USDA funded programs boost small scale agriculture in New Hampshire

Jun. 15—MANCHESTER — The award-worthy bounty of chard, collards, kale and lettuce grown by new American farmers in Concord and Dunbarton provides a feast of fresh greens for recent immigrants, refugees and low-income families.

And they are buying the produce from the Fresh Start Food Hub & Market on Spruce Street, or from a mobile market that delivers to homes in Manchester, Concord and Nashua.

It's been a novel way to receive nutritious food in what might be called a food desert — places including city neighborhoods, where it's hard or impossible to find fresh and affordable produce, let alone foods grown in one's native country.

And it occurred with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"They enjoy doing it and have passion about it. They want to grow food for themselves and their community," said Anthony Munene, project manager of Fresh Start Farms, speaking of the 26 immigrant farmers who supply the food.

Now another USDA project is poised to transform lives, financial security and the produce market — this time in northern New Hampshire, where the climate can be unfriendly to farming unless it occurs inside.

On Thursday, Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack, on a visit to Fresh Start Food Hub & Market, announced $320 million in loan guarantees to small farmers nationwide.

Roughly $19.9 million in loan guarantees has been awarded North Country Growers, LLC of Cambridge, Mass., to underwrite 20 acres of hydroponic greenhouse in Berlin — with the potential to supply 1% of the region's demand for lettuce and salad greens, according to New Hampshire Agricultural Commissioner Shawn Jasper.

"We are partnering with entrepreneurs in rural areas to build brighter futures, connect business owners to new markets and create jobs for generations to come," Vilsack announced in a press release.

USDA programs, including loan guarantees for small farmers and ranchers who might otherwise face roadblocks in borrowing startup and expansion money, will help bolster the food supply chain, expand processing capacity, create fairer markets, and help to bring down food costs at grocery stores, Vilsack said Thursday in Manchester.

The USDA currently subsidizes climate-smart initiatives at 12 farms in New Hampshire.

"It's absolutely critical that we build more, better and new markets for our producers," said Mayor Joyce Craig.

Manchester spent $1.1 million in American Rescue Plan Funds (ARPA) to create the city's Healthy Corners in 2022, which brings fresh and locally-grown produce to corner and convenience stores where nutritious choices are scarce.

"The future of farming in New Hampshire is with small operations, including with immigrants who want to farm," Jasper said.

The state's seven-year goal, which may not be realistic in that horizon, is to produce 30% of the food consumed in New Hampshire, in New Hampshire, Jasper said.

One of the obstacles: "We're still losing prime agricultural land," Jasper said.

The state's project, Land for Good, works to connect young people who want to farm to older people with farms who are aging out of agriculture, which will help.

Growing state's agriculture workforce

Growing the state's agriculture workforce is an imperative, Jasper said. It could help immigrants, the commissioner said.

This week New Hampshire's unemployment rate hit 1.9% — a new low. "We need to make people available for the jobs," Jasper said.

At Fresh Start Food Hub and Market, "What we're seeing is an entrepreneurial effort to allow the middle class to grow — by growing nutritious food. It's a heartwarming story," said Vilsack.

North Country Growers offers a way to build agro-business in the North Country, which is seldom valued for having a crop-growing climate.

The hydrodoponic greenhouse project is underway with no specified completion date.

The foundation and piping has been laid for the first 10 acres, which is expected to employ 35 people.

When the balance is constructed and opened, it will employ 80, Jasper said.

It's a new answer in how to fill the economic vacuum left by the long-closed paper mills, once a robust and dependable employer, officials said.

In addition to tapping a local workforce, and supplying well-paying jobs, the hydroponic greenhouses, which depend on recycled energy, will be more cost and energy efficient in northern New Hampshire than if they were sited down South, where it can be pricey to keep greenhouses cool.

Berlin "has cool nighttime temperatures. To cool a greenhouse is much more expensive than heating a greenhouse," said Marguerite Piret, chief operations and financial officer of North Country Growers. She said the company tried for other cool-climate locales in the Northeast, but ran into too much community resistance.

In Berlin, she said, it's been welcomed.

Modeled after hydroponic farms in Europe, North Country Growers will use the original gas lines from defunct paper mills to bring heat, light and electricity to the greenhouses, and 55% of the waste heat will be recycled to heat the water that runs through the pipes, Piret said.