DUFFIELD – Adam Pendleton and his staff readied for another Friday of work at the Appalachian Harvest Food Hub in Scott County, bringing pallets of food boxes out to distribute to people waiting in around 100 cars.
This Friday may have been the last day for the organization, which not only packages boxes of regionally raised produce, meat and dairy products for low-income Southwest Virginia residents, but helps local farmers find markets for their products.
More than six weeks of budget and personnel cutting across the federal government by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency has found its way to the program – part of Bristol-based Appalachian Sustainable Development’s programs to boost local agriculture and address food insecurity in parts of Virginia, Tennessee, North Caroline and Kentucky.
In late January, ASD got word from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that it was freezing the remainder of a $1.5 million Agriculture Marketing Services grant.
The grant, which had already been 50% spent, allowed the Food Hub to purchase local products to pack around 2,000 food boxes a week, according to ASD CEO Kathlyn Terry Baker.
The grant was on a reimbursement basis, so ASD paid farmers for their produce and filed for USDA payments. Baker said her organization was expecting the grant’s renewal after July, but that is now on hold.
“At the end of the day, that affects local and regional farmers and the people we serve,” said Sylvia Crum, development director for ASD. “People in the region have been hit hard by Hurricane Helene, recent flooding and now this.”
Besides working with around 35 produce, dairy and livestock farmers to create a market for their products, Crum said, Appalachian Harvest helps supply 40 various groups – food banks and pantries, churches, community organizations, charities – with boxes for folks that they also serve.
By the numbers
Paul Stacy, Appalachian Harvest’s director for workforce development, gave a summary of the Duffield Food Hub’s operations in 2024:
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77,406 food boxes packed and distributed for a value of $2.32 million
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2.167 million pounds of food distributed,
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11 Virginia and one Tennessee counties served
Food day
Pendleton joined his staff at Duffield Friday, moving pallets of pre-packed boxes – milk, lettuce, berries, broccoli – to the Food Hub’s parking lot to start handing boxes to families and individuals waiting in more than a hundred vehicles.
“The way the funding’s been, we normally do about 300 per day for distribution from here but today we’re having to cut it back to 150 today,“ said Pendleton. “It’s normally 1,600 to 1,800 per week. We had to cut back to make sure we got everyone who was on schedule covered to make it work.”
A typical week sees the Duffield staff packing boxes and handling organization pickups Monday through Thursday by 40 groups – 12 in Scott County – with Friday being public day.
“We could be looking at 4,000, 5,000 people getting fed by this normally,” Pendleton said. “Today is the last day, unfortunately. Unless USDA is willing to start back with the reimbursements, this will be the last day that we’re able to hand out boxes until further notice.”
“It’s not only going to take food off people’s tables,” said Pendleton, “but fresh food off people’s tables.”
Lester and Brenda Rhoten from Duffield had been parked at the Food Hub since 7 a.m. Friday.
“We’ve come here ever since it started,” said Lester.
“We’ve been coming here the last two years,” Brenda added. “It helps a whole lot. We don’t have to buy milk. In the summertime we get potatoes. The hamburger is excellent. We usually get a roll in each box, sometimes two. We freeze the hamburger, fix chili and freeze it.”
Brenda said they sometimes pick up a box for an elderly neighbor.
“Everything helps us so much,” said Brenda. “We don’t work anymore, and it really helps. The people here are so nice. When they put our boxes in, we always say thank you and god bless you and have a good day. They’re super friendly and you couldn’t ask for a better bunch of people.”
The food boxes also help the Rhotens stretch their income, since money they save from the weekly boxes lets them use the extra money on medicine and other needs.
“I feel like the government, the president, whoever’s doing this needs to look here at the people and see how much they’re helping the people,” Brenda said of the USDA cuts to the food hub program. “It helps us a hundred percent.”
Mountain Empire Older Citizens Healthy Families SWVA staffers Kaitlyn Counts and Stacey Collins also waited in line to pick up their regular 20 boxes for the week to serve families in Wise, Lee, Dickenson and Scott counties. That program helps families with children with various health and nutrition services, Counts said, and the food boxes are an important part of the weekly services MEOC offers.
“We deal with the whole home, so if there are elders, we deal with everybody,” said Counts, “but children are who we mainly go for.”
Appalachian Harvest helps MEOC deal with food insecurity issues among its clients, Counts said. The food insecurity issue affects 15.7% of the population in MEOC’s service area of far Southwest Virginia, she said, compared to a statewide impact on 9% of the population.
“I have explained to some of my families that this may be the last week of food boxes, and this is devastating to some of them,” Counts said. “They use this as a supplement to their other programs they utilize like WIC. They use the milk and the fresh fruits and vegetables and it’s devastating to them and the farmers around here.”
Kevin Koski moved to SWVA with his fiancé Shannon. On Friday, he brought the couple’s huskies Storm and Coco along to wait for his box of food while Food Hub worker Layla Lawson played with the dogs.
Koski said he works as an Uber driver while his fiancé works as a server, and they began coming to the Duffield site just over a year ago after learning about it from a neighbor.
“We really don’t have the finances,” said Koski, “and this here helps put food on the table. With inflation the way it is, it’s hard. This place is incredible. I just learned this place offers different classes and I don’t know if they’re going to cut them out too.
“I hope they get this stuff straightened out so they can offer the proper programs and hopefully try to balance the budget,” Koski said of the current federal budget cutting. “Just keep my faith in God and pray, that’s all I can really do.”
Employment
“It’s sad, honestly, going from helping so many people and so many communities to not being able to do that,” Food Hub worker Kayla Dorton said as she loaded a box in a client’s vehicle. “It’s really heartbreaking.”
Pendleton said he is worried about Dorton, Lawson and the other 10 site workers in the wake of the cuts.
“We’re trying everything we can to limit or keep from having to do any furloughs or anything of that nature,” said Pendleton. “That’s the last thing we want to do on top of this, but we’re trying our best. It’s gets more and more challenging by the day.”
The hub’s suppliers – farmers – also face uncertainty as Appalachian Harvest awaits the final word from USDA. With March being a slow period before the start of the harvest season, he said, a loss of the grant funding could cut a valuable market for their produce.
David Wallace, owner of Reeds Valley Farms and a supplier to Appalachian Harvest, said the freeze to Appalachian Harvest’s grant and another $1.25 million USDA grant for ASD’s agroforestry farmer education and support program “would be devastating, to say the least.”
The agroforestry program, according to director Katie Commender, helps farmers with crops such as herbs and mushrooms and farming techniques along with managing timber and shrubs on their operations.
“The agroforestry and herb hub are essential to Reeds Valley Farms success,” Wallace said. “Without these programs our farm would not be the farm it is today. People in our community would be worse off, with no extra income to support their families. ASD’s agroforestry program is essential to this community and Reeds Valley Farms.”
Congressional delegation reacts
Virginia’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, both criticized the USDA freeze and other cuts affecting Virginia farmers. Both called the ASD freeze – stemming from DOGE and the Trump administration – illegal.
“The administration is illegally halting federal funding, and it’s hurting Virginians,” Kaine said Friday. “It’s outrageous that the Appalachian Sustainable Development’s food hub program, which distributes food to over 4,000 people, is at risk of ceasing operations because they haven’t been able to get funding they’ve already been allocated.”
“Programs like the Appalachian Harvest Food Hub – which helps support local farmers while bringing locally grown food to consumers – are at the very heart of Virginia’s rural communities,” Warner said Friday. “I am going to keep fighting DOGE attempts to kneecap critical programs and defend the funding that Congress has appropriated by law.”
Kaine said he has talked with ASD officials about the situation.
“This is an administrative freeze,” Republican Ninth District Congressman Morgan Griffith said Friday. “No cuts have been made at the Congressional level. We reached out to USDA and they indicated to us that they would get us an answer as soon as possible.”