Table to Farm Compost, a La Plata County business that picks up household food scraps and turns them into carbon-sequestering soil for local farmers, announced Monday that it would eliminate two full-time positions and another three staff members would forgo pay because the federal government has reneged on its grant funding commitments.
The rug has been pulled out from under them. The business is in free fall. The runway has been shortened. Pick any of the analogies Table to Farm co-owner Monique DiGiorgio used to describe the situation – they all mean trouble.
Soon after taking office, President Donald Trump froze all federal grants and ordered agencies to review grant funding to ensure the programs complied with a volley of executive orders. A federal judge temporarily blocked that move, but to no avail.
DiGiorgio said she still has not received payment for an invoice submitted to the U.S. Department of Agriculture nearly two months ago. The invoice requested a drawdown from a $2.25 million grant the business was awarded in 2023.
The USDA’s Fertilizer Production Expansion Program made $500 million available to increase domestic fertilizer production after supply chains were interrupted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“I thought, ‘Wow, this is such a forward-thinking, unique, creative way for the federal government to address this fertilizer crisis,’” DiGiorgio said.
Table to Farm was “a perfect fit.”
“The timing was so great that we were awarded this $2.25 million grant, and it’s completely changed the landscape of our business,” she said.
Using the grant, the business has made significant investments in heavy equipment and its workforce. Table to Farm is also in the process of buying the land where it is permitted to operate. Given the 2½-year, $400,000 permitting process it went through – something it would have to repeat if it moved – the acquisition is critical to Table to Farm’s future stability.
Most difficult of all, the business is 12 to 18 months away from reaching a sustainable and profitable scale. The FPEP grant and another $128,000 USDA grant were important supports for Table to Farm as it reached that point. The second grant helped the business adapt to using wildfire mitigation slash in its compost.
“But with the federal government reneging on its obligated funds and pulling out of a signed contract, we're completely left in midair,” DiGiorgio said. “Our runway has been shortened, and we can’t make it to that year timeline that we had anticipated and were planning for.”
Table to Farm’s grant funding has not been formally canceled, but the business has received no information regarding when payments might resume. A temporary pause that included future certainty might be workable for a business like Table to Farm, but being left “completely in the dark,” as DiGiorgio puts it, is untenable.
The USDA did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Given the uncertainty, DiGiorgio – for whom the business is both an investment and her full-time job – is forgoing a salary, as are two other management-level employees. She informed a farm support worker and a compost collection driver Monday that she had to lay them off.
“I have a mortgage that I won’t be able to pay,” she said. “This is really disappointing and it’s kind of terrifying.”
For the time being, DiGiorgio does not expect the cuts to affect Table to Farm’s service.
In an email to state and federal lawmakers sent Monday, DiGiorgio specifically called on Rep. Jeff Hurd, the Republican congressman representing Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, to ask USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins to release the funds.
“This impact on rural Colorado is crippling to our economy and our community,” she wrote.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
