Agriculture grants help everyone, not just farmers
Butler County’s rolling farmland is receiving a significant boost from state and federal farm grant programs — bringing in new technology, preserving family farms for generations and empowering the next generation of farmers with technical and financial support.
Several farms across Butler County are set to receive or have received state-funded agricultural grants, and while they are funded through taxes the public pays, that money comes right back into the communities it came from, according to T. Lyle Ferderber, co-owner of Frankferd Farms, Frankferd Farms Milling and Frankferd Farms Foods in Clinton Township.
“If you look down the road and see a farm that made an improvement, you gained value in the community, it just didn’t come directly to you,” Ferderber said. “There is so much criticism with the government with wasteful spending here and there, and it’s sometimes warranted. But when you see local businesses growing because of taxpayer dollars, you can rest assured all it’s all positive for the community.”
Ferderber’s 80-acre farm is home to one of Butler County’s few functioning flour mills and is one of the most recent recipients of Pennsylvania’s Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure Grant program.
Ferderber’s farm was awarded a grant of $22,886 to upgrade milling and bagging equipment, which will increase product lines and packaging efficiency.
“Our kids applied for that grant that will get us new equipment that would allow us to make products we had never made before,” Ferderber said. “Basically sifted flour. By getting a sifter and a more updated mill that would feed into the sifter, we could increase our production, continue to be a player in the local and regional economy and we would hopefully stay relevant.”
Ferderber is in the process of ordering the new equipment and anticipates the business will grow between 25% and 50%, which will lead to hiring more people to help run the machinery.
“Grants are seed money,” Ferderber said. “Some see them as an undeserving gift. When you seed a business money to expand or change their operation, what you usually end up doing is creating more tax money, more jobs and making that business stronger.
“Gov. (Josh) Shapiro is wise in knowing the No. 1 industry in the state is agriculture,” he said. “Any money that stays in a local community just keeps going around and around.”
To apply for grants from the Pennsylvania’s Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure Grant program, visit grants.pa.gov/login.aspx. Those with questions about the process can email them to RA-AGBUSINESS@pa.gov.
William Thiele, director of Pennsylvania Farm Bureau District 15 and a dairy farmer in Jefferson Township whose farm covers more than 150 acres, said there are a vast amount of grants and programs out there for all different types of projects.
He mentioned the Agricultural Innovation Grant program, which was designed to help farms with technology upgrades.
“There are what I call sustainable agriculture grants,” Thiele said. “Which would be grant money toward sustainable agriculture projects. Those could range from putting in a buffer strip of trees or new seeds. My farm has taken advantage of some of that. There are a lot of ones for CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture. That is if you grow vegetables and fruit.”
Grants such as these require a lot of up-front paperwork, which could include farm information such as size, soil types, sales and projected sales once the project is completed, among others, Thiele said.
“Sometimes it takes a couple of years before being finalized,” Thiele said. “It depends on how large the project is. I would say talk to other farmers you know have applied for those funds. Ask them how long it took to fill out paperwork and get approved and all that. If they want some of that funding, they have to be very patient.”
Thiele said the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau advocates “heavily” for state funding to go toward conservation practices on farms.
“We were given a large pot of money to use, and that was sent out via all the county conservation districts,” Thiele said. “That was to be used for agricultural projects. That could be for waterways, innovations and that kind of thing.”
Thiele thinks the biggest challenge farmers face in Butler County is its proximity to Pittsburgh. He said the close proximity to the city has a positive and a negative.
“The way it’s a good thing is we have a major urban area that is not far away and provides a good customer base,” Thiele said. “The downside is that there is a lot of urban sprawl. There are the Cranberry Townships of the world who want to grow every second of every day. It seems to creep out from there. The way we have combated that is we are enrolled in farmland preservation, and my parents were the first ones to do it in the late 1990s in Butler County.”
Farmland preservation is different in other Pennsylvania counties, Thiele said. Not long ago, Thiele visited a friend in Fulton County and told him how popular farmland preservation is in Butler County. His friend said things are much different where he is.
“He said Fulton County doesn’t have any farmland preservation programs,” Thiele said. “He said the population in Fulton County has been about the same since the Civil War. (Farmland preservation) is not popular because they are not near an urban area. That blew my mind. No farmland preservation board because there is no threat.”
In 1988, Pennsylvania voters in a statewide referendum created the state’s Farmland Preservation Program, according to Shannon Powers, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
Since then, Pennsylvania has protected 6,564 farms and 654,551 acres in 58 counties from future urban and commercial development, investing nearly $1.76 billion in state, county and local funds.
“With almost 1,200 farms waiting to be preserved statewide, the program is very popular, with farm families resisting often-intense pressure from developers in favor of protecting their family’s legacy for future generations,” Powers said.
Through this program, farm landowners essentially are selling the development rights to their farm, Powers said. A permanent deed restriction stays with the land in perpetuity, even when it changes hands and payment for the development rights is based on an appraisal.
“Farmers start the application process by meeting with their county’s land preservation board administrator,” Powers said. “The county administrator confirms that the landowner’s farm meets all criteria before the farm is ranked and scored. The State Land Preservation Board meets every other month to review and approve farms that have applied and been recommended by the counties based on available funding for that county, as well as land quality, and location.”
To qualify for the Farmland Preservation Program, the farm must be at least 50 acres, unless the county has adopted the 35-acre provision.
In addition, the farm must be enrolled in the Agricultural Security Area program and must contain 50% Class I-IV soils — the highest quality soil, as recognized under a uniform system of ranking soil.
Lastly, the farm must be 50% harvested cropland, pastureland or grazing land.
LHL Farm in Marion Township is the newest Butler County farm to benefit from the Farmland Preservation Program.
Larry Lang, the owner of the 92-acre beef and cattle farm, said it took 10 years for state approval, but the benefits of the program were well worth the wait, as his farm will now be able to stay a farm forever.
“We are thrilled about it,” Lang said. “It has been a struggle for us. This is really going to help us out.”
The farm was granted $292,149 by the state for its development rights, ensuring the land will remain dedicated to agriculture forever and will stay in the Lang family.
This announcement was part of a near $10 million development rights purchase of 2,672 acres on 35 farms across 18 counties in Pennsylvania, which also included a 24-acre crop farm in nearby Beaver County.
“We have not seen the money yet,” Lang said. “It is ours to use as we want. We will use it to pay the mortgage off and then we get the rest of it.”
Lang purchased the farm in 1999 and operates it with his wife, Carrie Lang, and his daughter, Sara Lang.
Since Shapiro took office in 2023, Pennsylvania has invested $125.2 million to preserve 415 new farms and 35,177 prime acres of farmland across the state.
Lang said his best advice to fellow farmers to get in on some of the funding such as this is to apply as early as possible.
He also said, while farmers don’t make as much as they used to make, the need for them will always be there, even beyond providing food on our plates.
“You think about anything you wear, too, is somehow related to farming,” Lang said. “Wool comes from farming in shirts and sweaters. There are different grains and stuff, that all comes from agriculture.”
Four Seasons Farm is due to receive $100,000 for the installation of robotic milkers, according a Feb. 3 announcement from Shapiro’s office.
The Penn Township farm is one of 88 in the state to receive a portion of $10 million from the nation’s first Agricultural Innovation Grant Program that Thiele mentioned.
According to Jordan Kennedy, who runs Four Season Farm with his parents, Jeff and Janice Kennedy, the robotic milker will help save roughly seven hours of manual labor per day, which will help them focus more on other aspects of their cows’ well-being.
“The cow will walk to the milking unit, and she would step into a box. The milking unit is all autonomous,” Jordan said. “It will use lasers or 3D cameras to judge where the udder and the teats are to clean, prep and milk her.”
Jordan said this technology has become more popular in the United States over the past couple of years to save on labor and costs.
The farm expects to have the robotic milker by the end of the year.
“We are excited for us and excited for our animals,” Jordan said. “It's also very gratifying to know that the Pennsylvania stands with their farms and agriculture to support farms like us to make sure that farms continue to provide for the public.”
Kennedy said he would advise fellow farmers to take advantage of any and all grants and programs they can get their hands on, because at the end of the day, farmers need the help, even if they feel they feel they don’t deserve it.
“The farming community is a very proud community,” Kennedy said. “We can almost be too proud to ask for help. With something like this if you are trying to better your farm not just for yourself, but for the community, you have to be willing to ask for help. Find someone who has experience with it. That’s a major first step.”
This article originally appeared in the September edition of Butler County Business Matters.
