‘A very big deal for us’: Gullah farmers group wins $576,000 coronavirus contract
A Gullah farmers cooperative on St. Helena Island recently won a $576,000 federal contract as part of a national coronavirus relief program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Gullah Farmers Cooperative Association, a group of farmers in northern Beaufort County, received the money as part of an ongoing USDA initiative to distribute up to $3 billion in healthy produce to families struggling amid the pandemic.
The award is one of the largest COVID-19 contracts in the county, according to data released by the federal Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.
Joseph McDomick, president of the group, said the award keeps his “hopes alive” as the co-op develops the county’s former Leroy E. Browne Services Center near the St. Helena Elementary School.
The co-op wants to build a food packaging and distribution facility at the site.
“It’s revenue for the farmers,” McDomick said of the contract. “It’s a very big deal for us.”
From mid-May to the end of June, the group had to distribute 8,400 vegetable boxes to various Lowcountry organizations serving needy families, said co-op member Jacky Frazier.
Another 8,400 boxes must be delivered by the end of August, Frazier said.
The co-op, Frazier said, has sent the boxes to food banks in Charleston and Yemassee as well as other local organizations and churches.
Theresa Roberts, executive director of Love House Learning Academy in Beaufort, said her nonprofit is using the vegetables for weekly deliveries to senior citizens north of the Broad River.
“It has been monumental to them staying healthy,” Roberts said, especially as the coronavirus continues to spread in the county. “They’re not able to get to the market. Many of them are afraid to come out.”
Love House has been receiving the vegetables for a few months and distributing the boxes in Beaufort, Port Royal, Yemassee, Seabrook and Burton, among other areas.
Each vegetable box weighs roughly 20 pounds, McDomick said. At first, he said, the boxes were filled with squash, zucchini and tomatoes. They now include peppers, cabbage, corn and watermelon, among other things.
Seven to eight co-op farmers are involved in food distribution under the contract, McDomick said. The group, though, had to buy some of the boxes’ vegetables from a farmers market in Columbia due to the county’s summer heat.
“People can’t wait to get them,” Frazier said of the boxes.
The co-op initially won a $252,000 contract in May as part of the USDA’s coronavirus relief program, which is called “Farmers to Families.” The federal agency, however, later extended the contract in June, adding another $324,000 to the co-op’s scope of work, records show.
A spokesperson for the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, which runs Farmers to Families, said the agency recently extended contracts for “many high performing distributors.”
The USDA approved up to $1.27 billion in extended contracts for the program’s second round of funding from July to the end of August, according to the agency. It also awarded up to $202 million in new contracts.
“These distributors will help direct food to underserved areas and will have an increased focus on Opportunity Zones,” the agency said of the new contracts.
An Opportunity Zone is an economically distressed community where “new investments, under certain conditions, may be eligible for preferential tax treatment,” according to the Internal Revenue Service.
A peach grower in Saluda County, Titan Farms Inc., won a $10 million Farmers to Families contract this year. That $10 million is the second-biggest COVID-19-related federal contract awarded for projects in South Carolina in 2020, PRAC data show.
Locally, the co-op’s USDA contract is the third-largest award in Beaufort County as of Aug. 3, PRAC data and procurement records show.
Alpha Genesis Inc., a monkey research facility based in Yemassee, won a $4.6 million coronavirus contract this year. It’s the third-biggest award in the state and second-largest in Beaufort County. A public records request seeking more information about that contract is pending.
The largest COVID-19 contract for a project in the county — and in the state — went to an international engineering firm with an office in Greenville called Fluor Intercontinental Inc. That company won over $12 million to build a COVID-19 staging area for Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island.
