Agriculture
Why Agriculture?
PEP has always supported the agricultural industry. For over 14 years, PEP has collaborated with agriculture industry stakeholders, recruited businesses, advocated for policies at various government levels, researched diversifying specialty crops, and worked with the University of Wyoming to publish the Economic Contributions from Agriculture Production in Wyoming 2021 report.
Why? Because agriculture and ranching are the cornerstones of the Powell community, and they need support now more than ever. According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture, in Park County, the number of farms, land in farms (acres), and average farm size (acres) have all decreased since the last census in 2017. Ranchers are also facing record-high beef imports, which can make herd rebuilding a financial risk. Roughly 95% of the farms in Park County are family farms, so when we support ag, we support families and our community at large.
Wyoming Grown
Wyoming Grown (WYG): Building a Community Driven Food Hub for the Big Horn Basin, is a PEP project dedicated to supporting local producers by increasing the local market for their goods. Institutional buyers like schools and hospitals are one of the largest and most consistent buyers of food products. Purchasing local foods can be difficult for these institutions as they need large quantities of food and don’t have the capacity or time to find enough producers to fill their orders.
A food hub acts as a bridge for institutional buyers and local producers. The food hub works with producers to fill orders from schools and hospitals by aggregating goods and delivering them on behalf of the producers. This gives producers access to a wholesale market without needing to increase production, and without incurring high delivery costs.
To support this project, PEP formed a steering committee of seven community members. This steering committee guides the trajectory of the project and works to ensure that it will benefit Powell and all those who live and work here.
Agritourism
Another way to support producers is through agritourism, which is a way to link agriculture and ranching with tourism to attract visitors onto a farm, ranch, or other agricultural business. This provides a way to entertain or educate visitors while generating income for the farm, ranch, or business owner.
It is also a way to highlight the unique history of agriculture and ranching in Powell and generate excitement for this industry. The ability to farm in this region is due to the impressive irrigation system of dams and canals that allows snow melt from Yellowstone to irrigate the fields. The Homestead Act of 1902 is how many of the families here obtained the land that they still work on today. Understanding our history is how we keep this industry alive.
Providing agritourism not only benefits the producers, but it also brings more business to the rest of the community. PEP has provided agriculture tours for many years but is working to improve and expand these tours so they better support our producers.
Food Security
Through partnering with the American Legion Food and Commodities Program and other food security groups, PEP staff and the AmeriCorps VISTAs began exploring ways to address food security needs in the community.
As of 2024, 1 in 6 people experience food insecurity in Wyoming and 1 in 5 of those people are children. This equates to roughly 94,400 people, a significant increase from the 90,000 people reported in 2023. Food security is not just a current need, but a growing one as well.
Starting in the spring of 2026, PEP’s AmeriCorps VISTAs piloted a food security garden to understand how much money, resources and labor it would take to produce food for the local food access organizations in Powell.
The UWY Powell Research and Extension Center donated the space, and the VISTAs were awarded a Wyoming Hunger Initiative GALE (Grow A Little Extra) Grant to cover start-up costs. At the end of the season, the VISTAs harvested over 400lbs of food, all of which went back to the community.
The goal of this garden was to help demonstrate the ways in which anyone can help contribute to relieving food insecurity in the Powell community and the Big Horn Basin at large. PEP plans to create a toolkit that would be available to anyone interested in undertaking a similar project.
Addressing food needs and increasing access to local food is a community need that impacts the whole community and its ability to support workforce and business. Moving forward, the PEP Foundation will continue raising money to develop food access projects.
Get involved
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Consider supporting agriculture and our producers to help build a better local food system.
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80% of donations go directly to the campaign, and 20% to administrative costs.