The U.S. Department of Agriculture has canceled two programs that give states, tribal governments, schools and food banks money to buy local food from farmers.
The programs are the Local Food for Schools (LFS) Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) Cooperative Agreement Program.
The LFS program awards money to states to buy local foods for schools and child care institutions, and the LFPA program provides funding for state, tribal and territorial governments to buy food produced within the state or in 400 miles of delivery destinations.
Combined, the programs would have provided more than $1 billion this fiscal year, according to USDA estimates accessed through the Wayback Machine archive. That includes about $41 million in Illinois, $19.5 million in Missouri, and more than $11 million in Iowa.
A USDA spokesperson said in an email to KOSU in Oklahoma that the department has provided notice to territories, states and tribal governments that the programs are no longer available and the agreements will be terminated 60 days after the notification.
“These programs, created under the former Administration via Executive authority, no longer effectuate the goals of the agency,” the spokesperson wrote.
The department’s Agricultural Marketing Service will resume processing claims for prior LFPA activities, the USDA spokesperson wrote.
The USDA programs help schools include fresh and local produce in their cafeterias, said Alexis Bylander, the interim director of child nutrition programs and policy at advocacy group the Food Research and Action Center. Many kids rely on school lunches as a main source of nutrition, she said.
“Right now, families and school food service departments are dealing with rising prices and uncertain economic times,” she said, “and this was just a devastating time to gut programs that help get good quality local food to children.”
Chris Schwartz, the executive director of the Iowa Food System Coalition, said the USDA has not fully explained why it’s canceling the contracts.
“This program has been wildly successful,” Schwartz said. “And people have looked at the way that Iowa implemented it as truly a national model for success.”
More than 300 farmers in the state have already planned for the funding, he said. They already have seedlings sprouting in greenhouses, booked processing times at meat lockers and planned out the year based on this funding, he said.
“This is the kind of stuff that sends farms into foreclosure,” Schwartz said. “This is the kind of stuff that people lose their homes over. And so, here these are people that have been good faith partners with the effort to provide nutritious food to Iowa’s children, and we’re just going to be hanging them out to dry.”
Chris Bernard, president and CEO of food advocacy group Hunger Free Oklahoma, said the federal money had allowed entities to buy directly from local producers to provide fresher and healthier food that tends to be more expensive and harder to source. He said the state of Oklahoma and multiple tribal nations receive local food-purchasing money.
“We think losing somewhere between $12 and $25 million, depending on what actually is being cut versus will be allowed to get paid out,” Bernard said. “Which has significant impacts, honestly, primarily on local food systems and farmers.”
Bernard said the programs were designed around the COVID-19 pandemic to build a more resilient food system and to support local food options. He said if support is pulled, the infrastructure that’s become vital to food banks and schools will retract.
Bylander of the Food Research and Action Center said she’s worried about other possible cuts to school meal and nutrition programs.
“We are talking about people's food security here and their ability to access food so that they can be successful,” she said. “And so it's really an uncertain time and scary to think about what different programs ending or being cut could mean for children and families.”
Harvest Public Media reporter Rachel Cramer contributed to this report.
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
