For years, a federal program has supplied millions of dollars in guaranteed grants and loans to farmers – helping them tap into renewable energy and improve operations. Since 2014, it’s helped with thousands of projects in New York and New England combined. Now, it’s not clear when that cash might be disbursed again, leaving farmers in the lurch – including one in western Massachusetts still trying to turn the page on a disaster from last year.
For some 30 years now, Ryan Voiland has been tilling the earth in the Pioneer Valley. In that time, he’s come to oversee Red Fire Farm – a hundred acres in Montague and another hundred in Granby, where Voiland first bought a barn and plot of land in 2001.
“We are one of the most diversified farms that I know of,” he tells me as we walk through deep mud on the Montague premises, left in the wake of thawing snow. “Really, for better or worse, I have a passion for a lot of different types of produce, and - it's amazing what you can grow here in Massachusetts if you do it right.”
Following a round of snow, rain and sunshine, it’s effectively mud season when he shows me the operation in Montague Meadows one February afternoon. He describes how a television reporter before me managed to slip and land back-first in the stuff.
Along the way are greenhouses, cold storage freezers and an assembly line devoted to produce washing. There, about a dozen workers sort and soak greens, root vegetables and other goods bound for food banks and farmers markets, among other destinations.
A few muddy steps away is a greenhouse loaded with sprouting produce, including peppers and tomatoes – some of which are specially grafted to improve their chances in future soil.
“One of the ways that we can overcome some of the soil diseases and things that can happen in greenhouses over time is that we graft,” he says, holding up a tomato plant still in its early states. “We took a special root stock that's got more disease resistance, and then we grafted on the scion ... at the top, which has the particular varieties of tomatoes that we want - clip them together and get them to grow back together, and you get a plant that's a lot more vigorous than if you tried to grow it on its own roots."
Federal freeze calls farm funding into question
Financially, Ryan says, being an organic farm isn’t easy. Add in a massive barn fire in 2024 in Granby that added up to about a million dollars in damages and it makes any new hurdle all the more painful.
That’s why an apparent freeze on the Rural Energy for America Program, or REAP, has been making things difficult for Red Fire Farm.
Overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, REAP has helped thousands of farmers outfit their properties with solar panels, energy efficient equipment and other improvements often involving green energy.
According to USDA Rural Development data, almost $15 million in grants have been awarded to Massachusetts farms since 2014, and Voiland and company were in line for at least $125,000.
But, thanks to the federal funding freeze, the approved money is on hold.
“The hope was … instead of having to buy all this electricity from the grid, that we could get these solar panels and, essentially, offset our entire electricity needs at our Granby farm location,” he explains in his office, filled with paperwork, equipment and a smidge of dirt from outside. “And this is a little bit related to the fire that we happened to have a year ago, which burned down our farm store, so, even before all this … we have a lot of challenges as a farm, trying to replace that infrastructure and that asset that burned away.”
He tells WAMC the farm also lined up a $50,000 state grant to go with it – money he fears he may end up losing out on. Meanwhile, officials with REAP have told him not to do anything, giving no timeline for when the dollars might be freed up.
Some funds unfrozen amid "review" by USDA
WAMC has requested comment from Rural Development. A USDA spokesperson says currently, leadership is reviewing all funding that comes by way of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act – the latter of which has provided millions of dollars for REAP.
Notably, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins has released some funding for various programs over the last few weeks, according to a March 3 press release, including the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program.
During an initial release in late February, the USDA announced that it would continue to “review IRA funding to ensure that we honor our sacred obligation to American taxpayers—and to ensure that programs are focused on supporting farmers and ranchers, not DEIA programs or far-left climate programs.”
This current freeze is also not the only one Red Fire Farm has faced. Voiland says about $23,600 was up in the air for a time – money owed to the farm after it took part in a Natural Resources Conservation Service contract involving EQIP.
The work involved him spreading compost and biochar on a farm field in nearby Sunderland.
It’s a small source of income – and improves longevity and soil health in the field. But, the freeze appeared to block the payment, and potentially left Voiland on the hook for paying compost and biochar vendors. That is, until something happened behind the scenes, and word came that the cash would be coming.
“It hasn't hit our bank account yet at the moment, but we are told that now it is going to flow, and we've signed additional paperwork, and I think we actually probably will see that $23,000 in the next couple of days,” he said on Feb. 27, later confirming this week the money had arrived. “So, that's good, but, I think there's many other farms that still have similar contracts that are frozen - I don't think that the issue was completely gone away.”
Regardless, with the 2025 growing season under way and Voiland looking to make progress on further restoring operations in Granby, freezes, pauses and other national factors aren’t helping him and others get back on track.
“Based on my conversations with a lot of other farmers … nobody's having an easy time of it these days in particular. [The] cost of every input has gone up, labor costs have gone up a lot for us, more so than we can raise our prices in recent years,” Voiland said. “We have a lot of challenges anyway, and the last thing we need is a government that now is going to not be rooting for us and providing some small source of stability like they were previously under the Biden and, really, under every other administration, Republican or Democrat - that ever came before Trump. None of those ever pulled away for ... [the] minimum amount of support for agriculture, such as the NRCS and renewable energy types of programs.”
In an update Tuesday morning, March 11, Voiland tells WAMC the REAP grant funds are still frozen – but that Red Fire Farm has joined a lawsuit on the matter.
He says his case and those of other farmers are being taken up by attorneys with Earthjustice, a nonprofit focused on litigating environmental and agricultural matters.
Voiland says the suit will be filed imminently.
