Farmers urged to apply for millions in grant funds
State officials said paperwork matters, especially when it comes to grant money. They met with farmers this morning.
Karen Ross, Secretary for California’s Department of Food and Agriculture, said she was glad to be in the area to talk about grants after not coming here for about two years.
“To meet with folks here at the farm bureau to just get kind of that big picture overview and to tell them about a couple of the programs that we have that we hope can be supportive of them.”
Ross was in Imperial County at the invitation of Assembly Member Eduardo Garcia. They encouraged farmers to apply for over $279 million grant dollars available to them.
“Much of this money comes from the programs that we’ve been strong advocates for as it relates to reducing emissions in and around the areas of the border.”
During a press conference in the morning, some farmers complained about the application process.
“What’s happening in the application is you’re limiting it to growers that have used diesel power. And another issue is with our county is we’re not electrified. We don’t have the electric infrastructure. So, to run power a mile to our project is a million dollars. If you could adjust the application process and make it more sensitive to water savings and or more open to modernized gravity flow systems. We have a lot of new technology in gravity flow where we don’t have to use diesel power; we don’t have to use electric power. We can still use gravity flow but we have modernization techniques,” Ronald C. Leimgruber said.
“These are all great programs, without electricity it’s very hard to get more dots down,” Alan Boyce said.
Ross and Garcia promised to work with them.
“Our grants are a competitive process. We do have some deferred maintenance dollars that we have some people coming down, if i remember correctly, coming down to do an evaluation of some plans for a project at the fairs. We try to get the money – it’s a big state – we try to make sure that it’s getting to all the places of need,” Ross said.
“Hopefully, we’ll have more applicants from Imperial County than anywhere else in the state,” Garcia said.
Anyone who wants more information on state-funded farm grants can contact:
Imperial County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office
852 Broadway Street, El Centro, CA 92243
(442) 265-1500
California Department of Food and Agriculture
(916) 657-3231
Email: grants@cdfa.ca.gov
Assemblymember Garcia’s Imperial Valley District Office
1101 Airport Road, Suite D, Imperial, CA 92251
(760) 355-8656
