamation and economic renewal primarily in West Virginia’s southern coalfield region. 

The EDGE program

According to farmer Jason Tartt, Sr., of Berwind, McDowell County, a central focus of EDGE is to identify central Appalachia’s remaining economic drivers in the wake of the coal industry’s decline.

“One of those areas is agriculture,” Tart said. “We have built a 350-acre demonstration and research farm here in McDowell County, and we’ve been doing workforce development training for the last six years or so. Usually that’s through grant funding, and those grants allow us to pay the participants that come through our program a wage.”

Additionally, Tartt explained, after participants complete the workforce development program and select an agricultural initiative they wish to pursue, land is allocated to them through EDGE, which affords them the opportunity to establish small farm-based businesses.

“With this particular grant, there was funding for us to do that, as well as add infrastructure,” Tartt noted. “Infrastructure right now is what’s kind of holding agriculture back in central Appalachia. Once the infrastructure is in place, agriculture will explode.”

Several individuals, Tartt added, are currently working their way through the program, with three participants now in the process of starting farming businesses in McDowell County.

“WVU and that grant was really helping to get those folks in the position to get started.” Tartt said. “They were going to be bringing in a mobile poultry processor, for example, two weeks from now, because we’ve got a guy who started a poultry business down here.”

That new McDowell County poultry enterprise, Tartt noted, already had customers engaged and ready to purchase. And while the termination of the ILA grant has not forced that new business to shutter, it does represent a significant set back.

“Obviously the wage that these people were being paid through the program was taken away, so we had to adjust,” Tartt said. “It put some people out of work. It was painful. It really hurt our program and really set some folks back.” 

“We were very close to getting a few people kicked off with their businesses,” Tartt added. “We’ll still work toward that, but it certainly was a huge disappointment and really set us back in terms of what we were trying to get done this year.”

With the termination of the grant, Tartt said, he now must shift his priorities. 

“We still have to work toward the goal, but people have to make a living,” Tartt explained. “It’s hard to get people into the program if you can’t pay them because they’ve got to pay their bills. In some cases, it stops the project altogether.”

One such discontinued program, Tartt noted, is agro-forrestry.

“Guys that were making biochar (carbon-rich charcoal), and doing all kinds of cool stuff with flood mitigation,” Tartt said. “The agro-forrestry team we had to basically suspend completely, so that was really tough. Now those guys are just kind of waiting. We were just about to purchase a kiln for them to start doing some larger scale charcoal production.”

“That’s a big deal,” Tartt added. “When you look at that, agro-forrestry is projected to grow tremendously in this region over the next five or 10 years. It’s a very big deal–huge opportunities, and we had to put that program on the shelf.” 

Why did the FSA cancel the grant?

While WVU attributed “federal funding changes outside the University’s control” as the reason behind the termination of the funding, Farm Service Agency Associate Administrator Steven Peterson offered substantially different motivations.

In his letter to university representatives, Peterson wrote “The USDA has determined that awards under this program involved discriminatory preferences based on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and wasteful spending that did little to further lawful agricultural land purchases.”

Peterson crafted the termination letter using broad language that was not specific to WVU, but rather characterized the program as a whole. Peterson uses statements such as “Your award was made pursuant to a program rife with DEI preferences,” and “USDA programs … should never pick winners in the land market based on immutable characteristics like race or sex,” to justify the termination, going so far as to note that, “The vast majority of projects across the ILA program violated equal protection principles by selecting beneficiaries based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or sex.”

Peterson further noted that Congress’ intent was for the ILA program to provide sub-grants and loans in an effort to improve land access for “underserved farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners” residing in high poverty areas. This was to include veterans, beginning farmers, and limited resource producers. 

“Yet most of the awards did little to improve land access,” Peterson wrote. “With high overhead costs and excessive spending on outreach and technical assistance, existing awards do not do enough to help producers.”

Peterson went on to state that the ILA program “unacceptably exposed taxpayers to fraud, waste, and abuse.” As evidence, Peterson referenced the purchase of gazebos, massages, an RV, and more than $130,000 in office supplies. However, WVU is not specifically accused of such violations. 

In a statement on Friday to the Gazette-Mail, WVU’s Executive Director of Strategic Communications Shauna Johnson said, “Since its inception, the program has provided resources and expertise to strengthen Mountain State food systems, helping make West Virginia healthier.”

What’s next?

A sub-award recipient contacted the office of U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) regarding the termination of WVU’s ILA grant. However, Legislative Correspondent Will Lynch responded on Capito’s behalf, saying, “Unfortunatley, our office is not able to inquire regarding this program.”

Requests by the Gazette-Mail for comment from U.S. Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.), who serves on the Senate Agriculture Committee, as well as FSA Associate Administrator Steven Peterson, were not returned.

Representatives of WVU have indicated their intention to appeal the termination of the ILA grant. That appeal must be submitted to the administrative appeal board within 30 days of termination (by April 22). Interested parties wishing to have their written testimonial included in the appeal may email them to workinglandsproject@gmail.com

This remains a developing story.