West Virginia farmers face financial uncertainty as $1 billion program ends

CHARLESTON, W.Va, (WCHS) — The Trump Administration has ended a $1 billion program which allowed food banks and schools to purchase foods from local farms, causing some uncertainty among farmers.

“What are we to do? We have all this massive debt from expanding in anticipation of all these sales that are not going to happen,” Jennifer Gilkerson, owner of Sunset Berry farm, said.

Farmers nationwide are in a tough spot, not knowing if they will have the funding to continue.

“It’s heartbreaking to see this happening,” she said.

For some farms in West Virginia, selling to food banks and school systems is how they make the bulk of their money.

“We got a farm to school grant to introduce those new products to our local schools. We’re right in the middle of this grant, and we’ve expanded in anticipation of all of these farm to school sales that are not going to happen. Now we’re in debt because we’ve expanded,” she said.

Gilkerson said without this funding, they’ll have to look towards letting some of their full time workers go, and to look for ways to use their excess products.

“We’re going to fall and we’re going to fall hard. Our little farms could possibly close down,” she said.

Trey Yates owns Greenbrier Dairy, where he said 98% of his sales goes to schools and foodbanks.

“We we do supply a very healthy fresh product to the school system and so we we feel that we did our part on that and now it’s no longer a priority and we don’t know what that means for us,” he said.

He said for the past four years they didn’t sell anything in grocery stores. They primarily relied on schools and food banks to sell their products.

“Your stomach stays in a knot over it. Our knees are getting knocked out from from us and we’re just we’re gonna scream and fight about it the entire way,” he said.

Food banks are feeling the uncertainty as well, because without local farmers, their options to supply are low.

“We’ll proceed as normal, but the money will be tighter,” CEO of Facing Hunger Foodbank said.

Kirkhart said we need local farmers and they need us.

“You know what I love about food banking is just when you think that you can’t, somehow you can, and I have the best team in the world. They make a lot of things happen, so we’ll just continue to do that now,” she said.