March 2025 Updates: Status of Farmer Funding, Meet The Team Webinar, and More

As the spring season approaches, it brings with it new changes. Here at Accelerating Appalachia, we are making changes to our communications to help keep farmers better informed about our farmer funding program. Our staff also regularly receives questions or comments via email or phone concerning the program and many of you have requested more regular updates about what the Accelerating Appalachia team is working on. To meet all these needs, we are beginning this digital newsletter! The newsletter will offer general information and answers to questions, important status updates about the state of our farmer funding program, upcoming events, resources, and farmer profiles. Our hope is that the newsletter will serve as a resource to you so your feedback on what you’d like to see is always welcome and appreciated! 
 

What you will find in this newsletter: 

• Funding Update

• We Want to Share Your Story

• Meet The Team Webinar – March 27th

• Farmer Feature – Jeremy and Brenna Cantrell 

• Hay Delivery Project

Funding Update

The top question that we’ve received lately is, what is the status of the program and funding? The Accelerating Appalachia team is still awaiting guidance from the USDA on the next steps for our farmer funding program, however, USDA has not told us to halt our work. We are excited to share that we have resumed sending cash payments to farmers and will continue to do so unless we  receive guidance telling us to stop. We continue to prioritize American farmers first and believe this work meets the priorities as directed by Secretary Rollins. Additionally, our team continues to provide technical assistance to farmers by working to develop implementation plans and calculate incentive payment amounts. In order to help us with these efforts, please be sure to respond promptly to any emails or document requests from our team.

We Want To Share Your Story!

The Accelerating Appalachia team has also recently published a document promoting the impacts of our farmer funding program. In the document, you will find statistics on the program and testimonials from farmers. If you would like to be featured in future publications, we’d love to hear from you! You can share your experience here. Click the images below to read the document in full screen. 

The new USDA administration is reviewing the Partnership for Climate Smart Commodities program (which funds us), but we have not been directed to stop work and continue to accept and approve applications and continue to support farmers through technical assistance. Please take a moment to check out these videos developed by our partner, the National Center for Appropriate Technology, that explain different conservation practices that we endorse through our program.

Meet The Team Webinar – March 27th

Save the date for Thursday, March 27th, 7 PM EST to meet the team! This online webinar will offer you the chance to learn more about our farmer funding program, meet team members from Accelerating Appalachia and the National Center for Appropriate Technology who you’ll be working with, learn next steps, and ask questions. Can’t make this meeting? Webinars will be hosted every fourth Thursday of the month. We can’t wait to see you there!

Farmer Feature

Through our farmer funding program, we uplift farmers like West Virginians Jeremy and Brenna Cantrell. Below, Jeremy shares how he used funding from us to adopt conservation practices:

“With the funding, we’ve used it for electric netting and solar fence chargers for our sheep operation to help us graze through our fields and get into places where we don’t have fences. We also purchased weed eaters with brush blades to get in there after they graze and cut down what is left that the sheep couldn’t reach.”

Show your support and follow their journey:

Hay Delivery Project

Since October 2024, Accelerating Appalachia has coordinated with eastern Kentucky farmers multiple tractor trailer deliveries of hay, totaling over 200 round bales of clean netted hay delivered to western North Carolina farmers impacted by Hurricane Helene. Accelerating Appalachia in conjunction with Farm Aid are honored to be able to provide financial support for the deliveries. If you’d like to donate to the KY- WNC hay delivery project, or if you’re a farmer interested in making donations of feed, please be in touch with Le’Shae (Leshae@acceleratingappalachia.org). If you’re interested in making a financial donation to this project, you can donate here. Please be sure to click on “special instructions for the seller” and note that it’s for the “hay delivery project”. 100% of the proceeds will go to the delivery costs.

Thank you for your continued dedication to conservation agriculture. As always, if you have any questions or need support, feel free to email hello@acceleratingappalachia.org. 
 

Warm Regards, 

The Accelerating Appalachia Team