With the clock ticking down to lunchtime, middle school kitchen staff in Clear Lake, Iowa, pulled trays of baked potatoes out of the oven. They splashed lemon juice on apple slices and stocked the salad bar with freshly chopped lettuce, carrots and purple turnips.
This produce grew within a 200-mile radius, said Julie Udelhofen, the school district’s food service director. Other days, the menu may include local tomatoes and peppers or squash and parsnips. The rainbow shifts with the season.
“It just makes my heart so happy to see these kids’ trays full of beautiful food,” Udelhofen said.
Bringing local ingredients into the school district’s kitchens started in 2022 after the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched the Local Food for Schools (LFS) Cooperative Agreement Program. Another one, the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) Cooperative Agreement Program, supported food banks and pantries.
Former Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said these programs were intended to cement local and regional markets for producers.
“Because they’re very, very important to the 90% of farms that are small and mid-sized operations that struggle financially, even in the best of times,” Vilsack said recently on an Iowa Public Radio talk show.
The Local Food for Schools program awarded $200 million to states and territories, while the Local Food Purchase Assistance program for food banks provided $900 million.
In October, the USDA said it would extend both programs with a $1.2 billion investment over the next three years and allocate funds specifically for child care facilities.
But in early March, the new administration decided to end them.
When asked about the terminations on Fox News, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said they were COVID-era programs.
“As we have always said, if we are making mistakes, we will own those mistakes and we will reconfigure. But right now, from what we are viewing, that program was non-essential, that it was a new program, and it was an effort by the left to continue spending taxpayer dollars that were not necessary,” Rollins said.
How funds were distributed and the timelines for pre-existing grants to run out varies state by state and by program. The effects have been more immediate in states like Iowa and Missouri compared to Nebraska and Illinois.
Regardless, many farmers and local food organizations have expressed disappointment in the timing of the USDA’s decision. They say it cuts short the momentum in creating more permanent, regional supply chains.
Udelhofen said she expected around $40,000 for the Clear Lake School District.
“We were pretty excited that with that amount of money coming in, we were going to handle local beef and local chicken,” Udelhofen said. “Our school has not handled raw meat for quite some time. It’s processed, pre-processed, pre-cooked.”
Some farmers had already scaled up their operations, expecting the next round of federal funds to come through this spring.
Farmer responses
Liz Graznak is the owner of Happy Hollow Farm, a certified organic farm near Columbia, Missouri. She sells produce, flowers and eggs through community supported agriculture, farmers’ markets and several wholesale accounts with restaurants and grocery stores.
Graznak said demand from the USDA’s local food purchasing programs helped her ramp up production over the last three years. She hired more staff, bought a walk-in cooler and new harvesting equipment. Graznak said she was “devastated” when she found out the programs were ending.
“I was providing so much produce through these two programs that it was about a quarter of my annual sales,” Graznak said. “That’s a huge loss,”
In response to the cuts, Graznak said she’s making changes to the farm’s planting plan for the year. But “the biggest hit” is that she’s only able to hire five full-time employees instead of nine.
“I have families that depend on me for working here, and they've been employees of mine for years, and I'm not going to be able to hire them this year,” she said.
Graznak and other produce farmers interviewed for this story said the USDA’s cost-saving rationale feels disingenuous as funding for other ag sectors continues to flow.
Shortly after announcing the end of the local food purchasing programs, the agency released $10 billion dollars in economic disaster aid for farmers that grow commodities, like corn and wheat.
In Nebraska, Local Food Purchasing Assistance funds end in August, while Local Food for Schools ends in December.
Kyle Lammers, owner of KL Beef in northeast Nebraska, has sold ground beef and other cuts directly to a dozen schools over the last year and half through the Local Food for Schools program.
Like any new business venture, Lammers said it took some extra legwork at the beginning. He contacted almost all of the schools and made adjustments to supply their needs by the caseload, and he said he was getting good feedback from food service directors, head cooks and students.
“It was a great program,” Lammers said. “I will be able to find other outlets, but it’s unfortunate. It was a nice addition to my operation.”
He said a few schools are planning to compare prices to decide if they will continue buying from KL Beef. Lammers said he’s also exploring whether some private businesses could help fill in the gaps for schools that can’t afford local beef.
“[The program] did create opportunity to think about different ideas,” Lammers said.
Food bank, pantry responses
Over 8,000 producers across the country provided food to 7,900 food banks, food pantries and communities through the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, including First Lutheran Food Pantry in Clarion, Iowa.
Director Missy Loux said a food hub delivered fruits and vegetables, along with milk and sometimes meat and yogurt through the Local Food Purchase Agreement program.
“This allowed [pantry visitors] to have that healthy food and stretch their dollars,” Loux said.
Loux added that she and her partners are always looking for ways to provide more fresh produce. In 2021, they started food pantry gardens, which have since produced over 3,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables.
They also give out seeds, plants and containers and provide education for people to grow their own.
“We don’t believe in handouts, we believe in hand-ups, and so do our recipients,” Loux said.
But the number of people needing a hand-up has increased since 2022.
She said four food pantries and homebound deliveries in Wright County used to serve 200 to 300 people per month. Now it’s nearly 1,000.
“Things are just incredibly expensive, especially eggs and dairy and other items, and so we are seeing and hearing of those increased needs,” Loux said.
Higher food insecurity extends across the region.
Tim Williams is the government affairs and advocacy officer for Food Bank for the Heartland, which serves 77 counties in Nebraska and 16 counties in western Iowa.
“We're seeing higher numbers now than we did at the height of COVID. On top of that, we're not seeing the resources or the food that was coming in during that peak in COVID,” said Williams.
The food bank and its partners saw 1.56 million individual visits over the year ending June 2024. They expect that to rise to 1.6 million at the end of this fiscal year.
While the food bank worked with local growers and producers before the USDA’s Local Food Purchasing Agreement program, Williams said the federal funding helped them be more strategic: for example, coordinating with a nonprofit to grow certain types of produce at times when it’s most needed at pantries.
“By that [funding] not coming into the Heartland anymore, it’s a big hit on growers and producers but also people who are in desperate need at a time when groceries and inflation [are] on the rise,” Williams said.
The USDA’s termination of the local food purchasing programs “does halt some good momentum that has been built,” he said. But Williams emphasized that Food Bank for the Heartland is committed to working with growers and producers in the region.
The sourcing staff is “developing several scenarios based on how future funding streams could evolve,” Williams said in an email. He remains hopeful that the new administration will implement a program similar to the Local Food Purchasing Agreement program.
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.
