Special to Atmore News
Atmore will share in the $25.5 million being invested statewide by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to help rural businesses and farmers through business expansion and technical assistance.
According to a press release issued jointly by USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and Nivory Gordon, director of Alabama’s USDA Rural Development, the agency has allocated $2.1 million in loan guarantees to United Bank to assist the Coastal Growers LLC peanut processing plant in purchasing additional equipment and to expand its operations.
The investment will create five jobs and will also help to support local peanut producers.
“For some time, rural America has been at the mercy of an extraction economy, where resources are taken from rural lands only to create jobs and economic opportunity in urban and suburban areas,” Vilsack said. “That’s why USDA is committed to doing what we can to change that extraction economy into a circular economy, where value is added closer to home, so the wealth created in rural areas stays in rural areas.”
The $1.4 billion in federal funding is part of a suite of business and cooperative services that are projected to help create or save more than 50,000 jobs in 49 rural U.S. states, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico through investments made in fiscal year 2021.