GREENFIELD — Thanks to $30,000 from the federal Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program, the Franklin County Community Development Corporation will provide microloans and trainings to business startups, federal officials announced Tuesday.

Congressman Jim McGovern, who represents Massachusetts’ 2nd Congressional District, and Scott Soares, state director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development office, got a tour of the facility at 324 Wells St. and touted the corporation’s history of helping small-business owners and entrepreneurs with business planning, lending and commercial space. The building houses the Western Massachusetts Food Processing Center and administers the PVGrows Investment Fund, which provides financing and technical assistance to farm and food businesses through community investments.

“Thank you for having the vision and the determination to make all this work,” McGovern told John Waite, the facility’s executive director. “This is a big success story.”

Soares, the USDA Rural Development state director for Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, said a person’s aptitude for growing is all for naught if the crops cannot be manufactured and processed.

“There may not be an organization more familiar with our programs than you all,” he told Waite.

The tour brought McGovern and Soares into the processing center’s kitchen, where they watched as employees boiled and then flash-froze squash destined for Boston Medical Center. The two then chatted with Waite and other workers in the conference room, where Waite thanked McGovern for securing the funding and getting it to small-town folks. Waite also advocated for small-farm assistance in the upcoming Farm Bill legislation.

“When you think about … all the USDA funding that has gone into this facility in a variety of forms over the years, I mean it really makes you appreciate [that] these are good programs,” McGovern said.

The congressman recalled that Kitchen Garden Farm — a 50-acre, certified organic vegetable farm in Sunderland — used the processing center the first time he visited and now the Sunderland farm’s products are available in a store in Washington D.C.

“What I’ve learned is that the USDA grant programs — and I say ‘programs,’ plural — have been enormously successful,” he told the Greenfield Recorder. “They have helped support a lot of the progress that has been made in this facility that has helped a lot of our local farmers, that has helped people to be able to get things to market and to be able to make additional money outside of just the farms that they operate.

“And it gives people in this community access to local food,” he added.

After his Greenfield stop, McGovern was scheduled to visit South Deerfield to talk about plans for a net-zero municipal campus and then Conway because that town has been included in his newly redrawn Congressional district. He is also scheduled to visit Leyden at noon on Wednesday for the same reason.

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.

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