MOULTRIE, Ga. — Colquitt County frequently brags that it’s the largest agricultural county in Georgia, but if you go to a local grocery store to buy frozen or canned vegetables, that food didn’t come from here.

Those vegetables are processed by national companies with contracted growers all over the country and even internationally.

Local farmers are raising crops for the fresh produce market. Their best tomatoes, squash and cabbage wind up in stores everywhere. Their second-best produce winds up in the trash.

Economic development officials have begun to ask: What if it doesn’t have to be that way?

“Anybody hates waste of a food product,” said Barbara Grogan, executive director of the Moultrie-Colquitt County Development Authority. 

The authority’s proposal is a processing plant in Colquitt County that would serve farmers here and in nearby counties. It would take in the produce that’s perfectly fine to eat but isn’t pretty enough to be sold fresh, Grogan said, and it would put that produce into the market through other routes.

Development Authority representatives have been meeting with local agricultural producers to gauge interest, and Grogan said the support is there. Not only would it provide the county’s larger farmers with a market for excess vegetables, it would also offer a reliable market for smaller farmers.

In early August, Dr. Benjy Mikel, a consultant in the food preservation business, held three days of meetings with local producers and Development Authority members to begin crafting a business plan. 

The goal is not for the Development Authority to own a business, Grogan said. In the normal course of its duties, the authority seeks to bring a business to Colquitt County, and part of the package it offers may include building a facility for the company; the authority owns the building and leases it to the company for a monthly rental fee. This proposal applies that same logic to a locally grown company, she said.

Many questions remain to be resolved. For instance, what will be this business’s structure? And who will be in charge? Grogan said they’re looking at several models but leaning toward a co-op, which is fairly common in agricultural endeavors. Under that model, participating farmers would have control over the business, possibly in proportion to how much produce they bring to the processing plant.

“We want any farmer who wants to participate to be able to,” Grogan said.

Startup costs

The current version of the business plan calls for starting with two lines. One will cut the vegetables into chunks that can be sold fresh for vegetable trays or sold to restaurants, according to Dug Schwalls, who helped Grogan present the proposal to the Colquitt County Board of Commissioners Aug. 24. Schwalls is director of business development and marketing for Southern Valley, one of the largest vegetable producers in the county.

The other line would similarly cut up produce then flash-freeze it. Flash-frozen vegetables remain good to eat for at least a year and a half and probably longer, Schwalls said. That would open up the frozen food market to local growers.

Grogan said that as the business grows, it would add other lines to preserve food in cans, jars or both. The technique for canning is more complicated than for freezing, she said, and planners thought the other lines could start earning revenue more easily.

Grogan said the business would employ about 100 people to start, then add more as it grows.

Schwalls estimated line workers would earn $14 per hour and skilled workers, such as mechanics to maintain the machines, would earn even more.

But Grogan said the initial funding is the issue.

“Like any business it’s the overhead startup that says, ‘Can we do this?’” she said.

Under the current plan — to start with those two lines and allow for growth later — Grogan estimates the building will cost $50-55 million. Plus another $40-45 million for equipment.

The biggest expenses involve the cold storage facilities that have to be built into the building, structural elements to enable the facility to get proper food-handling certifications, and cutting tools that have to meet strict requirements in a food-processing facility.

Federal money

Enter the coronavirus. Or more accurately, the federal government’s response to it.

President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act — sometimes called ARPA — into law on March 11. It allocated money for economic impact payments directly to taxpayers, expanded the child income tax credit and provided assistance to homeowners, renters and businesses dealing with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. It also sent billions of dollars to state and local governments.

The City of Moultrie and Colquitt County are each receiving a few million dollars. Moultrie plans changes to its wastewater treatment system. On Aug. 24, Colquitt County commissioners approved a plan to use the county’s money to pay for existing items in its budget.

On top of all that, though, the State of Georgia is receiving $4.85 billion for the State Fiscal Recovery Fund, which it can then disburse in grants to local governments or nonprofit agencies. The money is available for three purposes: broadband infrastructure, water and sewer upgrades, and mitigating the negative economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Grogan said the food processing project fits into the third of those categories. She has been preparing a grant proposal in hopes of getting money from the state to help build the facility. She’s asking for $52 million, although she doubts they’ll get the full amount.

“The way the money is flowing right now, you ask for as much as you want and you build to what you get,” she said.

The deadline for application was initially announced as Aug. 31 with grant awards to be announced Oct. 18. Grogan was a flurry of motion trying to get all the aspects of her grant proposal lined up, including meetings with the city and county governments. Then on the evening of Aug. 24, as county commissioners debated support for the application, the state sent an email that the deadline had been extended to Oct. 31 with awards to be announced Jan. 3.

Grogan said she still planned to submit the grant application before the original deadline. She has applications for other grants to write.

“There’s about six levels of funding,” she said, including some money related to COVID as well as annual grants for economic development. “We’ll just keep trying — as we would with any other industry.”

If the Fiscal Recovery Fund grant is for less than the building cost, other grants could make up the difference — or they  could be used to buy equipment to go into the processing plant.

Local matches

Some of those other funding sources require matching money from local agencies, and the Fiscal Recovery Fund gives preference to projects with a local match, Grogan said. She said it shows the locals have “skin in the game.”

“That makes them (local officials) more committed to making it work,” she said.

That’s why Grogan was speaking to the Moultrie City Council Aug. 17 and to the Colquitt County Commission Aug. 24. She had put together a plan for $15 million in local matches, and one-tenth of that needed to come in the form of money from those two governing bodies.

To get the $15 million match, Grogan counted the $800,000 the Development Authority had already paid to buy land at what’s now Citizens Business Park, where they plan for the food processing plant to be located. 

She counted an estimate for a project to address stormwater drainage at the site. Drainage will have to be improved for anything to go there, she said. An engineer has just started looking at the problem and hasn’t had time to propose a solution yet.

And she counted lost property tax revenue. One of the other federal grants requires that the Development Authority own the property, which means it can’t be taxed. The land they plan to use already belongs to the authority.

“While it’s not up-front lost money because we haven’t had it before, it’s still money we won’t realize,” Grogan explained.

Her hope was to get $750,000 from the city council and $750,000 from the county commission. That’s not the way it worked out.

The Moultrie City Council listened respectfully but didn’t give Grogan an answer.

City Manager Pete Dillard raised a concern. Prior to 2016, the Development Authority received a stipend of $150,000 each from the city and county. The authority had the ability to levy taxes but did not do so, in favor of the stipend. In 2016 , the authority changed its funding mechanism to levy taxes with the promise that the city and county wouldn’t have to fund economic development out of their tax revenues.

Dillard said the authority was now asking the city and county to do exactly that. He said it wasn’t fair to the taxpayers to be taxed for the Development Authority then to have to use city and county tax money for that purpose as well.

The Colquitt County Commission came to the project’s rescue Aug. 24, but commissioners were hesitant for much the same reason.

“All the risk is on the county taxpayer right now,” County Administrator Chas Cannon said. “The more we spread out the risk the more people who’ll buy into it.”

Commission Chairman Denver Braswell pointed to the fact the site is served by the city’s gas, water and sewer services. The project would bid for electrical service and the city might win that contract too.

“We’re subsidizing something that makes them revenue,” Braswell said.

In spite of the concerns, Cannon was able to offer a solution that appeared to minimize the county’s risk. The Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax is currently bringing in significantly more money than anticipated. When it started, the SPLOST didn’t collect taxes on internet sales, but now it does. It’s currently about a million dollars ahead of where it was expected to be by now, Cannon estimated, and with more than three years remaining on the tax, it should be much higher when it ends.

Cannon proposed the county government loan the Development Authority $1.5 million from this overage, which the authority would then pay back over time. The county commissioners voted to approve this plan, with Commissioner Marc DeMott abstaining. DeMott serves on the Development Authority too, so he felt he had a conflict of interest.

The county attorney will draw up an intergovernmental agreement that the Development Authority will vote on at its next meeting.

“It’s the perfect fit for what Colquitt County is,” said Commissioner Chris Hunnicutt, a farmer. “If we don’t help it’ll never happen.”