Grants Grow Success

Source from:  The Courier-Journal By CAROLINE LYNCH  05/18/2004

Among farmers' finds are honey, seeds and salsa Several thousand bees and a grant from Kentucky's Agricultural Development Board helped save Rick Sutton from a fate he feared: a factory job. Sutton had watched other tobacco growers take "city jobs" to make ends meet, but he wanted to make his living on the farm in Lancaster— even if tobacco wasn't paying the bills anymore. [img border=0 hspace="4" vspace="4" align="left" src=http://www.tobaccochina.com/english/picture/05-17-2004_F1_biz_0517bee1.jpg] "It's easier to get up in the morning for something you like to do than something you hate to do," he said. Ten years ago, tobacco supplied up to 65 percent of Sutton's income from his farm, but since quotas have fallen, it is 20 percent. He has worked to make up the losses by growing another business: fruit-flavored honey. But supporting a family that included four kids didn't leave much money to grow a new business. [img border=0 hspace="4" vspace="4" align="right" src=http://www.tobaccochina.com/english/picture/05-17-2004_F1_biz_0517bee3.jpg] That's where the state Agricultural Development Board came in. Eight months ago, the board approved a $47,400 grant for Sutton Honey Farms to expand the business and make it more efficient. Though grants are scarce for owners opening or expanding small businesses, Kentucky legislators have earmarked money to help struggling tobacco growers. A total of about $155 million has been awarded to about 1,600 companies, said Kara Keeton, communications director for the Governor's Office of Agricultural Policy. The money comes from the national tobacco settlement that resulted from a lawsuit by state attorneys general against the tobacco industry in the late 1990s. [img border=0 hspace="4" vspace="4" align="left" src=http://www.tobaccochina.com/english/picture/05-17-2004_F1_biz_0517bee4.jpg] Kentucky created a grant fund from 50 percent of the settlement money to help tobacco farmers diversify. Sixty-five percent of that fund goes to state projects and the other 35 percent is divided among counties, based on their tobacco dependency. "We want to break the physical dependence and the financial dependence on tobacco," Keeton said. The most common new venture for farmers has been beef cattle, Keeton said, although some have begun raising meat goats, started greenhouses or changed crops. This month, two women in Maysville were awarded money to build a commercial kitchen to make salsa. Carla McDowell of McDowell Farms Salsa and her sister, Belinda Ness, didn't get into the salsa business to make up for the tobacco losses McDowell and her husband were facing. Instead, it started when their mother died of a stroke two summers ago. "Mom brought us up to can everything — you name it, we canned it," said McDowell, 50. "So when she died ... it was our way to get through the mourning period. We just jumped in the kitchen and started making salsa." At first they handed it out to friends only, but after a push from the people at their local extension office, they started selling the salsa. And it took off. They sold $2,000 worth at a festival the next fall. Then they got a call from a Lexington woman who wanted 3,000 jars. "We said, `Ma'am, we haven't made that much yet, but we'll keep you on the list for next year,'" McDowell said. Though McDowell and Ness, who both have other jobs, are still making salsa on McDowell's stove at night, they're watching a commercial kitchen form in the back yard. The $56,000 grant will pay for about half the cost. Keeton said each recipient of a state grant has to turn in a business plan and a proposed budget and provide a 50-percent match for the requested money. Grants requests have ranged from $500 to $10 million. The ag board also requires the applicants to show how their plan might help other struggling farmers in the area. McDowell showed that she would buy vegetables from area growers — something she would have done regardless of the grant's requirement. Because most Kentucky tomatoes aren't ripe yet, they ordered Florida tomatoes to start the season but returned them. "We're desperate for Kentucky tomatoes," she said. Sutton's contribution to other farmers is direct and indirect. His bees pollinate many other farmers' crops. His grant will allow him to buy equipment to move his hives so the bees can do even more pollinating and create more honey. In the next year, Sutton said, his company will have about 800 hives and sell nine flavors of honey. With that kind of volume, he'll be able to sell hives to other farmers who need them for pollination. The best option for those farmers currently is to buy bees through the mail, and it takes a year before the hive is ready. "It's a help-help situation," Sutton said. "I need them and they need me." The McDowells and the Suttons were funding their products even before they got approval for the grants. On a Saturday two weeks ago, the McDowells received a letter saying they would receive the grant, made up of state and county money. They said they hope the salsa business can become a family affair and they can eliminate tobacco altogether. Randy Seymour of Hart County dropped tobacco four years ago while starting a seed business, which he runs with his son, John. "We were starving to death raising tobacco," Randy Seymour said. Roundstone Native Seed has received $177,600 from the board for expansion. Roundstone sells seeds for warm-season native grasses, which are more in demand because of federal and state emphasis on conservation practices. The grasses attract certain wildlife and prevent erosion, among other things. The Seymours are growing native grasses and harvesting the seeds on 600 acres of their own, as well as using acreage on other farms. The grant money is paying for new harvesting and seed-cleaning equipment, and for improvements to make a building temperature- and humidity-controlled for storing seeds. Those improvements