SOUTH DEERFIELD — As funding freezes cut off streams of federal support that farmers and small business owners could count on, the Franklin County Community Development Corporation (CDC) is trying to make up the difference.
“The cost of being a farmer is really high now,” said Hannah Sobel of the Franklin County CDC. “The same tariffs and oil prices that are driving up consumer costs are driving them up even higher for farmers and anyone who grows or makes food, so our food system is in an incredible economic pinch right now.”
Amid these financial challenges, Sobel has heard demand for the “flexible” and “accessible” funding that Franklin County CDC’s Pioneer Valley Grows Investment Fund (PVGrows) provides. According to Sobel, who serves as the PVGrows program manager, the fund, established in 2015, pools contributions from individuals, institutions and foundations, and then funnels the money to farms and small food businesses with requests that may seem too risky to a traditional lender.
“It’s a different way of looking at risk and reward. We are fully aware of what might make a loan risky, but then we have all of the built-in support services that help mitigate those risks,” Sobel explained. “There’s an entire world of impact investing that’s still dominated by a lot of the big guys, so we really feel like we’re making an impact investing locally [and] as democratically as we can.”
To help farms and small businesses cope with the financial hits of tariffs and cuts to federal grant programs, PVGrows launched “Put Your Money Where Your Fork Is,” a new investor drive that aims to grow the fund from $2.7 million to $5 million, a number that will sustain the fund into the future and prevent the group from having to prioritize loan requests, Sobel noted. To launch the new drive, the organization invited investors and residents interested in contributing to the fund to visit Mycoterra Farm, one of the 81 farms and food businesses that PVGrows has helped flourish, on Oct. 15.
When the PVGrows team first heard of Mycoterra Farm owner Julia Coffey, she was growing mushrooms in a closet in her basement in Westhampton. After expanding into greenhouses, the business quickly “outgrew it before we finished it,” she recalled.
In 2016, Coffey was driving through back roads to deliver mushrooms to Champney’s Restaurant & Tavern, when she passed an equestrian center in South Deerfield with a “For Sale” sign.
“It was a big metal building, which was perfect for growing mushrooms,” Coffey said.
A PVGrows loan and financial expertise from the fund’s team helped make the move into the building possible. Later, when Coffey closed the farm’s delivery business, she turned to the Franklin County CDC team, who walked her through her options to keep the mushrooms growing without taking on more debt.
“It feels connected to the community,” Coffey said of PVGrows. “It’s not JPMorganChase.”
Attendees at the launch event got to see PVGrows’ impact for themselves by touring the farm, from the high-pressure steam boiler that sterilizes the substrate — or the carefully combined soil for the mushrooms — to the 990 bags of shiitake mushrooms.
“This is our incubation space, where the mycelium grows from the grain through the sawdust, which transports it into the living fungal organism,” Coffey told the group circled around her. “We’ll line up 30 bags of substrate on the inoculation bench, we very carefully open each bag, and then one bag of grain carefully gets poured into each one. Then we seal the bags, shake them, shelve them, label them.”
As groups took turns peeking behind the curtain of Mycoterra Farm’s mushrooms, others chatted with investors and the CDC team to learn more about PVGrows, including Jennifer Ladd, an early investor in the fund.
For her, the decision to invest came down to three things: love, fear and agency.
“I love the vitality of farms, I love to go to a restaurant and see local food, I love the CSAs, farmers markets, the celebrations like the [North Quabbin] Garlic & Arts Festival — I just love all of that, and I wanted to participate in it in all the ways that I can, which is physically and financially,” Ladd explained. “We live in really tumultuous times where there’s ups and downs … so it felt like a way of investing in security in a sense — valley security.”
Ladd said the fund gave her a way to take action and invest in bolstering security instead of feeling helpless.
“It’s investing in foods and businesses in your community. It’s investing in your neighbors,” Coffey said. “You’re getting paid back in more than just interest; you’re getting paid back by having amazing food and products accessible locally. … There’s a lot more to it than the money.”
“It’s really, you’re helping yourself,” Ladd continued. “You’re investing in the present and the future at the same time.”
