After 20 years of business in Rome, Wagner Farms is set to shut down at the end of 2018.

The Rome Sentinel talked to owner Ron Wagner, and the farm is closing up due to a combination of declining revenues and mounting debts.

“We’ve lost a bunch of sales over the last five years,” he went on. “We can’t make the required payments any longer, and this was a make or break year for us. It broke us.”

Wagner Farms started out as a 7th grade FFA project and quickly turned into much more. Over the years they have given away well over 1/2 million pounds of produce to the needy of the area and across the entire East Coast of the United States.

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