Financial improprieties: State cancels $800,000 grant with Bloomington farmers market
A state agency has canceled an $800,000 contract with an anti-racist Bloomington farmers' market after discovering financial improprieties.
Former members and co-founders of the market and local farmers said some of them are owed tens of thousands of dollars, and when they began asking questions, they were met with gaslighting and accusations of being racist, homophobic and transphobic.
The money, part of a federal program administered by the state, was to help socially disadvantaged farmers grow crops that were to be delivered to local food banks to support people who are struggling to put food on their tables.
The Bloomington-based People’s Cooperative Market received the $800,000 grant last year from the Indiana Department of Health, but the agency’s spokeswoman said via email last week that it terminated the contract in February because “the grant requirements were not being fulfilled.”
After follow-up questions, the spokeswoman, Lisa Welch, said, “expenses were submitted that were not allowed.”
“IDOH notified People’s in February that the grant would be terminated, and grant activities ended Feb. 15,” Welch said.
The department declined to provide more details, and the federal agency that provided the money, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, referred questions to the state agency.
Former members and co-founders of the market and some local farmers said the transgressions include the submission of inflated invoices and failure to pay some farmers tens of thousands of dollars for their work.
At least one of the farmers said the lack of payment is jeopardizing the future of her farm.
People's Cooperative Market lands $800,000 grant
The People's Cooperative Market was formed in 2019 after public outrage when the Bloomington Community Farmers’ Market included a vendor with white supremacist beliefs. Some local vendors decided to no longer participate in the city market and instead formed the PCM, the vision for which includes working towards “intersectional anti-racism.”
The group’s website lists among its vendors Jada Bee’s Black Witchery and 3 Flock Farms, based in Ellettsville and operated by Lauren McCalister and Brett Volpp.
No one from the PCM responded to emails, phone calls and text messages.
The market, which operates Saturdays at First United Church, last year was designated the state health department’s partner for southwestern Indiana to distribute $800,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Local Food Purchasing Assistance program, or LFPA.
Those dollars, according to the USDA, are to be used to “purchase agricultural products from socially disadvantaged producers, and distribute the food to identified underserved communities.” The health department’s partners are to be chosen in part based on their commitment to “address racial and social inequities within their regional food system.”
In total, the USDA awarded Indiana nearly $13 million in LFPA funds in 2023.
The state health department last year contracted with the Bloomington market for $800,000 that was to be funneled to farmers in the state’s southwestern region. Those farmers were to use those dollars to invest in seeds, equipment and personnel to produce food that they would then deliver to food banks such as Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard and Hoosier Hills Food Bank.
Welch said the People’s Cooperative Market received $484,572.66 before the agreement was dissolved.
'Gaslighting', 'dishonesty': One farmer worries about losing her operation
Former members of the local market and some local farmers said soon after the money started flowing, problems arose. And, they said, when they began asking questions, they were called names and ostracized from the farmers market, which undermined their businesses in an already difficult, low-margin industry.
Brandi Williams, owner and operator of Primally Inspired Eats and Solidago Acres, said she lost a salaried position paid for by the LFPA program, is still owed more than $10,000 for a catering event and lost an LFPA contract worth $15,000 because of problems with the People’s Cooperative Market.
She said the funding losses have placed her in a difficult situation, because she obtained loans for her 8.6-acre farm based partially on the expected funds from the LFPA program.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep my farm,” she said.
Williams said she is one of the original farmers who left the city market to create the People’s Cooperative Market to seek a safer and more equitable collaboration of farmers. Solidago Acres is a BIPOC, woman-owned, queer and trans-run farm, she said. BIPOC stands for “Black, indigenous and people of color.”
Williams said part of the grant that PCM received from the state paid two administrative salaries, for an executive director, Lauren McCalister, of 3 Flock Farm, and a value chain professional, a role that Williams took on.
PCM signed contracts with some farmers with whom it already had established relations and paid them half of their contract up front so the farmers could use the funds to purchase equipment and hire staff, Williams said. The contracts were very basic, she said, to make sure that the farmers had flexibility and could ramp up production quickly.
Sometime last year, though, Williams said, she received reports from some of the farmers that they never received the second tranche of their promised payments. For many of the farmers, who would not have ramped up production without the contracts, not getting the expected funds proved problematic, she said.
“They are struggling,” Williams said.
She said one farmer was contracted to receive nearly $100,000, and another about $75,000, but both received tens of thousands of dollars less.
When Williams started asking PCM leaders questions, she said the cooperative, supportive vibe that was crucial to the market’s vision, changed drastically. She said she didn’t quite know how to handle the situation, in part because she didn’t want to lose her own LFPA contract and salary. She said she depended on the money as a small business owner and single mother to a child with a chronic health condition. She said she also did not want to alienate the local farming community.
Williams said when she asked questions via email, she would be told the matters had to be discussed in person. Eventually she was told the duties for which she was getting paid would be transferred to someone else, which meant she lost her salary.
While she said she felt as though she was advocating for the struggling farmers, she was told by PCM leaders that she was not being supportive of a BIPOC-run organization.
Williams said she experienced “a lot of gaslighting, a lot of dishonesty.”
Being part of the market became so hostile and abusive, Williams said, that she “finally just gave in and left the organization.”
A catering job she performed for the market also remains unpaid, she said.
Dispute bubbles to surface, social media, city council
Internal disputes at the local market bubbled to the surface late last year, when another co-founding member, Susan Welsand, known locally as The Chile Woman, announced via social media on Dec. 4 that she was leaving the PCM.
Two days later, the PCM posted on its Facebook page that it “continues to combat lies, rumors and accusations while combating racists in our community including but not limited to those who work and fund the Rosehill Farmstop, City of Bloomington Farmers Market and Woolery. People’s Cooperative Market is not defeated by false accusations and those committed to misunderstanding."
“When white people spread false, inaccurate and misleading information about BIPOC run organizations this tactic is incredibly damaging as other white people will believe the fake information without question & without communication or consideration to the BIPOC leadership,” the PCM wrote.
The posts were discussed widely on a Bloomington Reddit thread, where a post about the "drama" garnered more than 150 comments.
Welsand said recently that she left the market after she brought to the PCM leadership’s attention that multiple farmers last year told her that they were not paid for products they had delivered. Farmers are supposed to get paid within a matter of days, Welsand said, but some had not gotten paid for months.
Welsand shared a text message she said was sent by one of the farmers in November to McCalister in which the farmer said they were still owed for produce delivered in July, August, September and October. The total amount owed, according to that text message: $27,340.
“So I started asking questions, and that was not received well at all,” Welsand said.
At the last PCM meeting she attended, Welsand said she was not allowed to speak.
As she didn’t get answers locally, Welsand contacted the Indiana Department of Health, which was responsible for funneling the federal dollars to the local farmers.
While Welch, the IDOH spokeswoman, said via email that the agency uncovered problems “during our normal grant oversight process,” Welsand said the IDOH had not been aware of any problems until contacted by her.
Welch, when pressed for more details, said via email, “We do not have any additional information to provide on this matter.”
Welsand said she notified the state about bills that had gone unpaid and she provided information about invoices that the PCM had turned in that did not match the invoices the farmers had sent to the PCM. A screenshot of accounting software Quickbooks showed one invoice, which Welsand said was submitted by the PCM, that included a $500 delivery fee, which, Welsand said, the farmers had not submitted.
The Herald-Times could not independently verify the authenticity of the invoice nor was Welsand able to provide any originals. She declined to identify the farmer who had submitted the original invoice.
“Most people are quite genuinely terrified to speak in public,” Welsand said.
“My concern in all of this was just to get the farmers paid,” she said.
This month, Bloomington resident Jami Scholl raised concerns about the PCM problems at the Bloomington City Council.
Scholl, a culinary medicine coach and garden consultant, co-founded the Bloomington Food Policy Council, which aims “to increase and preserve access to sustainably produced, locally grown, healthful food for all residents in Monroe and surrounding counties.”
She said she got involved in part because some of the local farmers asked her for help, and because the city council has provided local grants to the PCM.
“We need these BIPOC farmers and food vendors,” Scholl wrote council members in an email. “If a farmer or food vendor grows this food, hires people to work the farm, and prepares the food for sale, then they should be paid, and paid in a timely way.”
Other local sources — Shanna Poveda, a BIPOC business owner; and Kelsey Campbell, a queer woman and co-owner of a local farming business — relayed experiences similar to those of Welsand, Williams and Scholl. Poveda and Campbell said they have experienced non-payment of claims and name-calling and harassment when they asked questions.
Welch, the IDOH spokeswoman, said via email that the state does not collect information about the unique number of recipients who received food through the program, but she said 16 local producers from the southwest region, one of the five LFPA regions in the state, participated in the program in the first year. And she said the food was distributed to “dozens of sites” within the region.
Julio Alonso, executive director and CEO of the Hoosier Hills Food Bank, said the organization last year received nearly 50,000 pounds of food through the LFPA program, including potatoes, corn, squash, greens, tomatoes and peppers.
This year, the food bank is dealing more directly with the farmers, rather than the PCM, which acted as a liaison between the state and the farmers, he said.
The LFPA program helps a lot of local farmers who otherwise would not have gotten that monetary support, Alonso said, and the food they grow helps local food banks.
“It’s really high quality food, and we’re very grateful to get it,” he said.
The state department of health website lists four regional partners for the state’s five LPFA regions. Only the southwest region, which includes Monroe County, lists the partner as “TBD,” or to be determined. The state directs farmers interested in the LFPA program in this region to instead contact Denise Jamerson, an IDOH staffer and LFPA program manager.
Welch said the agency “is in the process of identifying a new southern region vendor and hope(s) to have a grant in place in the next couple of months.”
Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Financial impropriety: State cancels Indiana farmers market $800K grant
