Federal agencies visit rural businesses

Leaders of two federal agencies toured Northern Nevada’s rural communities in May to promote business enterprise, talk with community leaders about challenges and participate in a Workforce Development Roundtable.

Joseph Amato, district director for the Nevada Small Business Administration, visited small businesses to learn of their needs and how his agency can better assist each rural city or town.

Phil Cowee, USDA Rural Development state director, is also interested in workforce development and how education systems can work closer to create an educational curriculum and career tracks to meet economic development needs in the state.

While in Churchill County they visited Churchill Vineyards and Oasis Teff and Grain. They also had stops in Hawthorne, Gardnerville and Minden, Winnemucca, Elko and Ely.

John Getto and Dave Eckert began growing teff as an experiment more than a decade ago and later built a seed cleaning operation and grew more types of gluten-free grains.

Desert Oasis’ cleaning and storage facility on Golden Circle sends sending grain in bulk to processing plants, and also providing smaller quantities for the Fallon operation.