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CHARLESTON, W.Va. —  Department of Agriculture Commissioner Kent Leonhardt continues to push for more funding for a statewide healthy-eating initiative focused on West Virginia grown products and producers.

Leonhardt was on MetroNews ‘Talkline’ this week to talk about the department’s West Virginia Grown program, which was developed in 1986 and designed to market the state’s grown and made products from local farmers and producers.

He said while WV Grown partners with “FARMacy” programs which have been popping up throughout the state in more recent years, programs created by non-government organizations and non-profits that help outsource fresh foods to communities and families, they are still only limited to select areas due to limited funding.

“If we had more funding we could support the farmers markets better, we could actually have more coordinators out there and building up the FARMacy programs, those are the type of things we need, and we know we need to get to healthy eating,” Leonhardt said on Talkline.

However, he said they have seen improvements in people’s health through partnering with the different programs, as the food that the initiatives gather that gets sent out to people in boxes even includes recipes they can follow to know how to cook the food in specific meals.

Leonhardt said the more local the food can stay, the better for people it is.

“The shorter the distance between the food we consume and the food we eat the healthier it is, it doesn’t have to be processed, it doesn’t lose nutrition even if it’s fresh,” he said.

Leonhardt said the state’s high-blood pressure and diabetes rates are evidence of the outcome of consistently relying on processed foods, and that despite the fact that they are FDA-approved, that doesn’t mean they are a replacement for freshly-grown foods.

“They come up with a way to take foods, process them, and deliver it to us cheaper, but there are fillers in there, there are things in them that aren’t necessarily the best choices,” said Leonhardt.

He said this issue is also due to the fact that many local corner grocery stores which longtime sold fresh foods have been replaced with corner Dollar Generals and gas stations only selling processed foods.

Leonhardt said as WV Grown continues to work with the local FARMacy programs and other state initiatives promoting farm-to-table efforts, he encourages everyone to try to grow some of their own food as much as they can.

“There’s ways to do that, and it’s a great way for families to get together and work together out in the garden, teach the children about growing and where their food comes from,” Leonhardt said.