.env values are returning the string that should have been referencing a value within package.json, but instead are displaying the literal text from the env file.

in my .env file I have tried the following:

REACT_APP_VERSION=`${npm_package_version}`
REACT_APP_NAME=`${npm_package_name}`

REACT_APP_VERSION=$npm_package_version
REACT_APP_NAME=$npm_package_name

I am using the following script to associate the .env file

"start": "env-cmd -f .env.production react-scripts start",

These are being returned as the literal strings from the .env file,

My app is returning these values literally.

<p>App Name: {process.env.REACT_APP_NAME}</p>
<p>App Version: {process.env.REACT_APP_VERSION}</p>

Thus, these become:

App Name: `${npm_package_name}`

App Version: `${npm_package_version}`

Any thoughts on what I am doing wrong here?
These ideally should have been returning the name of the app, and its semantic version number.