JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
It's been a turbulent couple of months at the government agency committed to helping rural economies. It's called USDA Rural Development, and the turmoil it faces may erode a major source of federal aid for small towns and farms. Frank Morris of member station KCUR reports.
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FRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: Raising big animals for meat is tough, and on small farms, the owners do all the work.
JENNA BATCHELDER: It's not a job that you can just shut on and off. It's a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job, and sometimes you question your life choices when it's negative 25 windchill (laughter). Yeah - checking calves, cutting ice, making sure that everyone's warm, you know?
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MORRIS: Jenna Batchelder and her husband Brad and their four kids raise cattle, bison, pigs and poultry near Belton, Missouri, south of Kansas City. They've had this farm for a decade and spent most of that time living in a walled-off and furnished section of the barn. When the pandemic hit and shut down big meat-packing plants, they saw an opportunity to sell individual cuts of meat. Brad Batchelder says a grant from USDA Rural Development made it possible.
BRAD BATCHELDER: Yeah, I mean, it was really almost life changing for us. This grant has definitely - like, we see a path and a vision now, and that has been even more motivating to us, I think.
J BATCHELDER: You can see some of our steaks that we sell.
MORRIS: Now they're running a thriving meat shop out of the corner of the barn where they used to live.
J BATCHELDER: Pork is in here. We have our beef products in this freezer here.
MORRIS: USDA Rural Development covers up to half their processing costs. That investment flows through the rural economy to local butchers and other suppliers and makes the food supply chain just a little stronger. USDA Rural Development is Washington's chief tool to promote economic growth in rural counties, where President Trump won, on average, almost two-thirds of the vote last year, according to AP VoteCast. But Kyle Wilkens, who ran USDA Rural Development in Missouri under President Biden, says the agency is in turmoil.
KYLE WILKENS: Because they don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
MORRIS: The Trump administration first pressed USDA Rural Development employees to retire, then terminated hundreds. Now, the courts are forcing the agency to rehire workers with back pay, at least temporarily.
WILKENS: Think of the time that you're taking away from these folks doing their actual job, and that is money. That's all it is. It's money.
MORRIS: And money is getting tight. Congress cut USDA Rural Development by hundreds of millions of dollars last year. Owen Hart with the National Association of Counties says the agency does things that local governments can't afford - building water supply systems for small, shrinking towns, for instance, shoring up hospitals, buying police cars. It's an economic lifeline to places without a lot of options.
OWEN HART: In a lot of these communities, USDA Rural Development is the most important partner. You can't rely on private investment coming in. The market's just often not there for it. You can't rely on philanthropy, like you can in a lot of urban areas, to meet some of these needs. And so, Rural Development is a really, really crucial partner.
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MORRIS: That includes manufacturers that President Trump is counting on to boost U.S. industrial production. Here's Kyle Wilkens again, standing outside the Miller's Custom Cabinet factory in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, half an hour northeast of Kansas City.
WILKENS: That is a huge industrial building that they're making cabinets in, and half of it, which I'd say at least half a football field, is covered in solar panels. They are saving a lot of money right now in electric cost.
MORRIS: USDA Rural Development covered half the price of the solar array - a quarter million dollars. Wilkens says the savings will help management thrive and maybe hire more people, strengthening the economy here. Farm state politicians will work to shore up the agency that's done so much for their constituents over the decades. But Wilkens says it'll take time to heal the damage recently inflicted on USDA Rural Development. For NPR News, I'm Frank Morris in Kansas City.
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