SUNDERLAND — From extreme weather related to climate change to stronger crop insurance protections and an increase on the cap on lending, area farmers paused their work briefly Tuesday to share their concerns with U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern when he swung by as part of his annual two-day, 11-farm tour in Franklin, Hampshire and Worcester counties.

McGovern, a member of the House Committee on Agriculture in Congress, began his tour in Hadley at Amherst Nurseries, a tree nursery farm run by John Kinchla and his wife Amanda. Established in 2001, the farm specializes in growing trees — about 5,000 a year — and shrubs that it primarily sells to urban municipalities, state agencies and nonprofits as well as providing landscaping services.

At the farm, Kinchla spoke about some of the issues his nursery faces with regards to climate change, government regulation and more.

“The challenge in this industry is finding good, reliable people to work for you,” Kinchla said. “It is not like most other industries, and so I try to hold on to the good ones and keep things moving forward.”

Speaking about the climate, Kinchla said that more polarizing and extreme weather, such as a sudden and severe cold snap, can cause a great loss of planted trees. For farmers like Kinchla, climate change is no longer a far-away, abstract concept but something that is already having a major impact on crop production.

“A lot of farmers rely on frozen ground in the winter. Cranberry growers, vegetable growers, we all rely on some type of frozen surface in the winter to do certain things,” Kinchla said. “It’s just not happening. Actually, I can’t think of a time in the last five years when it’s happened. It’s just astounding.”

He also said that greater periods of drought hurt the farm’s bottom line, with the urban municipalities the farm sells to enacting water bans, making them less likely to buy and maintain trees. Kinchla called for greater federal drought monitoring to add better protections for farmers.

McGovern blamed the current climate change problems on fossil fuel companies and their subsequent lobbying efforts against other forms of energy, and called for urgent action to address the issue.

“Part of the problem is the fossil fuel industry is really powerful. There’s too much money in our political system, and they buy a lot of their influence in Congress and state legislations all across the country,” McGovern said. “We have to be proactive, and we’re running out of time.”

“Two years ago, in that drought, it was like COVID for us,” said Kinchla said, speaking in terms of the drought’s economic impact. “It was if the world shut down because the our main customers just weren’t planting, just like during COVID.”

Following McGovern’s trip to Amherst Nurseries, the crew made their way to Kitchen Garden Farm in Sunderland to speak to new Co-owners Lilly Israel and Max Traunstein, who purchased the farm from longtime owners Caroline Pam and Tim Wilcox this spring. Kitchen Garden Farm was founded in 2006 in Hadley — it moved to South Silver Lane in neighboring Sunderland in 2007 — and specializes in peppers, salsas and sriracha. The farm employs about 25 people, with “12 to 15” serving as year-round employees.

As new business owners, Israel and Traunstein spoke about their experience of trying to come up with $2.2 million to complete the purchase of the 65-acre farm, which required Farm Service Agency (FSA) ownership and equipment loans, as well as lending from Farm Credit East, among other programs.

“The funding we did was a huge effort and a big mish-mosh,” Israel said, adding the most helpful thing the government could do for farmers like Israel and Traunstein is to “increase the cap on FSA lending because their cap on lending for land purchases is $600,000.”

“Usually it’s really, really hard to transition land to people, who have been farming, [who] don’t come from money,” Israel added. “Who can buy a $2.2 million farm and put down a $444,000 down payment? Definitely not us, not people who have been farming for many years.”

Another request from Israel and Traunstein — as well as from numerous other farmers in the wake of 2023’s flooding — is stronger crop insurance protections for small farmers, as she said it typically covers larger farms growing one to two different crops.

Dan Smiarowski, the state executive director of the FSA, said lifting the cap is a legislative issue, which could be addressed in a new Farm Bill, a legislation package that has been revised and renewed once every five years. McGovern, however, said the House’s current version of the Farm Bill currently being negotiated is “awful” and will likely “kick the can down the road” in terms of crop insurance.

“My problem with the farm bill that came out of the House is that it basically is a bill that echoes the Trump administration view that farms ought to get big or get out. I think that’s a terrible approach to agriculture,” McGovern said during an interview with the press in Hadley. “We have a lot of small- and medium-sized farms, not only here Massachusetts, but throughout the country, and I think there’s value to making sure that we help these farms survive.”

The Farm Bill does, however, raise the loan cap to $850,000, according to a draft of the Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2024 on the House Agricultural Committee’s website. The 2018 Farm Bill was extended to the end of September, according to the USDA.

As the tour wrapped up, McGovern lauded Israel and Traunstein for their work in taking over Kitchen Garden Farm, as well as the work the former owners had done to make the business so successful that their products appear in all 50 states.

“I feel a sense of pride whenever I see your product,” McGovern said, adding he recently saw it a Whole Foods in his hometown of Worcester. “It’s amazing you produce so much and your operation is so modest.”

McGovern was accompanied on the tour by officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA), and the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, including the latter organization’s commissioner and Deerfield native Ashley Randle.

“It’s really helpful to hear from the farms about both the climate change impacts from the last few years, as well as how we can adapt our programs and our grants to be supportive of what their needs are,” Randle said in an interview. “With a nursery, it’s different than a fruit and vegetable grower, which is different than a livestock operation. Today we’ll get a good mix of different types of operations, and from there our team is able to come back and figure out ways to be supportive.”

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com. Alexander MacDougal can be reached at amacdougal@gazettenet.com.