Apple and cherry trees in Southwest Virginia started blooming about three weeks ago — five months too early. 

Orchard owners have seen handfuls of autumn blossoms pop open in their fields in years past, but the consensus is that early blossoming is occurring more frequently due to increasingly warmer weather. Experts say this phenomenon is tied to climate change and are concerned for the future.

Last week, orchards in Cana were quiet and empty. The harvest was over, the workers had gone home. Carroll County farmers were taking a rest before the holidays, before pruning and planting would begin anew. 

The fields, though — they sat waiting, seemingly willing the season to go on. Though the calendar said mid-November, tall green grass was still growing between the trees. Immature, rosy-cheeked green apples still clung to summer-strong branches, and the trees were still covered in bright green canopies of healthy leaves. On and on this went … one row after another, one orchard after another.

There was a single row of apple trees, right next to a road. Though the orchard’s other trees were full and green, the trees in that row had begun to shed their leaves. The process was nowhere near finished, but through those bare spots, it became easier to see that these particular trees were doing something new: They were sending up crisp green growth. 

The cherry trees at Ayers Orchard were mostly bare, but just a week or so prior, they had been hanging full of blossoms, according to packhouse operator Phyllis Allan, whose brother owns the orchard. She was readying things for the winter; that Saturday was the last market day until spring.

The packhouse sits on the edge of a hill. Just beneath the parking area, the cherry trees’ skeletal limbs waved their last bouquets of wilted blossoms. Swollen bulbs predicted that more blooms would be on the way, if a frost didn’t kill the buds first. Lower branches sported fresh greenery. The trees were readying themselves for spring.

These trees should have been preparing for their own winter’s nap, a period of dormancy in which cold-weather acclimated fruit trees stop growing.

“I’m not worried, yet,” said Ricky Berrier, a sixth-generation farmer who operates his family’s 171-year-old apple orchard in Carroll County. “Even 20 years ago, I would see a limb blooming this time of year,” he said, explaining that sometimes weaker trees get a little confused.

If the heat continues or blooms show up in even more apple trees, that’s a different story. 

A couple of weeks ago, Bethany Schaepler’s wife, Cortney, was mowing Hill’s Orchard when she noticed blossoms here and there on the trees. 

Schaepler’s father-in-law, Willie Hill, said he’d seen a few blossoms, too. But he had spoken with friends and neighbors who were experiencing entire blocks of bloom. 

He ticked off the names of folks who have told him about premature blossoms over the last few weeks. Entire groups of Golden Delicious at one orchard just over the hill. Two rows of Pink Ladies had bloomed nearby, and another set of the same had broken open down in Wilkes County, North Carolina. 

“For a whole lot of them to bloom? I don’t know,” he said. 

When Tom McMullen has seen fall blossoms, they appear in clusters, he said — perhaps a dozen blooms per tree, not the thousands that people typically see in the spring. 

“It’s not like you’re driving by and seeing a gazillion flowers,” he said, adding that the premature blooms are certainly related to the weather. McMullen co-owns Tumbling Creek Cidery along with three others; he is also a botanist. 

‘Jack Frost is getting them’

Schaepler also attributed the out-of-season bloom to weather. 

“We’re still very warm. I mean, right now I’m in my car running air. It’s 72 degrees,” she said Monday.

The weather in that area was unseasonably warm for much of October and into the beginning of November. There were some cold days during that period, including a freeze for some, but it wasn’t enough to trigger the trees into dormancy, when the leaves would fall and the sap would no longer pump into the tree. 

This stage is critical because it protects the tree from cold weather damage. During winter freezes, fruit trees that are not dormant are at greater risk of structural damage, particularly if those trees are hanging full of blooms, said Kaden Kilgore, owner and operator of Appalachian Cider Co. in Scott County. That would impact the next year’s harvest.

These early November blooms will most certainly freeze; even if the bloom falls away, the parts of the flower that remain will be left to freeze.

“A cold spell comes in and hits those buds and kills them. Then you get some frost damage. You won’t have any apples on those buds. The blooms in the springtime — those buds won’t bloom then,” Kilgore said.

“Jack Frost is getting them regardless,” Kilgore said.

One bloom isn’t a problem. Neither is a dozen. A treeful? A row? A block? What is the point of tolerance?

Apple trees respond to changes in temperature in order to fall into the dormant state, according to Virginia Tech researcher Sherif Sherif, who studies ways to boost fruit tree production and mitigate frost damage at the Alson H. Smith Jr. Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Winchester. 

December, February and March were all warmer than average last winter. McMullen attributes the blooms farmers are seeing now to that warmth. 

Every variety of apple tree needs a specific cumulative number of chill hours — hours spent below 45 degrees Fahrenheit — in order to produce fruit. Apple growers in this state tend to grow varieties that need between 800 and 1,100 chill hours. 

The calculations become increasingly complex depending on the precise temperature of the orchard’s location. Trees perform better at some temperatures than others, and everything really depends on the variety. 

Fruit trees that do not receive enough chill time during the winter months are adversely affected, according to research published in The Texas Horticulturist by Texas A&M researchers David Byrne and Terry Bacon. In conducting their research on peach trees, they found that insufficient chilling led to delayed foliation. When leaves appeared, they were only on the tips of the tree branches during the season following the affected year, and those branches appeared to be weakened.

As with the foliage, blooms were delayed in appearing following winters with insufficient chilling, the researchers found. At other times, the bloom season may have been extended, with blooms appearing throughout the autumn. When this occurred, the fruit failed to develop into full-sized fruit. 

Finally, the fruit quality itself was reduced, they wrote.

“It’s kind of like jet lag for a human. It can really mess you up, you don’t know what’s going on, right?” McMullen said.

Not getting enough chill hours does the same thing for a tree. As Berrier would say, “It confuses it.” 

“We still have a kind of winter that is cold enough to achieve the chilling requirement for most of our deciduous trees,” Sherif said. This includes apples and stone fruits.

“It is a concern for some southern states, like Georgia, Florida. With the warm winter, they might have some issue with achieving the chilling requirement, but not us,” Sherif said.

Sherif is more concerned that farmers will continue to follow their traditional pruning schedules without regard to the state of their trees. 

Farmers absolutely should not prune their fruit trees until they are positive that the trees are dormant, he said — and the trees currently are not dormant. Any Virginia farmer who is planning to prune their trees right now should wait, Sherif repeated adamantly.

Trees that are pruned before they are acclimated to the cold will have a greater risk of suffering extensive damage from a hard freeze or a hard frost. That alone would jeopardize future crops. 

While this may seem to be advice for novice gardeners, pruning an entire orchard is a big job, one that requires a team of employees and a couple of months’ time to complete. To prune Berrier Farms’ 20,000 trees, a team of eight must complete 400 trees a day. It takes about two months. 

Farmers hire crews of seasonal workers to help out. Once employees arrive on the farm, they must work 40 hours a week. A farm with no chores is dead in the water.

The impacts of Hurricane Helene

This is the second time in a matter of months that farmers have needed to realign their traditional farming calendars to align with Mother Nature.

At the end of September, the remnants of Hurricane Helene rushed through the state. Twenty-one Southwest Virginia counties reported suffering agricultural damages in the weeks following the storm, according to a report compiled by the Virginia Cooperative Extension.

In Carroll County, a declared disaster area, Cana farmers found rows and rows full of fallen apples — the ground was so covered in fruit that you could hardly walk from one tree to the next. 

“It hampers your picking when everything’s on the ground,” Berrier said. 

Berrier left the apples to act as fertilizer for next year’s crop. Other farmers swept them into a pile, like the one at Ayers Orchard, where a massive hill of apples rots into compost. The heap smells like the strongest apple cider anyone will ever encounter.

Berrier had a block of Golden Delicious that he had half picked before the storm; that half totaled about 1,500 bushels. After the storm, his crews picked only 20 bushels from the remaining half of the block. A smaller harvest meant fewer days in the fields and fewer days in the packhouse. He kept his seasonal employees on as long as he could, he said. Still, the packhouse employees lost a couple of weeks of work at the end of the season.

According to Virginia Cooperative Extension data released Nov. 7, Southwest Virginia apple farmers suffered an estimated $836,175 in direct losses from Helene — the losses immediately attributable to the storm, a number that includes apples that could not be sold from wind-related fruit drop, damage and loss from power outages, said extension agent Ashley Edwards.

Farmers lost the apples that fell from their trees. They lost the ones that were banged around, bounced into each other and left too battered to be sold. They lost limbs; they lost entire trees.

Depending on which varieties they grow, Carroll County apple farmers lost 25% to 50% of their crop during the storm, Edwards said. Their direct losses totaled $617,000, or nearly 74% of the state’s total estimated direct losses to apple farmers.

Virginia Tech agricultural economist John Bovay found that Helene’s current estimable indirect effect on apple farmers is likely between $1.2 million and $2.8 million, in addition to more than $1.4 million attributable to direct losses and future losses.

On Tuesday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin submitted a request to President Joe Biden, President-elect Donald Trump and Congressional appropriators for $4.4 billion in additional support for recovery efforts. The request includes $630 million to repair and rebuild agricultural producers.

‘It was just warm all along’

But still, the weather still won’t cooperate. The farmers seem to be taking it in stride, saying all will be well. The elders reassure the younger generation: This has all happened before. 

Bert Drake, emeritus scientist and plant physiologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, has been plant-watching for over 40 years. He pioneered a decades-long research project that sought to understand how plants react to temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations. 

He didn’t specifically study apple trees, instead focusing more generally on the nation’s crops and crops around the world. He wanted to know how the foods we rely on would react to rising carbon dioxide concentrations. It turns out, plants don’t mind higher carbon dioxide, he said. 

The problem comes when the concentration of the greenhouse gas causes the temperatures to climb, which is what he believes we are seeing now. Many crops that we depend on don’t do well when exposed to high heat for long periods of time, he said, referring to temperatures of about 90 degrees.

If those high temperatures eventually encroach too far into Southwest Virginia’s winter, then the apple trees will not meet their required chilling hours.

“Winter isn’t nearly as long. It’s shortened on both ends,” Drake said.

Early springs induce flowers blooming too early in the spring, thus becoming susceptible to frost, Sherif said. 

This is what Ayers Orchard encountered last year, said Phyllis Allan.

“It was just warm all along. We had one frost we thought would surely kill them, but it didn’t.” Allan said of the fruit trees.

“What’s hurting, is they’re blooming about a month or so early. In February, if the blooms start, you can forget about it,” she said. 

Once the danger of frost passed, the fruit all ripened earlier than expected, Allan said.  Cherries started early in May. Peaches came two to three weeks early, in June. Then apples continued that trend on through, starting on the backs of the peaches. 

Drake sees environmental trends such as irregular tree blossoms as key indicators of what a region’s climate may look like not so many years into the future. 

“We can only see [changes] in retrospect because it’s been so slow. When we see the trends, it’s very clear now that things have changed a great deal,” he said.

According to the 2022 State Climate Summary released by the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Virginia’s temperatures have increased by more than 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of the 20th century. 

While the state climate summary report recognizes that temperatures in the more mountainous regions tend to be cooler than other parts of the state, data from the U.S. Climate Divisional Database shows that the average minimum temperature in Carroll County is on an upward trajectory.

“Everything has moved north, and it’s moving north in a fairly regular fashion. During the American Revolution, the climate of Richmond, Virginia, was similar to present-day Toronto,” Drake said.

“One of the things we clearly showed with our study was that the increase in crop productivity, or in the growth of plants, is overwhelmed by increases in temperature.

“If I was a farmer, my whole existence depended upon growing apples, I would take that as a warning that that future is not to be had. Doesn’t have a good outlook for me,” Drake said.

Cardinal News weather journalist Kevin Myatt contributed information to this story.

The post As apple and cherry trees burst with blooms months ahead of schedule, climate experts sound a warning appeared first on Cardinal News.

Loss of infrastructure, accumulation of storm debris could fuel wildfires, make it difficult for firefighters to reach blazes in Western NC.

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GREAT FALLS — The Great Falls City Commission has approved a reduction in funding for the Great Falls Public Library. The new agreement, struck Tuesday night during an often contentious meeting, is a compromise after months of negotiations between city and library stakeholders.

The agreement cuts 3.5 mills of funding from the library budget from fiscal year 2026 until fiscal year 2029, which ends on June 30 of that year. Based on projected mill values, that amounts to a cut of about $471,413 from the 2026 budget and $499,088 by 2029. The library has warned that this will result in cuts to services, staff and a day of operation.

The cuts are the direct result of two contrasting levy measures in 2023: the library’s successful levy in the spring and the much larger public safety levy and bond that voters rejected last fall. Throughout 2024, the debate over funding positioned a library with a $3.1 million budget against a much larger public safety budget that has fallen far behind the city’s needs.

“I knew that a compromise was the only way to ensure some level of funding would remain in the management agreement,” said Commissioner Susan Wolff, who was on the city’s negotiating team. “My fear was that we would lose all seven [mills].”

The cuts come from a batch of seven mills that the city approved in 1993 to support the library. Those mills were separate from the funding approved in last year’s levy election, though library supporters have said that their campaign relied on those seven mills as part of the foundation on which to build.

During their meeting on Tuesday, commissioners first voted to cancel the 1993 agreement before moving on to consider the new agreement, which passed on a 4-1 vote with Commissioner Rick Tryon voting against.

“I’m glad this is coming to an end,” Mayor Cory Reeves said. “This has not been a fun project.”

It was a long road to Tuesday’s meeting. The first of eight negotiation sessions was on April 25 and continued even after the city offered a “last, best and final” offer that would eliminate all seven mills by 2027.

The library’s board of trustees countered in September with its own proposal, which was for a smaller reduction of 2.5 mills through 2029.

In this latest agreement, passed by the city commission on Tuesday, the city agreed to maintain reduced funding through 2029, at which point the library and city would discuss renewal. But with the reductions passed, Library Director Susie McIntyre has warned that services would need to be cut, staff positions would be in jeopardy and the library could close for one day each week.

The city’s agreement still requires approval from the library board of trustees. Whitney Olson, the library board chair, told Montana Free Press on Wednesday that this will likely take priority at one of their next meetings. In the months leading up to the next fiscal year, the board will also need to decide how to realign its services with funding levels.

“The board is going to have to make some hard decisions about what we are going to have to cut,” Olson said. “Because it’s not feasible to keep our current level of service with the amount of money the city has granted us.”

Public comment and commission discussion on Tuesday focused a lot on Great Falls’ strained public safety resources. The city has vowed to reallocate the library funding to public safety needs, though the money is less than 1.5% of the $32 million public safety budget for courts, legal, police and fire.

The library negotiations in 2024 have been juxtaposed against the successful library campaign of 2023 and the public safety levy that failed later that same year. The public safety levy would have raised some $13 million annually to fund firefighters, police officers, 911 dispatchers, legal staff and more. It also included a $21 million bond request for building and infrastructure.

Early in Tuesday’s meeting, the audience heard from Great Falls Police Chief Jeff Newton for a regularly scheduled update. Newton opened his remarks by mentioning the failed 2023 levy.

“Despite the failure of the public safety levy and bond, the workload has not subsided and the challenges have not gone away,” Newton said.

Officials have described the lack of resources at police and fire departments in Great Falls as dire. The city has grown in the 50 years since the last expansion of public safety funding, increasing the number of fire, police and medical calls. The lack of additional funding has increased fire response times, left departments unable to cover unstaffed positions and left the police department in a reactive position, as Newton described.

During a Nov. 6 city meeting, Great Falls Fire Rescue Chief Jeremy Jones said the department had reached the limits of the adjustments they’ve made to maintain its level of service.

Following the failed levy, the city created a Public Safety Advisory Committee. Aaron Weissman, vice chair of that committee, urged commissioners during Tuesday’s meeting to keep library funding and address public safety separately.

“The citizens of Great Falls support public safety,” Weissman said. “It was just a really big ask.”

After some debate earlier this year, the committee submitted a set of public safety recommendations that included the drawback of up to seven mills of the library’s funding. Jeni Dodd, another member of the public safety committee, advocated for removing all seven mills from the library coffers.

“The 1993 agreement for the seven mills was never guaranteed in perpetuity,” Dodd said on Tuesday. “Each year it was subject to nonrenewal by either party.”

Positioning library funding against public safety needs was key for those who supported the reallocation of library funds.

“I can’t in good conscience support library expansion over public safety,” said Tryon, who was the lone vote against the agreement. 

Tryon announced he would vote no after reading off a list of insults he received in his email inbox and holding up a printout of a sticker that said, “Don’t rob our readers! Hands off the GFPL!”

Those who lobbied to maintain the same level of library funding couched their arguments against the library’s successful levy campaign. 

“Our voters supported enhanced library services, not replacement funding,” said Brianne Laurin, Great Falls Public Library Foundation executive director.

As part of its levy campaign, the library agreed to return a $350,000 annual general fund subsidy. Added to the reduction approved on Tuesday, the city will recoup around $821,410 from past library funding for the next fiscal year.

The library board of trustees’ next meeting is Nov. 26, and the funding agreement is likely to be on that agenda.

It’s likely that city officials will regroup and coordinate another public safety levy request in the future, though it’s unclear what that will look like at this time. The city will determine how to use the roughly $470,000 that will return to its general fund in the next fiscal year.

“We’ve been asked several times: So how will we use these funds that come back?” Commissioner Wolff said. “And I will be recommending to our city manager and our fellow commissioners that this money be used to support our courts and our legal department.”

In-depth, independent reporting on the stories impacting your community from reporters who know your town.

The post Great Falls commissioners pass cuts to library to support public safety appeared first on Montana Free Press.

Collaboration between government agencies and a mining company has transformed a dangerous but valuable property

Flying high: Bats in Idaho have a new home. File photo: Paul Cryan/USGS/Flickr

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By Kendra Chamberlain. November 18, 2024. The bats of Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge have a new roost to call home this winter.

An orphan mine, located on protected land around Bear Lake in southeast Idaho, was sealed up years ago to protect humans from wandering in. That meant the mine was also off limits to wildlife like bats.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USWS) partnered with Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, the Bureau of Land Management, Idaho Department of Lands and the mining company Synesco to open the mine entrance so that bats can roost in the mine’s long, twisting tunnels.

The mine was officially opened to bats on Oct. 21.

Today, bat habitat is at a premium. North America’s 154 species are facing extreme population declines due to habitat loss, the scourge of White Nose Syndrome, climate change and even wind turbines.

That’s made old mines an attractive prospect for bat conservation efforts. Orphan mines are being repurposed across the country for bat habitat.

But USFWS biologist Daniel Nolfi told Columbia Insight the Bear Lake project was especially intensive because it required reopening a mine that was no longer accessible.

The entrance was excavated and then fit with a gate to keep humans out, but allow bats in. Synesco owns the claim on the mine and covered the cost of the project.

Making a bat cave: Sealed mine at Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge (L); bat-friendly gate being lifted into place (C); bats can get in, people can’t. Photos: Dan Nolfi/USFWS

Mines may also help stave off the spread of White Nose Syndrome (WNS), a disease that has ravaged bat populations across the United States.

WNS infects hibernating bats, rousing them from their sleep and causing them to burn all their stores of fat before winter’s end. Infected bats—often entire colonies—die of starvation.

The disease was first detected in New York in 2006, and has since spread west from state to state, killing an estimated 6.7 million bats along the way.

The fungus that causes the disease, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, or Pd, was first detected in Idaho’s Minnetonka Cave in 2022. That cave is right next door to Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge.

“Research suggests that the temperature of hibernation sites may affect the severity of WNS,” Nolfi told Columbia Insight in an email. “Artificial habitat, such as mines, allow for more intensive control measures for WNS. Opening mines to bats can be done in such a way that desired temperature conditions are created, potentially leading to reduced WNS impacts to the bats that use these habitats.”

Nolfi said up to eight different bat species use Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge, including little brown bats, an endangered species that has seen significant population declines across North American due to WNS.

USFWS’ Idaho office is engaging other mining companies for similar projects on both federal and private land in southeast Idaho, a region known for phosphate mines.

“The goal is to evaluate opportunities to provide bat habitat while maintaining closures for human safety,” said Nolfi.

The post An abandoned mine in Idaho is now prime habitat for bats appeared first on Columbia Insight.

In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) unveiled its Rural Public Health Strategic Plan, which outlines the priorities, objectives and outcomes the agency hopes to see over the next five years as it collaborates with other federal agencies and various stakeholders on how to improve the health of rural residents.

The plan was developed with the help of more than 50 experts within the CDC who reviewed more than 200 rural initiatives, programs and efforts to identify opportunities. Then the agency enlisted the feedback from more than 230 federal and external partners through listening sessions, lunch meetings and town hall events, Dr. Diane Hall, the director of the CDC’s Office of Rural Health (ORH), said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.

The strategic plan is a guide for ORH and the CDC at large, as it moves forward with programs and research into rural health needs. Developed with stakeholders such as the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) and state offices of rural health, the plan seeks to combat issues that are seen at higher levels in rural communities, like obesity, chronic illnesses and substance abuse.

Opened last year, the ORH came as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Disparities between urban and rural access to care shined a spotlight on the need for more attention on rural public health, she said. The strategic plan is the office’s first major publication.

“We really wanted the strategic plan to actually be strategic, but also be actionable,” Dr. Diane Hall, the director of the CDC’s Office of Rural Health, said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “But more than that, we wanted it to be relevant to the lives of people that live in rural communities.”

Stakeholders, like Alan Morgan, CEO of the NHRA, said the plan is an indication of what is coming in rural health. 

“Realistically, this is a blueprint for the future,” Morgan said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “They have highlighted long-standing issues and now they have a direction and a plan to get to where they need to be.”

The plan focuses on four main priorities – engaging with community health partners, strengthening rural public health infrastructure, advancing rural public health science and improving rural public health preparedness and response.

“CDC is committed to advancing rural public health across America by identifying and addressing gaps in the evidence base, data analytic capabilities, and the workforce in rural communities,” the plan said.

Hall said her office will work alongside stakeholders and other subject matter experts to develop a more specific action plan and to determine how best to serve rural areas.

“A lot of times, rural communities haven’t really been served well by government policies or decisions,” she said. “All of that needs to be addressed when we’re talking about health decisions.”

The plan isn’t regionally or state-specific, but it is a step toward an action plan, Hall said.

“Rural health is an issue that garners bipartisan support in Congress,” Hall said. “And Congress has been very clear that they wanted the CDC to create this office. These are the first steps in a very long process to address the rural urban disparities in healthcare.”

Hall said that before the end of the year, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), part of the CDC, will release an updated method for urban-rural classification.

That will make researching rural health issues easier, Katy Backes Kozhimannil, the co-director of the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center, said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. One of the issues facing researchers is determining the rurality of subjects.

Although the strategic plan doesn’t provide direct actionable items, it is a step in the right direction, Kozhimannil said.

“This is a long process,” she said. “Working with local hospitals and rural public health agencies, as well as research centers like ours, is the beginning of the process. I think we’re all looking forward to the next steps and seeing what action items come out of this strategic plan.”

The post CDC Presents a Five-Year Plan for Rural Healthcare appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Farm employers’ increasing use of guest visa farmworkers has strained federal agencies, potentially impairing workers’ rights, a federal watchdog found in a report released Thursday.

The report comes days after Donald Trump was re-elected president. During his first term, Trump championed the use of guest farmworkers — foreign laborers who work temporarily in U.S. agricultural fields — as a legal alternative for farm labor. Many farmworkers in the U.S. are undocumented.

Trump has promised mass deportations of people who are not in the country legally. That could mean an even greater increase in guest farmworkers coming to the U.S. through the H-2A visa program, further straining federal oversight responsibilities.

“Agencies’ approaches to processing H-2A applications amid growth may have unintended consequences for the agencies,” the report from the Government Accountability Office reads, “such as their ability to perform oversight, process adjudications for other programs in a timely manner, and ensure workers are provided with information about their rights.”

The H-2A program has grown in popularity as a response to farm labor shortages. Between 2018 and 2023, the number of applications for H-2A workers increased by 72%, according to the GAO’s analysis.

However, the time the federal government took to review and approve applications remained static. This was accomplished, in part, by shifting staff from other responsibilities to focus on the H-2A program.

The federal government has said the program is an essential part of national security because it helps ensure widespread access to food in the U.S. Given that, agencies have prioritized approving H-2A applications quickly. 

Eliminating the H-2A program was a component of Project 2025, the blueprint created by Trump’s allies for his next administration. During his campaign, Trump disavowed the policy proposal, and, during his first term, he called H-2A labor a “source of legal and verified labor for agriculture.”

Currently, the H-2A program is intended to be used for field labor. (Some employers, however, use H-2A workers to construct animal confinements.) But industry groups representing other parts of the agriculture sector — such as dairy farms and meatpacking plants — have pushed to expand the program to include their operations.

As of Friday, Trump has yet to announce who he will nominate as his labor secretary, the person ultimately responsible for the H-2A program.

H-2A program’s integrity possibly impaired by rapid expansion

Three agencies coordinate approval of H-2A visa applications, though the U.S. Department of Labor performs most oversight. The agency reviews and approves employers’ applications for workers. 

The U.S. Department of State interviews potential workers at its consulates in foreign countries, primarily Mexico. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reviews a worker’s visa as they cross into the country.

In budget documents, the labor department has said the H-2A program might be compromised by the need to process applications in a timely manner. 

When employers apply, they provide evidence that no U.S. workers want the available jobs, list wage rates and show proof of adequate housing. If an employer’s application does not meet all requirements, the agency can send a “notice of deficiency.”

As the H-2A program expanded, the number of notices decreased, the GAO found. In 2018, almost half of applications were flagged for various infractions, such as inaccurate job descriptions, lacking proof of adequate housing, or missing information on employee transportation. In 2022, just a third were. (In 2023, the figure jumped back to almost half, which officials contributed to new reporting requirements.)

The agency has conducted audits to ensure employers comply with requirements.

But, with the increase in applications, the number of audits has dropped precipitously. In 2018, the agency conducted more than 500. In 2023, the figure was 30, according to the GAO.

“Officials attributed the reduction in H-2A audits to the competing priorities of staff,” the GAO wrote in its report. “Specifically, officials told us they have limited resources to conduct audits because the same staff who process applications also audit the approved applications.”

Prioritizing the H-2A program can also lead to backlogs in other visa programs the labor department oversees, the GAO said.

In some instances, the labor department has approved H-2A applications for employers that then faced scrutiny. 

In 2023, 13 Black farmworkers in Mississippi reached settlements with two employers after the employers hired white South Africans through the H-2A program. The employers told the labor department they would offer the same pay and same number of hours to the U.S. citizens and the H-2A workers — a legal requirement. The U.S. workers were given fewer hours and less pay, they alleged. 

Also, in recent years, contractors in Nebraska who provide detasseling labor — primarily teenagers earning pocket money — have cried foul. H-2A employers have taken some of their business, despite long waitlists of teenagers available to work.

State Department policies may lead to worker exploitation

The State Department is supposed to conduct interviews with prospective H-2A employees at its consulates. During the interviews, workers are provided with “know your rights” pamphlets — the H-2A program has a well-documented history of abuse.

But, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency waived the interview requirement, and, now, most H-2A workers are no longer interviewed in person. In 2023, the agency waived 90% of interviews, the GAO said. 

If an interview is waived, the consulate sends the pamphlet with the worker’s passport. However, the recruiter or the workers’ employer will often pick up passports on workers’ behalf, the GAO said.

This situation — coupled with the fact some employers confiscate passports and charge return fees — “suggests some employers may not prefer to provide H-2A workers with the information about their rights,” according to the GAO’s report. 

The State Department said it was taking steps to address this. 

For instance, when workers apply for visas online, they must certify they have read the information in the “know your rights” pamphlet in order to complete the application. The state and labor agencies are also collaborating with the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, to identify recruiting fraud.

Labor department has small number of investigators

H-2A workers often face abuse while in the U.S., but a couple factors impair the labor department’s ability to investigate abusive employers, according to the GAO.

For one, workers do not feel they can complain. If they do, they could face retaliation, such as being blacklisted by recruiters or being fired, which essentially maroons them in the U.S. if their passport was taken by an employer. Worker complaints were the origin of only 15% of investigations between 2018 and 2023, according to the GAO.

However, complaints are valuable to the agency. When investigations begin with worker complaints, investigators found, on average, 38 violations. When investigations began other ways, such as through a report by the media, investigators found, on average, 22 violations.

Second, the labor department has relatively few investigators now, and their focus is not just on agriculture or the H-2A program.

The agency’s Wage and Hour Division investigates employment issues, such as stolen wages, for H-2A workers. (The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, another labor department division, focuses on workplace safety.) In 2014, the wage and hour division had nearly 1,000 investigators.

Now, it has 773 investigators — one of its lowest staffing levels in the past 50 years, according to the GAO. 

These issues likely factor into the small number of investigations that the wage and hour division has pursued in recent years. Between 2018 and 2023, the Labor Department approved more than 90,000 H-2A applications, but it investigated fewer than 3,000 employers, according to the GAO.

In April, acting Labor Secretary Julie Su said the department needed more resources to shore up its enforcement responsibilities.

“Laws are only as powerful as their enforcement,” she said. “We need more resources in order to do what we need to do. We cannot allow companies that profit off of workers, who decide that it’s cheaper to break the law and the chances of getting caught are slim and the costs even if you do get caught are negligible, to keep on pursuing those practices.”

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Gov. Andy Beshear announced what he said is the third largest job announcement in Kentucky during his governorship Friday — a $712 million battery manufacturing plant in Shelbyville.

Officials said the plant would eventually become the largest employer in the city; the company is expected to hire 1,572 employees in its first three years.

“We’d already become the [electric vehicle] battery production capital of the United States, but with this investment, we’re putting our stamp on working to become just the battery capital of the United States of America,” Beshear said. “Now with Shelbyville Battery Manufacturing, we’re going to lead in the industrial electrification space.”

The two other major projects of Beshear’s administration — BlueOval SK Battery Park in Hardin County and the AESC battery manufacturing plant in Bowling Green — both produce electric vehicle batteries.

The new plant will create industrial battery cells and modules used in projects like solar and hydroelectric power generation. Shelbyville Battery Manufacturing is owned by e-STORAGE, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar Inc. which is a global renewable energy company based in Ontario.

The facility appears to be on the same site as a previously announced plant. Energy storage firm EnerVenue finished construction of the plant last year, but never began operations.

Because the one-million-square-foot factory is already largely constructed, Colin Parkin, president of e-STORAGE, said they hope to have the plant up and running by the end of next year.

“The products we will build in the Shelbyville factory will be ready, will be installed into energy storage projects nationwide by early 2026,” Parkin said. “That is, of course, a very aggressive timeline.”

The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority approved a 15-year incentive agreement with Shelbyville Battery Manufacturing, with up to $35 million in tax incentives — and another $5 million besides through the Kentucky Enterprise Initiative Act. The governor’s office said those incentives are based on the company’s investment and an average hourly wage of $25.34 with benefits for 15 years across the nearly 1,600 new jobs.

GOP Senate President Robert Stivers of Manchester said in a statement he celebrated the new investment.

“The General Assembly has worked to foster a pro-business environment in Kentucky, making us an attractive destination for global companies,” Stivers said. “We’ll continue this work, alongside Gov. Beshear, to keep bringing opportunity to our citizens.”

Shelby County Judge/Executive Dan Ison said he wants to increase industry in Shelby County by welcoming “quality business.”

“We don’t just open the door and say, ‘Come in, pollute our community.’ No, we get clean business. We get good business. We get good jobs,” Eisen said.

State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Amanda David felt a wave of devastation as reality sank in that former President Donald Trump would lead the country again. Yet, the past four years have felt as if he had never left.

She’s been battling ongoing violent threats, racism, and harassment from her white neighbor in Ithaca, New York. The college town and farming community more than 200 miles away from New York City prides itself on being progressive, with Tompkins County residents backing Vice President Kamala Harris and securing wins for Democrats across the board. 

It’s a facade, David says. The racism and segregation is more subtle in the city, where Black people are only 5% of the nearly 31,400 residents. Mere miles away, she recalls seeing Confederate and Trump flags flying high. 

It’s not just the rural South or conservative regions — Black people in rural areas across the country don’t feel safe. As David and others are still processing the election results, they told Capital B that another Trump administration will only perpetuate ongoing issues over the next four years. Long neglected by both his campaign and previous administration, they see little hope for change in their persistent struggles: limited resources, weak civic infrastructure, and constant threats of violence. 

Sekou Franklin, political scientist and professor in the Department of Political Science at Middle Tennessee State University, points out that part of the issue is the erasure of Black rural communities in American politics, and how the policies don’t adequately address the diversity of rural Black America — whether it’s the Arkansas, Tennessee, or Mississippi Deltas, the Georgia Black Belt, or the Gullah Geechee communities along the coasts. 

Franklin suspects in states like Tennessee with Republican-dominated legislatures, lawmakers will pass substantial bills that will “legitimately” hurt Black communities. When it comes to opposing laws or fighting back against law enforcement officials, for example, many rural communities don’t have the infrastructure or extensive resources to do so.

“As bad and as tough as it may be in some of the urban communities, we have a little bit more of a grassroots infrastructure. We got young activists. We got civil rights leaders. We have attorneys,” Franklin said. “When you go to rural communities, where there’s brain drain and alienation, there’s no equivalent of a [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] group there.”

“The things of old are not old at all”

The election reminded Democratic Mayor W. Mondale Robinson of Enfield, North Carolina, of his own experiences as a Southern mayor who tore down the Confederate monument and received death threats from white supremacists for doing so.

“The reality is that America’s love for whiteness is on display at every turn, and this was no different,” he told Capital B. “I’m reminded that things of old are not old at all. They are around the corner and right in our face every day.”

In a crucial battleground state, North Carolina, voters there backed all Democratic candidates down ballot, but still voted for Trump to be president. 

Back in New York, when David moved to Ithaca in 2020, she set out to build community gardens and teach herbal medicine and land stewardship through her organization Rootwork Herbals.

Immediately after she arrived, David said her neighbor constantly yelled at her kids, calling them the N-word while trespassing on her property, which consists of a home, community garden, and area for her animals. Despite several protective orders and several police reports, he continued the racist bullying. 

“Anytime I felt threatened … I had this group of people that I would call, and they would come over because I had to do something to protect myself. The law wasn’t doing it,” David recalled. 

With nowhere to turn, Central New York Fair Housing filed a federal housing discrimination lawsuit on behalf of David against Robert Whittaker Jr. in 2023. She’s also fundraising through GoFundMe to relocate her family and business, which she had to shut down due to safety concerns. 

In Michigan, another key battleground state that Harris lost to Trump, Dilla Scott faced a lack of community support as her family experienced years of harassment and racism. She and her children moved to the small town of Cadillac in 2005 in search of better housing, becoming part of the 2% Black population. While in grade school, Dilla’s daughter, Angel Scott, was bullied by a white boy on the bus. One day, he even told her he wanted to burn a cross on a Black person’s lawn. When Dilla reported the incident, the school district failed to respond to take action, she said. 

The bigotry came to a head in 2020 when one of her sons, Alex Marshall, was racially profiled by the police, which led to him being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing a police officer. The county prosecutor later dropped those charges.

“In my experience from being in Cadillac, the white people thought they were entitled to do whatever they wanted to a Black person,” Scott said. “I think Trump had a lot to do with it, the influence of people mistreating Black people and its racist acts.”

After that traumatic experience, Dilla’s home became infested with rodents and her landlord refused to act. She sought help from several agencies, including the local housing commission and health department, but received no support. The 68-year-old fell ill and discovered she had 22 ticks on her body. She had enough, but at the time, the single mom couldn’t “just up and move. You know, you’re trying to survive,” she told Capital B.

The decades of lack of local support served as a reason for why she chose not to vote, feeling things wouldn’t change.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s not a politician that has not lied,” Scott said. “I have no reason to vote for man. I vote for God.”

Others have used the racism they’ve faced as a catalyst to improve their community.

Delbert Jackson grew up in a predominately white, rural town in east Texas. Unlike Ithaca, Center, Texas is a majority-Republican town, and its racist roots trace back to the 1920s when Lige Daniels, a Black teenager, was lynched in the main square at the courthouse. When Jackson returned to Center in 2010, he noticed the racism wasn’t hidden anymore — it was public for all to see. He noticed Confederate flags displayed during parades. He also stumbled upon the private club called the Sundowner, “a discreet and exclusive establishment … offering a unique social experience for its members.”

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He kept digging, and learned the Little Pony League changed its name to the Dixie League. The local activist knew he had to get involved when he found out white families participate in an annual ceremony to hang blue ribbons on the tree where Daniels was killed. For years now, he’s requested the local city council to relocate the historical marker of Daniels from the Black neighborhood to the courthouse grounds. The request was denied, but he’s still working to get it moved.

“They didn’t like the language that was used on the marker that’s at the location in the Black community. They told us that if anybody wanted to read the narrative that’s on that marker, then they can go to the Black neighborhood and read that narrative, but they wouldn’t allow that language on their historical Courthouse Square,” Jackson said.

In a place like Center, there is no local chapter of the NAACP or civil rights groups to support Jackson in his efforts. When asked why people aren’t getting involved, Jackson explains that most Black people “want to just mingle and merge, stay in their own churches or whatever. It’s business as usual. It’s not the same Black community that was here during Reconstruction or pre-Civil rights era.”

Though Trump will assume office, Jackson knows Black folks, particularly in the South, “won’t go down lightly.” While local white Democrats blame Harris’ loss on economics, Jackson emphasizes the history of racism and white supremacy is why Trump is back in office.

“That’s the American mindset. It’s regressive. It’s always been here, and it’s still here,” he added.

“We got to get to work”

While they will keep fighting locally, Black rural residents urge the Democratic Party to invest and organize in these communities year-round, not just during election cycles.

Robinson, the founder of the Black Male Voter Project, emphasized the need for the Democrats to come to grips that their policies aren’t translating with how folks vote, and having celebrities and influencers speak on behalf of Black communities doesn’t work.

Read More: The Powerful, Unsung Role Black Rural Voters Can Play in Our Elections

“When you have [a large percentage] of Black men not voting at all, or only one of the last four or five federal elections, that’s a critique of the tactics, not of the demographic,” Robinson said. “We have to … rethink what it means to invest in trusted messengers outside of Washington, D.C., and invest in state level politics, local level politics in a way that we’ve never done, not in modern times.”

Over the next four years, Democratic Mayor Dwan Walker of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, agreed the focus should be on local and state races to “put us in the best position to keep what we have and try to gain more if we can.”

“The wars are fought in Philly and Pittsburgh and Erie, but the battles are won in these small areas like Aliquippa” he said. “By getting a lot of those people out to vote in these rural areas, you could neutralize some of the areas that you don’t get that’s not a stronghold.”

But, the policies must align with low-income and working-class people, which is an area he felt the Democratic Party missed the mark. Even with Harris’ economic plan, which included $25,000 down payment for first-time homeowners, some people questioned, “How do I even get there?”

“Like my Dad always said, ‘There’s got to be an avenue to success. Don’t show me something and not tell me how to get there.’ Say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna help you with your credit. We’re gonna give you some support.’ Show me what my insulators are,” Walker said. “Who’s gonna protect me when [or] if I fall? What if I lose my job?”

Beyond organizing, the moment calls for taking a moment to walk away and connect with your community, said Dr. Kenya Johns, a professor and licensed professional counselor. She’s also the mayor of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, and recently lost the bid to become the next state senator for Pennsylvania District 13. Even Johns is still processing the outcome. 

“This is my motto since it happened Wednesday. Everyone, cry today. Get your tears out. Get your sadness out. Because Thursday, we got to get to work, and that’s exactly what I feel,” she said.

The post Rural Black America Sees Little Hope for Change in Another Trump Term appeared first on Capital B News.