Nearly 50 community projects aimed at helping young, beginner and underserved farmers lost close to $300 million in federal funding last month.
This includes the Agraria Center for Regenerative Practice in Yellow Springs. It received $3 million from this grant pool under the USDA’s Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access projects.
Agraria's BIPOC initiative director Tia Stuart said their George Washington Carver Project for Equity and Access focused on helping BIPOC underserved and regenerative farmers expanding access to farmland with support from local land banks and trusts, offering assistance with grants and loans to fund land acquisition and farmer education.
"We had a comprehensive training program in regenerative farming practices, business management, market readiness," she said. "We were collaborating with partners like Central State University Extension and Co-op Dayton, and then market opportunities. So we would go to farmers markets and also connect with the Hall Hunger Initiative."
"We know people are interested in buying land, and we want to be able to provide access and an opportunity for as many people that want to take that opportunity to grow their own food and start their own businesses."
The program had so many interested participants in the free classes that Stuart said they often had a waiting list.
"Typically we would have about 10 or 15 farmers attend classes," she said. "Sometimes I would have to put a cap on classes depending on what the class was."
Despite the five-year program's early success, Agraria received a letter in March terminating the remainder of its funding, which was just under half of the grant value.
"We had to cease all activities as of the official termination date and unfortunately, that meant that all of our partners working on the grant were no longer able to be paid," Jessica D'Ambrosio, board president, said.
The letters were sent out across the nation to 49 out of 50 project operators, claiming there was little improvement to land access and excessive spending.
But Stuart said even the budget they agreed upon with the USDA was conservative.
“We were working a lot of times under budget," she said. "We get volunteers to help with infrastructure so we were making our dollar stretch.”
D’Ambrosio agreed with Stuart and added that their plan was on track, meeting the grant requirements before it was abruptly canceled.
She said it wasn't until around April 2025 that their project, as well as many others nationwide faced delays getting their federal funding.
“We started to see some slowdowns and responses from our grant manager and we did start to see some delays in the reimbursement payments that we were getting," she said. "And that did force us to have to re-plan and rethink the way that we could execute the program we had designed.”
D’Ambrosio and Stuart said they are hopeful other funding sources will revitalize the program to help Agraria better serve former program participants and create business opportunities for local growers and producers.
"We know people are interested in buying land and we want to be able to provide access and an opportunity for as many people that want to take that opportunity to grow their own food and start their own businesses," D'Ambrosio said. "I would say the ceiling would be a couple million dollars to get this off the ground and really create that model and that's what we intended to do create the model for the region that could then be replicated and expanded far into the future."
Stuart said despite the loss of funding, Agraria is dedicated to supporting farmers who need assistance learning regenerative practices, though they are doing a lot of work via volunteers.
"But we are looking for funding so that we could provide more quality and more time toward those efforts. So the funding changed, but the need didn't," she said.
