Last July, the stream that usually trickles from the woods above Ansel Ploog’s farm in Woodbury came gushing down the hillside for the second year in a row. It dug out a cabbage bed, covered strawberries and lettuce in half a foot of water and littered the fields with driftwood.
This year, Ploog was planning to buy native trees and shrubs to plant above her fields at Flywheel Farm, a small fruit and vegetable farm that sells produce to several markets in central Vermont. The plantings would help slow down the water that floods the farm during heavy rains.
Flywheel Farm was slated to receive over $20,000 from a federal program to pay for the flood mitigation work, as well as compensation for practices that promote soil health and to expand their mushroom cultivation. Staff from Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont had visited to make a site plan for the projects — all aimed at helping the farm prepare and adapt to climate change.
Now that money is gone, along with more than $500,000 to fund similar projects across 55 farms in Vermont, after an announcement from the Trump administration earlier this month canceling a U.S. Department of Agriculture program called the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities.
“The loss of this funding is part of a loss of a ton of funding that is all about how we get through climate change,” Ploog said.
The five-year program was still in its early stages in Vermont.
“We had just started promoting the program,” said Nancy LaRowe, the director of organic practices with NOFA-VT. “There were quite a few [farms] that we didn't even get to determining a project scope or value.”
The USDA program paid farms and provided technical assistance for practices like prescribed grazing, planting cover crops and trees, reducing tillage and managing nutrient inputs. It was designed to serve small-scale farms, which are common in Vermont.
“There were farms that were getting $2,500 contracts and they were thrilled,” said LaRowe.
In a press release, the USDA wrote they canceled the program because of high administration fees and that some projects could continue “if it is demonstrated that a significant amount of the federal funds awarded will go to farmers.”
LaRowe is not optimistic that any future funding will reach Vermont.
"This program would have been a really great opportunity to move the needle on supporting farms to being more climate resilient, economically resilient." she said. "It's really quite distressing that it was terminated."
Ploog, at Flywheel Farm, still plans to plant trees above her fields to slow water during heavy rains. But she’ll likely take cuttings of willow trees and grow them herself, instead of buying plants. She’ll plant fewer species, and over a much longer time frame.
“Without the funding, we're probably going to be like five trees a year,” she said. “It’s a lot slower.”
