{"id":23280,"date":"2025-03-05T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/federal-spending-freeze-forces-layoffs-at-la-plata-county-compost-business\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:32:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:32:51","slug":"federal-spending-freeze-forces-layoffs-at-la-plata-county-compost-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/federal-spending-freeze-forces-layoffs-at-la-plata-county-compost-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal spending freeze forces layoffs at La Plata County compost business"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Table
Table to Farm Compost co-owners from left, Monique DiGiorgio, Taylor Hanson, Fort Lewis College intern Jared Steuber and Operations Manager Chris Trullaz, gather handfuls of compost on June 29 northeast of Durango. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 they all mean trouble.<\/p>\n

Soon after taking office, President Donald Trump froze all federal grants and ordered agencies to review grant funding<\/a> to ensure the programs complied with a volley of executive orders. A federal judge temporarily blocked<\/a> that move, but to no avail.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The USDA\u2019s Fertilizer Production Expansion Program<\/a> made $500 million available to increase domestic fertilizer production after supply chains were interrupted<\/a> by Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018Wow, this is such a forward-thinking, unique, creative way for the federal government to address this fertilizer crisis,\u2019\u201d DiGiorgio said.<\/p>\n

Table to Farm was \u201ca perfect fit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe timing was so great that we were awarded this $2.25 million grant, and it\u2019s completely changed the landscape of our business,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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 2\u00bd-year, $400,000 permitting process it went through \u2013 something it would have to repeat if it moved \u2013 the acquisition is critical to Table to Farm\u2019s future stability.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut with the federal government reneging on its obligated funds and pulling out of a signed contract, we\u2019re completely left in midair,\u201d DiGiorgio said. \u201cOur runway has been shortened, and we can\u2019t make it to that year timeline that we had anticipated and were planning for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Table to Farm\u2019s 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 \u201ccompletely in the dark,\u201d as DiGiorgio puts it, is untenable.<\/p>\n

The USDA did not respond to a request for comment for this story.<\/p>\n

Given the uncertainty, DiGiorgio \u2013 for whom the business is both an investment and her full-time job \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a mortgage that I won\u2019t be able to pay,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is really disappointing and it\u2019s kind of terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the time being, DiGiorgio does not expect the cuts to affect Table to Farm\u2019s service.<\/p>\n

In an email to state and federal lawmakers sent Monday, DiGiorgio specifically called on Rep. Jeff Hurd, the Republican congressman representing Colorado\u2019s 3rd Congressional District, to ask USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins to release the funds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis impact on rural Colorado is crippling to our economy and our community,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

rschafir@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018It\u2019s kind of terrifying,\u2019 owner says of economic uncertainty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[281,2547,28,315],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-agriculture","tag-arable-farming","tag-headlines","tag-president-donald-trump"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78050,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23280\/revisions\/78050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23280"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}