{"id":62388,"date":"2025-03-19T01:00:16","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T09:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/?p=62388"},"modified":"2025-03-20T03:24:40","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T11:24:40","slug":"the-end-of-federal-support-for-local-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2025\/03\/19\/the-end-of-federal-support-for-local-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Local Food Survive Trump\u2019s USDA?"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/div>

In November, after months of finishing complicated paperwork, developing infrastructure, and building relationships, the pieces were finally in place for Emma Jagoz to start fulfilling a new contract to sell fresh fruits and vegetables to Maryland schools.<\/p><\/div>

\n

It was terrible timing. Jagoz, owner of Moon Valley Farm, grows organic vegetables on 70 acres near Frederick, Maryland, while also acting as an aggregator of produce from about 50 other small farms in the region. By November, the bulk of the Mid-Atlantic harvest had been sold. Despite that, in the months since, she managed to move more than 300,000 pounds of apples and pears, about 10,000 heads of lettuce, and more than 30,000 pounds of broccoli, carrots, sweet potatoes, and squash into hundreds of schools in 12 Maryland counties.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat this means from a bigger picture is that people are not going to have access to as much local food, and our farmers are already going into debt.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

All of it was enabled by a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) initiative called the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program<\/a>, which had active contracts in 43 states and was meant to make it easier for schools to serve students fresh food from small farms. The USDA had also funded a related initiative set up to move local farm harvests into food banks, called the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program<\/a>. The agency had invested more<\/a> than $1 billion in the two programs since 2020 and was queued up to spend another $1 billion.<\/p>\n

Last week, President Trump\u2019s Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, canceled both<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The day after the announcement, Jagoz, who has other USDA grant contracts that are also paused, told Civil Eats she couldn\u2019t get a straight answer as to whether she\u2019d be able to finish out the current contract through May, and she was devastated that renewal was off the table.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m heartbroken about this because a lot of these students that we\u2019re serving, this is their only meal in a day,\u201d she said, and she believed replacing the often-processed school meals with fresh food grown nearby undoubtedly provided a nutrient boost. \u201cI care less about the financial hit. I care about it, I\u2019m a business owner, but I’m also a mother,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The Rise and Fall of New Local-Food Programs<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>

Five years ago, when COVID-19 scrambled the world\u2019s supply chains<\/a>, leaving grocery shelves bare, Americans turned to small farms in their communities as a more reliable source of nourishment. Those farms had already been expanding<\/a> due to a movement<\/a> toward local food<\/a> as a way to produce healthier, regenerative foods while paying farmers more for their crops and therefore rebuilding<\/a> a rural America hollowed out by consolidation<\/a>. <\/p><\/div>

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In that moment of crisis, the resilience and adaptability those farms<\/a>, ranches<\/a>, markets, and food hubs<\/a> demonstrated sparked new policies<\/a> and investments in local and regional food systems. Under President Biden, the USDA became a primary funder<\/a>, expanding a suite of programs that support regional food systems from seed to processing to plate.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"A<\/a>

Students at a Washington, D.C. public school gather around a salad bar. Last week, the USDA cut an initiative called the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program, which helped schools receive fresh ingredients from small farms. (Photo credit: Paul Sale\/USDA) <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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Just two months into the Trump administration, that steadily growing ecosystem of producers, processors, and distributors is being bulldozed.<\/p>\n

USDA\u2019s cancellation of the Local Food for Schools and Local Food Purchase Assistance programs has garnered headlines, but they are just two of more than a dozen programs supporting small farms and regional food infrastructure that have been impacted.<\/p>\n

The agency has also canceled individual contracts<\/a>\u2014within programs including the Farmers Market Promotion Program and the Local Food Promotion Program\u2014with groups that train young farmers<\/a>, provide technical assistance to small farms, and help connect small farms to markets in their local communities, <\/strong>based on words like \u201cequitable\u201d appearing in their contracts.<\/p>\n

Payments to grantees in the $3.1 billion Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities Program are paused<\/a>, and a private contract canceled by DOGE threatens some grantees\u2019<\/a> ability to continue. Within some programs\u2014including Organic Market Development Grants, the Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure Program, and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program\u2014payments have started up again for some farmers and groups but not for others. Farmers and farm groups are also waiting to find out if new contracts they spent months working on will be thrown out.<\/p>\n

The impacts of pauses and cancellations are widespread, affecting a livestock feed-processing facility in Montana, tribes working on Native food sovereignty<\/a> in Kansas, a community-supported fishery project in Maine, and many more.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u200bAt the same time, the agency has worked quickly<\/a> to distribute “economic relief” funding authorized by Congress last December for commodity farmers. Farmers who grow corn, soybeans, oilseeds, and other row crops will be able to apply for direct payments<\/a> starting today.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s not forget that canned food is also wholesome. . . . So that\u2019s always an option as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Some of the grant payments may be unfrozen as USDA continues its review of contracts. Legal challenges have already begun<\/a>, and others are being considered. But sources told Civil Eats that regardless of what happens next, there will be long-term impacts, especially because all of this is happening at a critical time of year for many farmers and the organizations that support them\u2014a period when crop planning and field prep must be completed to get plants in the ground on time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat this means from a bigger picture is that people are not going to have access to as much local food, and our farmers are already going into debt,\u201d said Sadie Willis, the network coordinator for Wisconsin\u2019s Fairshare CSA Coalition.<\/p>\n

Democrats in the House<\/a> and the Senate<\/a> are pushing back. At a recent Politico event<\/a>, Senator Tina Smith (D-Minnesota), a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, condemned the cuts. \u201cOver the last 10 years or so, we have done so much good work at the federal level and at the state level to build connections between local producers and schools in their communities so that kids can have healthy foods and local producers can have markets for the food that they’re producing. This has been highly successful,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, I think what they’re doing [now] is completely wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to a similar question about cuts to the program that allows food banks to purchase more local produce, Senator Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska) said that while she supports food banks having fresh food available, \u201cLet\u2019s not forget that canned food is also wholesome. . . . So that\u2019s always an option as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Secretary Rollins has defended the cuts and publicly touted grant cancellations<\/a> on her Instagram as examples of waste now being eliminated. (A particular grant she pointed to was an award to Agroecology Commons<\/a>, an organization that trains and provides resources to beginning farmers in the Bay Area.)<\/p>\n

Some contract cancellation letters reviewed by Civil Eats state that a given award \u201cno longer effectuates USDA priorities, which are to maximize and promote American agriculture; ensure a safe, nutritious, and secure food supply; enhance rural prosperity; and protect our National Forests.\u201d But advocates for local food say these investments are exactly what is needed to support American health, farm resilience, and rural communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proof is in the numbers,\u201d said Theresa McCormick, executive director of The Good Acre<\/a>, a food hub that works with farms in Minnesota, northern Iowa, and western Wisconsin. \u201cWhat we know from the USDA is that for every $1 that’s moving through The Good Acre, it’s a direct $1.72 benefit to the community,” she said. “Because this type of work has so many stacked and layered benefits, small investments have a big, big, big payoff. When we look at health, when we look at rural economies, when we look at American agriculture and making sure that our small farmers can be competitive and our local farmers can feed our local families, the numbers are there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The USDA did not respond to a request for comment or to questions about the status of specific grant programs.<\/p>\n

Closing Down a Market Pipeline for Local Farms<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>

A push to aggregate food from small farms in order to get it into institutions including hospitals, universities, and schools has been in the works<\/a> for decades, with successes and failures along the way. While Democrats have been the primary champions of policies that support the work over the past decade, some programs, like those that move local food into schools, have had bipartisan support.<\/p><\/div>

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USDA grants are meant to help producers and others in the supply chain overcome initial challenges to making it work, like higher costs and complicated logistics that prevent regional growers from being able to compete<\/a> with the large global companies that dominate a consolidated food system<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

One of the biggest hurdles for Moon Valley, Jagoz said, was creating a system that worked for farms and the schools she wanted to sell to. \u201cSchool menus are written out months in advance, and schools have a massive variability in equipment and staff,\u201d she said. One might not have the kitchen equipment needed to peel and cook and store raw carrots, for example.<\/p>\n

Grant funding through the Local Food for Schools program was meant to help defer some of those initial costs so that the local farmers could compete with the easier, low-cost route schools often have to take by ordering packaged, ready-to-heat foods that are often highly processed.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, it’s not just the money,\u201d she said. \u201cWe’ve built a system that allows farmers to reach schools, using our software and using the contacts we’ve developed.\u201d Some schools may be able to continue to make purchases on their own, but others likely won\u2019t have the budget, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this administration truly wants to make America healthy, cutting programs that create reliable markets for U.S. farmers and ranchers and that increase access to fresh produce for children is not the answer,\u201d said Joelle Johnson, MPH, deputy director at the food and health watchdog organization the Center for Science in the Public Interest, speaking to the cancellation of the Local Food for Schools program.<\/p>\n

In Minnesota, The Good Acre food hub works with about 150 farms, McCormick said. In 2024, their sales were $3 million, a number that\u2019s doubled since 2021. As the business has grown, the team has been able to leverage federal grants that allow them to sell into food banks and schools to significantly expand their sales to private businesses including restaurants, co-ops, and other retailers. About half of the farmers who started growing for The Good Acre\u2019s farm-to-hunger relief program have also gone on to access larger wholesale market contracts, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is truly economic development for our rural communities,\u201d McCormick said.<\/p>\n

When Trump came into office, The Good Acre\u2019s current contracts with USDA were frozen, but the agency has since restarted payments to them. At the same time, McCormick is hearing from many farmers and other institutions in the food hub\u2019s network who are still waiting for funds or have had contracts cancelled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve heard from so many foundations about, \u2018How in the world do you start to plug all the holes?\u2019\u201d she said. Food hubs are going to have to plan differently, she said, \u201cto make sure that we’re not losing so much that we gained from the last crisis we were responding to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blocking the Growth of CSAs <\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>

In Madison, Wisconsin, the Fairshare CSA Coalition<\/a> looks forward to National CSA Week every February.<\/p><\/div>

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It\u2019s the nonprofit\u2019s biggest week of the year, said Willis, when small farms all over the country use Fairshare\u2019s resources to mobilize members of their communities to sign up for community supported agriculture shares for the coming season. \u201cWe estimate about 2.5 million consumers are reached through CSA Week efforts and could get connected with local farms,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"A<\/a>

Farmers tour Choy Division, a CSA farm in Chester, NY, with the CSA Innovation Network. (Photo credit: Sadie Willis\/FairShare CSA Coalition)<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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This year, CSA Week started on February 16. Two days before, Fairshare received a letter from the USDA<\/a> notifying the team that one of their grant contracts was terminated.<\/p>\n

While Fairshare was created by a group of growers to support small-scale local vegetable farms more than 30 years ago, Farmers\u2019 Market Promotion Program grants from the USDA had allowed them to expand their reach nationally in recent years. In 2015, they created the National CSA Innovation Network to act as a public resource for farmers across the country, with marketing materials, webinars, and other tools.<\/p>\n

The USDA awarded the most recent grant for $500,000 to the network in October. Fairshare planned to use it to pay for research to inform new marketing materials farmers could use to attract CSA customers and to pay farmers to be part of a committee that would share skills and resources.<\/p>\n

Willis said they had only spent 3.5 percent of the grant funds to date. After CSA Week wrapped up, they put all the work on hold. The USDA said the grant was canceled because it was flagged as \u201cdiversity, equity, and inclusion programs and activities.\u201d Its title was \u201cCSA for All: Strategic Marketing for Equitable CSA Expansion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a really valuable investment of funding to expand the amount of local foods that people across the U.S. would have access to while bolstering the ability for farmers to successfully reach those consumers and have pathways to sell their food through this CSA model,\u201d Willis said.<\/p>\n

Eliminating Technical Assistance for Young Farmers<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>

While Fairshare has not had to lay off staff yet, further east in Pennsylvania, Pasa Sustainable Agriculture<\/a> recently announced it will furlough most of its staff, about 60 people, on April 2.<\/p><\/div>

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Pasa had scaled up its staff over the past two years as the lead partner<\/a> of a $59 million Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities project to deliver payments to farmers to implement conservation practices in 15 states. Since Trump took office, payments to grantees in the larger program across the country have been frozen<\/a>; his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) also canceled a private contract that enabled some of the work to get done.<\/p>\n\n

While the Biden-era grant program was primarily focused on climate action, the regenerative practices it paid farmers for are the same ones that build soil health and therefore farm resilience on other fronts, including helping farmers hold water on their land during drought and preventing erosion during storms and extreme flooding. The ongoing pause is already having cascading effects on small farms selling into local markets and will ripple out even farther if the program is canceled, sources told Civil Eats.<\/p>\n

Pasa, for example, is the premier provider of technical support for small farms in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, and its ability to continue to provide that support is threatened. At the same time, Future Harvest,<\/a> another Mid-Atlantic farm organization with reach that extends further south, won\u2019t be able to pick up the slack, said Executive Director Grace Leatherman.<\/p>\n

Future Harvest has multiple USDA grants. Some payments have been delayed but are still being made, while other grants have been paused. \u201cWe’re still waiting for some significant reimbursements for work that we did in quarter four,\u201d Leatherman said. In the meantime, she worries they will have to lay staff off if the situation doesn\u2019t improve.<\/p>\n

While the organization\u2019s flagship Beginning Farmer Training Program is safe because it\u2019s being funded by American University this year, she said, other farmer support is at risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf nothing changes, we’re going to have to dramatically limit technical and financial assistance to farmers in terms of soil health and conservation, and we’re really worried about that,\u201d she said, noting that not only will Pasa be providing less help, but the USDA is also cutting staff<\/a> in local Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) offices.<\/p>\n

NRCS employees are USDA\u2019s boots on the ground; they help farmers implement conservation practices and connect them to financial assistance. \u201cFarmers are really going to be looking at a lot less support in the coming year, Leatherman said.\u201d<\/p>\n

Local Supply Chains Disrupted<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>

Up on the coast of Maine, Togue Brawn, a fisheries manager by training, was a stranger to USDA grant programs before the agency undertook a recent push to extend support to aquaculture growers and other local seafood efforts.<\/p><\/div>

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After discovering that local scallop fishermen were losing out by having to sell their premium products into commercial supply chains, Brawn created Downeast Dayboat<\/a> to get those fishermen better prices for their products. The company started by buying scallops directly from the dock and shipping them to customers within 24 hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe typical distribution network for seafood does not lend itself to providing high-quality, transparently sourced seafood,\u201d she explained. \u201cMy program offers less-expensive, super high-quality domestic seafood, but I also pay fishermen better prices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brawn had always wanted to find a way to sell more of Maine\u2019s local seafood within the region, and in the last few years was inspired by community supported fishery<\/a> models. In 2023, the USDA awarded her a $350,000 Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP) grant to get her own project off the ground. With that start-up capital in hand, she thought she could build a self-sufficient business that moved more local seafood into communities by the end of the grant contract in October 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hired a program director. I set up the website. I have the software. I’ve arranged with some community partners,\u201d she said. In January, the first orders went out and it was time for her to kick promotion of the new sales channel into high gear. Then, payments stopped and her contact at the USDA said they would only be able to reimburse her for money spent before January 20.<\/p>\n

Now, she\u2019s in limbo. \u201cI don’t know if I’m going to be compensated for the money that I’ve outlaid. I’ve had to borrow money from my mother,\u201d she said. \u201cThink of the loss in productivity. I’m spending all my time trying to figure out how to fund my business and whether I should lay off my project director. This is not an efficient way to run a business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in her Maryland fields, Jagoz is thinking similar thoughts. She is in the thick of planning for a busy season ahead and would rather be thinking about transplants and deliveries than whether she\u2019ll have to adjust her crop plan or find new markets for vegetables intended for elementary school students nearby.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese programs support the health and education of our children, and it\u2019s domestic production for domestic consumption,\u201d she said. Of the new administration\u2019s approach so far, she said, \u201cI don\u2019t really understand it, unless their stated goals are not their actual goals.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was terrible timing. Jagoz, owner of Moon Valley Farm, grows organic vegetables on 70 acres near Frederick, Maryland, while also acting as an aggregator of produce from about 50 other small farms in the region. By November, the bulk of the Mid-Atlantic harvest had been sold. 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