The Owensboro Times
Updated January 13, 2021 | 9:03 pm
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Several grant funding opportunities are open through the Kentucky Department of Agriculture (KDA).
“The Kentucky Department of Agriculture offers a number of grant funding opportunities to support farmers, restaurants, and research institutions every year,” said Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles.. “These grant programs are more important than ever before as we support our farm community in rebuilding after the coronavirus pandemic.”
Buy Local – Connecting farmers to restaurants
The Buy Local program provides incentives for participating restaurants and other food service businesses to buy and use Kentucky Proud products for their customers. The program offers participants a 15% reimbursement for the cost of eligible Kentucky Proud farm food up to $8,000 a year or a lifetime cap of $36,000.
The state Department of Agriculture last week classified chlorpyrifos as a restricted use pesticide.
Chlorpyrifos is used to control a broad spectrum of insects in more than 50 crops statewide, but studies showed it may have harmful neurological effects.
Growers say alternatives are urgently needed, but research could take one to five years per pest per crop, followed by a years-long registration process â and researchers say the state isnât supporting them with sufficient funding.
âComing up with new modes of action has gotten harder and harder,â said Ian Grettenberger, an entomologist at the University of California-Davis Cooperative Extension.
Grettenberger received a grant when Californiaâs Legislature, after voting last year to take away chlorpyrifos, invested millions of dollars in researching alternatives.