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What is the true cost when federal programs designed to strengthen regional food systems are canceled? Civil Eats’ Lisa Held joins us to share what she learned from the dozens of farmers, regional food systems program managers, and organizations affected by the funding cuts. She shares more from her feature, “Losing Ground,” and the effects of changes under Trump’s USDA.
Lisa Held is Civil Eats’ senior staff reporter and contributing editor. Since 2015, she has reported on agriculture and the food system with an eye toward sustainability, equality, and health, and her stories have appeared in publications including The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Mother Jones. In the past, she covered health and wellness and was an editor at Well+Good. She is based in Baltimore and has a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism.
“Losing Ground,” Civil Eats’ four-part series by Lisa Held
Civil Eats | Lisa Held
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Amy O’Neill Houck: Welcome to Eat, Drink, Think. I’m Amy O’Neill Houck. In this podcast from Edible Communities, a network of magazines published across North America, we celebrate all things local and sustainable in the food world. A little over a year ago, we invited Civil Eats senior staff reporter and contributing editor, Lisa Held, back on the show to talk with us about the rapid-fire changes occurring in food and farm policy under the then new Trump administration. Civil Eats is a news site dedicated to reporting on the food system, and Lisa had begun logging the flood of change in a food policy tracker.
Lisa reports on agriculture and the food system with an eye towards sustainability, equality, and health. Her stories have also appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Mother Jones. Recently, Civil Eats published a new series called “Losing Ground.” It’s in-depth reporting documenting the real cost of the losses in funding due to the canceling of programs that were designed to strengthen regional food systems.
Lisa spoke to dozens of farmers, to regional food systems program managers, to organizations that were newly able to purchase from small farmers and more. Lisa’s here today to talk with us about “Losing Ground,” and the effects of changes under Trump’s USDA. Lisa, welcome back to Eat, Drink, Think.
Lisa Held: Thanks for having me, Amy.
AOH: We’re glad you’re here. So, “Losing Ground” is a four-part series. It took months of reporting, and the first two pieces focus on the now canceled local food purchase assistance program or LFPA. We’re going to be having a lot of acronyms today, so we’ll try and slow down for those.
LH: So many acronyms. Yes.
The LFPA was a connector program for groups in need of support, including both food banks and small farms. Can you talk about the program and what your reporting shows about how those who had been involved are doing now that the programs are gone?
LH: Yeah. And I’m glad we’re starting here. And it’s funny that you mentioned that both the first and second stories focus on this program, LFPA, because the first story I really see as kind of an overview for the whole series, but because the local food purchasing assistance program kind of rose to the top in my reporting, as the program that farmers talked the most about, and really wanted to share about, I ended up using it to frame the introduction too, because there was so much to say, and so many farmers who wanted to talk about it. And yeah, as you mentioned, so, this program was set up coming out of the COVID pandemic.
There was a lot of funding that had been passed by Congress and sent to USDA, with the intention of stabilizing supply chains. Basically, Congress allocated extra money to USDA, and then the USDA was tasked with figuring out how to create more resilient supply chains. And one thing that they really wanted to do was to make it easier for small farms to access wholesale markets, and not just wholesale markets, but food banks and schools, because everybody calls it this win-win, because if you get these small farms into food banks and schools… not only are they getting income, and it’s helping the farm, but also the food is going to populations that benefit from healthy food that might not otherwise be able to access it or afford it.
So, the programs were set up, LFPA had a sister program called Local Food for Schools, and I kind of talk about them all as one. I just say LFPA to reference both, because otherwise it’s too confusing. But the programs were set up as kind of state run or run by tribes. And so, each state and tribe got this funding, and then kind of designed systems themselves.
And in my reporting, I found that that was a really important component, because they were able to look at their own state and see how it might work the best for them there, and really design it according to that need. And what happened is these farms that really in the past had not been able to sell to these bigger buyers were suddenly getting a fair price for their crops, consistently and at high volume, which is essentially the hardest thing for a small farm to figure out how to do. And they can’t compete, because the food system is really consolidated, and the bigger farms really dominate those markets. They can’t compete on price if they don’t have a little bit of help.
So, this kind of bridged that gap and really helped them. And a lot of these farms, because they suddenly had this market, they weren’t only selling more. They started to scale up and build their infrastructure. Because suddenly they had stable markets. They were like, okay.
One farmer I talked to in Illinois, he was growing chickens. He doubled the number of chickens in the first year, then he doubled it again the next year. And so, every time you do that, you’re buying more feed, you need new infrastructure to house the animals. And so, he was kind of growing his farm as this program continued.
And everybody thought there was at least another year, because right before the Biden administration left, they authorized another round of funding. So, when Secretary Rollins canceled that funding, the blow was really big, because everybody was expecting that the money would be there, and no one thought that it was going to last forever, but they were in this growth mode. And so, that’s why it had a really big impact, and it left a lot of farmers with inventory that they thought was going to be bought, and then it wasn’t. One farmer I talked to in Wisconsin had pigs, and a lot of piglets had just been born.
And then all of a sudden it was like, actually this food bank that said they were going to pick up the harvest six months from now isn’t going to. And you can’t just… It’s not like other things where you can just kind of stop. The piglets already were born. So, there was a lot of stories like that that I heard, where people were just kind of left in this space where they expected purchases, they were investing money because they were growing their farms.
And then suddenly they were left looking at the coming year and thinking, okay, now I need to find another buyer. How will I find another buyer? All these other farms are doing the same thing as me. And so, it just created a lot of chaos. And I think what I heard was that a lot of these farms that thought that they would have really gotten to a new place in terms of size and stability just felt like that’s no longer going to happen for them.
They’re essentially kind of stalled or back where they started and have been shut out of a lot of these wholesale markets once again.
AOH: I think it’s maybe worth thinking back for a second to—you mentioned that these were instigated by what happened during COVID—and maybe just it’s worth thinking about that, because it’s easy for us to not want to think about that era anymore. But I think what came to light was the fragility of the centralized food system. Suddenly it was very fragile when the big chicken plants and meat processing plants and egg producers and all of that, they had to shut down, and food just left the shelves. And then this idea that a sort of more spoke and hub model, or a regional food model, could be way more resilient, that really had momentum.
And so that’s why everybody got behind it. I mean, I felt like there wasn’t pushback. It wasn’t necessarily a partisan issue. It was just this idea like, well, if we have more regional resilience, we can be better prepared for future problems.
And so, that wind changing was probably pretty shocking, right?
LH: Yeah, I think that’s really key to all of this reporting, because it was this kind of singular moment where everybody, and I think you’re right, it wasn’t partisan, where people across the country saw, oh, this sort of industrialized, centralized food system is more fragile than we thought. And creating something that isn’t so dependent on these international supply chains, or having all these farms with a little bit of meat all over the country, is maybe a more resilient approach than having one company that is sending all of the meat, because then if something happens to that one supply chain, it’s really devastating. Whereas if it’s spread out, there’s more of that resilience.
And it’s key to this story in a lot of ways, because it did, I think, change the thinking of federal policy in a pretty significant way, just for that small moment in time.
And I think all of that investment that went into these new programs, that was really, really unique. And the USDA spends tons of money on agriculture every year, for commodity programs, conservation programs, billions and billions of dollars, that’s normal. But these were brand new programs. And not only were they new, and it was a big infusion of money that was promised to farmers, but most of the projects were multi-year projects.
So, the Biden administration got them going, gave farmers multi-year contracts. And so, in a lot of cases, they were in the middle of a contract. And this doesn’t apply as much to LFPA, but a lot of the other programs I wrote about, like the Climate Smart Commodities, for instance, you might’ve had a three-year contract, and only been in a year and a half in. And so, that kind of lots of money, long-term structure meant that when this stuff was canceled, it was really, really disruptive, in a way that it wouldn’t have been in the past.
It’s almost like they created more things to be canceled, in a way.
AOH: Is there a farm or a farmer who you can share how they’re doing now or how they’re managing now that the rug has been pulled out from under them?
LH: Oh, there’s so many. I talked to so many farmers. I guess I already mentioned a couple, but one group that I talked to that had a big impact on me was kind of the, I guess I’ll say collective, but they’re not actually formally related to each other at all. It was just a group of farmers in upstate New York that all know each other and just try to work together and support each other.
And so, it was a bunch of small farms, and one of them was called Rock Steady Farm. There’s three farms that are in a commons called Choi Commons. This kind of group of farmers, they had been really able to break into food banks and food security networks in New York City in a big way, because of the LFPA program. And so, for instance, Choi Commons told me that I think their wholesale sales, I want to say, tripled because of LFPA.
And they were bringing these culturally relevant vegetables to communities in New York, to Chinese elders, these beautiful, vibrant vegetables that reminded them of home. And they were bringing in all this really healthy, amazing food and able to provide it to communities in need at no cost. And when the funding ended, they told me that the first year, it was sort of a gradual dropdown as the money ran out and it was cut in half and then they were back down to almost no wholesale revenue by this year, 2026. And it really changed everything for them.
And they’re trying to grow their CSA now and they’re looking at other markets and they all said, “We’re going to survive.” This one farmer, Tiana Kennedy said, “We’re going to survive, but we’re not going to thrive.” And she said a lot of things that really stayed with me. She said, “For one moment in time, it felt like we were getting a glimpse of what it might look like to succeed, and now that’s done.” And that’s just devastating.
And especially another thing that those farmers told me is they’ll find new markets and they’ll figure out a way to keep the farms going and keep growing this healthy food, but it’s going to be people who can afford it, who are going to be eating it more. So the people who are hit the hardest in terms of who’s eating this food are communities that can’t afford it.
Because of the way our system is structured, it costs a little bit more.
AOH: So access becomes an equity issue too, as far as aligning these two groups. Yeah.
LH: And I was going to say, and we also made a video as part of the series. We have an incredible video reporter, Vanessa, and we worked together on a video component. And we went to a farm in Pennsylvania called Hunter Hill CSA. And then we went to one of the food pantries that the farmer, Dan Hunter, had been selling to, called Eastside Community Pantry.
And we got to see his farm and all the food he was growing, which he used to be sending to the pantry, but now they’re no longer able to purchase from him. They just have to accept essentially commodity produce donations from big supermarkets where the produce has been sitting for weeks. And I went to the pantry, and I saw the stuff on the shelves and some of the strawberries had mold on them and the bananas were brown. And it was just the contrast of seeing what people were being offered now and the pantry staff telling us last year we were picking up fresh tomatoes, okra, lettuce from Dan and bringing it here and handing it out the same day.
And it’s just a completely different picture now.
AOH: The new Farm Bill included a provision to create a program that was meant to try to replicate parts of the LFPA. Is that going to help?
LH: So good question. And it speaks to your earlier comment about this being a very kind of bipartisan program. That program did have bipartisan support. It got into the House version of the Farm Bill, which was ultimately passed by Republicans.
And so, advocates and farm groups are very excited that the program was included. However, it didn’t include permanent funding. It just authorized appropriations, which means that it could do some good, but basically there’s no guaranteed money attached to it. So even if the farm bill did get through, which that’s a whole other thing that we would have to get into because it’s very unlikely there’s going to be any farm bill passed this year anyway.
But even if it did, this program wouldn’t have guaranteed funding as it’s written right now. And so farm groups really want to see that changed and see mandatory funding attached to it so that it’s more of a stable program.
AOH: You say in one of the pieces, “While every new presidential administration makes policy changes that reflects its priorities, Trump in his second term is the first to throw out legal contracts that had already been signed.” Were there any legal challenges that came up to throwing out these contracts?
LH: There have been many legal challenges. And in fact, one program that I wrote about, the Increasing Land and Capital Markets Access Program, I think that’s right. As we mentioned before, they have long names and confusing acronyms, but basically it was a program that was supposed to help young and beginning farmers access land, which is one of the biggest challenges for young and beginning farmers. So, that program was canceled, and a group called FarmStand helped some of the farms involved challenge that in court.
And a court just actually after the series was published, so this isn’t in the series, but just a couple weeks ago did uphold. Well, they issued a preliminary injunction and essentially said that the USDA had to reinstate some of these grants while the legal challenge is being heard until the case is actually completed. So, some of those firms did get their grants reinstated for now. It’s been kind of a mixed bag.
There have been other lawsuits, they’ve had mixed results. A lot of the groups that lost the Climate Smart Commodities grants applied. There’s sort of an internal federal government system where you can appeal a cancellation of a grant. A lot of the groups I talked to for that one did try that and didn’t have any luck with it.
And also some of them were still waiting to hear, but they got into this situation where then the USDA was telling them to reapply for the new program. So, they had to decide if they should wait or if they should reapply, and they didn’t know what was going to happen. There’s a lot of things like that, where it’s been a lot of chaos and confusion for these farmers and groups. So, they’re trying to navigate day-to-day the legal issues and how to go about it.
So yeah, I’m not sure what will happen with that case that I mentioned at this point, but we’re definitely going to keep tracking it. And yeah, I know that there have been other legal challenges. Grants were canceled in other agencies too. So, I think it is definitely an ongoing question as to whether or not some of this gets.
But I guess the other thing is at this point it’s been a lot of these grants, even if a court said, okay, well the USDA was wrong, it was actually illegal because you signed a legal contract. The consequences that I wrote about, at least, really wouldn’t change that much because in farming, a year of this kind of chaos is still going to have an impact.
And there’s farms that were expecting to plant something and now you’re a season behind or you were going to buy this infrastructure and now you’ve changed your whole plan for the next several years because you weren’t able to do that. I don’t think it would, even if they were able to reinstate a lot of these grants, it wouldn’t mitigate all of the damage.
AOH: One of the details that stands out in this reporting is the divide in support or the level of support for small fruit and vegetable farmers versus row crop or commodity farmers. Beyond government’s inclination to support big business, is there more to it?
LH: I mean, I guess it’s important to say that historically, yeah, the federal government has pretty much always supported commodity farms more than it supports small fruit and vegetable farms or diversified farms. So that’s pretty standard and has been for a very long time. There was a little bit of movement that we talked about, about this new infusion of money into these small farms selling into regional systems that started to change that. But even that, all of these things we’re talking about are still this tiny drop of money compared to the money spent on agriculture overall.
AOH: It wasn’t this versus that. It wasn’t like we had to stop this so that we could support it.
LH: While all this is going on, and it’s like, for instance, the regional food business centers that I wrote about, I think is a $400 million program. That sounds like a lot of money, but in the one big, beautiful bill, the Congress authorized changes to commodity programs that will send 60 billion more dollars to commodity farms over the next 10 years. So, those numbers are not even in the same universe.
AOH: And actually, that makes me think about the amount that it takes to help a small farmer. Some of those statistics that you were quoting, like revenue for this one farm when it was participating in the LFPA was around $100,000. It wasn’t a lot of money to really make an enormous change in the life of this farm. And then it dropped to half and then it dropped to a quarter and they’re squeaking by, which how does anybody stay alive on $25,000 a year?
LH: That’s such a good point too, because even the farmer in Pennsylvania, Dan Hunter was like, “This changed our lives.” And he was talking about $30,000 in wholesale sales. These are really small farms. It’s just people growing on their own with a couple employees really doing it with a lot of passion. And they’re not corporations that we’re talking about.
And one other piece of this that I think is important to mention that we haven’t talked about is there were these big cancellations, but there were also cancellations of individual grants within many programs. And a lot of those hit small farms, diversified fruit and vegetable farms. But a lot of them were canceled, because of language that the Trump administration decided qualified as diversity, equity and inclusion language. So, words like equity, Black farmers.
And that, I think, so to your question about, well, what’s different about who’s getting support and who isn’t? I think this piece is important to throw into the mix, because a lot of farmers and farm groups who are from underserved groups had those kinds of words in their applications. Also, I should say, because the Biden administration, they were actually really trying to include equity in the USDA’s programming. So, they told farmers, and they told farm groups, tell us how you are going to achieve equity in this program.
Tell us how you’re going to reach young farmers, Black farmers, LGBTQ farmers. They wanted that and they directed people to do it. So a lot of farmers and farm groups did. But this is a long way of getting to the fact that a lot of the farms that lost money because of that are also the small farms that are growing fruits and vegetables or diversified livestock.
There’s a lot of overlap between those two things. And so, I think support for those kinds of farms went away, because the USDA decided that that constituted DEI, and that means that some of those smaller farms lost funding.
AOH: Yeah. I think you mentioned to you it felt like the new USDA was trying to essentially punish the Biden administration and the fallout is really that the farms are who were suffering.
LH: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t remember exactly who said that, but I do remember one of my sources said that it felt like the USDA was really trying to just cancel anything that seemed like a Biden era program. And I did try to get the USDA to talk to me and to respond to a lot of these things and do interviews, and they ultimately declined and didn’t provide comment.
But I did go back, and because I’ve been covering this throughout this entire time, I’ve heard Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, and other USDA officials essentially defend these cuts many, many times, and give their side of the whole situation. And a lot of times in the press releases, the language is suggesting that they’re trying to blame the Biden administration for something. I know that the partnerships for climate smart commodities, which they canceled and then changed in the press release for that, they called it a Biden era slush fund. And there was a lot of language like that, just saying that this was sort of waste, and a lot of money that was just being wasted.
There was a lot of language too where they would say, “We’re focusing on farmers. We’re going back to focusing on farmers,” which I think people interpret as the anti-DEI thing. It’s a certain kind of farmer that they’re essentially prioritizing. So yeah, I definitely do think that there’s a lot of politics involved in a lot of these decisions, for sure.
AOH: And since you brought up tone, one of the other things you quote Secretary Rollins is saying is, “The partnerships for climate smart commodities was largely built to advance the green new scam at the benefit of NGOs, not American farmers.” And I feel like the language, the tone, well, it’s just kind of mean. It’s like a sauce that coats a lot of Trump era government communications. And you mentioned loss of trust more than once in these articles. Can you talk about that? And if you think maybe both the meat of the message and the plating play a part in that?
LH: Yeah. I think a lot of farmers that I talked to and a lot of groups said, “I don’t know if I’ll ever apply for another USDA grant or to trust the USDA again.” And that messaging that they’re getting, they’re hearing that, and it does have an impact.
I think I mentioned one of the stories, the National Young Farmers Coalition launched a social media campaign in the midst of all this that they called We Are American Farmers. And they had graphics that they put out that said, “Hey, USDA, we are American farmers.” Because essentially what they’re saying is they’re hearing, “You don’t consider us American farmers because we put in our application that we’re trying to reach black farmers” or that we’re small or whatever it is, we’re focused on equity.
But I do think the other piece of tone and messaging, I think that we haven’t talked about yet, is around climate change. And that quote that you mentioned on the green new scam speaks to that, is the Trump administration has really been essentially dismantling anything that looks like climate action, purposefully scrubbed the term climate change from the USDA vocabulary.
And so, the partnerships for climate smart commodities messaging is interesting, because they called it a green new scam, and it had climate in the title, so they canceled it, but then they ultimately kept it. They allowed groups to reapply, and the projects that they’re reapplying for, many of them have gotten into the new program, are very similar, or if not pretty much the same, they just have to meet criteria that are a little bit different, but it’s more like accounting in the background than it is what they’re actually doing on the ground in a lot of cases.
And so, when you think about messaging and tone, it’s like these projects might look pretty much the same, but they’re just not called climate smart projects anymore. They’re in this advancing markets for agriculture program. And so, it’s about markets instead of about climate, which is these sort of conservation practices that these farms are doing are good for all these things. They can help farmers make more money, they are good for climate, they are good for reducing water pollution. So, you could kind of call it whatever you want based on your political priorities, but they’re actually mostly the same as they were before.
AOH: It’s hard to reconcile for sure. For sure.
LH: And I will say with that program, a lot of those projects are the same, but it took them a year to reapply for this new program and get approved, and they didn’t extend their projects. They didn’t give them any extra time. So, they all lost at least a year of time on the project. So, everyone basically said we had to reapply for the same project, lost a year. And so, whatever we could have accomplished for farmers, now we have one fewer year to do that.
AOH: And you quote former Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack as mentioning both public and corporate momentum towards food that has grown in a climate-friendly way. It doesn’t seem like the public has changed their minds. Maybe the corporations have. I mean, is this just a shift in policy and tone that’s mostly government led or do you think there’s a chance that momentum can keep going back towards climate support?
LH: That’s a good question. It’s really hard to know at this moment in time. Climate coverage in media has decreased significantly in the past year. And I think part of that is because the Trump administration has made so many changes on all fronts that a lot of newsrooms are just really busy trying to cover everything that is happening, and so have directed resources towards other things.
But I also do think there is a piece of it where, because corporations, including food and agriculture corporations, were really leaning into climate action, because it was politically beneficial to them when the people in power were saying, “This is what we’re doing.” And they felt like consumers really wanted climate smart food and agriculture to have better climate outcomes.
But I think now that they’re not being held, now corporations essentially see that it’s actually better for them not to talk about climate, not to meet their goals that they set. And we are seeing a lot of the big food and agriculture companies are just kind of quietly walking away from a lot of the things that they said they were going to do on climate. So yeah, I think that’ll be something, probably, that we’ll have to be covering long-term.
I’m not sure. I think people still care. The climate crisis is clearly. It hasn’t gotten better, in fact, now we’ve taken a lot of steps back and so it deserves more attention.
And I’m actually working on a story right now on how devastating some of the climate impacts on farms are getting. And it’s only happening more and more, where farmers are losing crops and our food is getting less healthy because of carbon emissions. So yeah, I think there’s a lot there to follow going forward, but I’m not really sure about where the American public, if their mind has changed at all. It’s hard to say.
AOH: Or maybe it’s the pain points kind of have to align when prices are up and they can see that maybe this is because of climate, then they’re like, “Whoa, hey, let’s…” I don’t know, maybe the right things have to come together at the right time. The pandemic was enough to drive change and something else needs to come along. I don’t know.
LH: Yeah. No, I think you’re right. It’s kind of like I was saying too, when there’s a lot to care about and a lot to take in, as humans, we sort of have to choose. You can’t always handle caring or dedicating your attention to every single thing.
And because climate change is such a long-term problem, I think we tend to just file it behind a lot of more pressing problems that we need to deal with, which it makes sense. If food prices are high now, and people can’t afford groceries right at this moment, you feel like that needs to be dealt with now, as opposed to the long-term impacts of climate change on growing food. So, it is hard to balance things.
AOH: It’s really hard for people to understand generational problems. I think what you mentioned about nutrition, I was thinking about that. It’s like, well, it’s kind of like the frog in boiling water. Nobody’s going to notice that their food has less nutrition.
It’s like their kids and their kids’ kids who are not going to have as healthy bones, and that kind of thing. They’re not going to grow as tall, or whatever. It’s just that kind of thing is. And then building soil, if you’re not a farmer, it’s so hard to transmit the idea that building soil takes generations and generations to build tiny amounts of healthy soil.
So yeah, it’s a struggle.
LH: Yeah. And actually I should say too, in the story in this series on the Climate Smart Commodities Program, one of the pieces of that program that was dropped was data collection. And Robert Bonnie, who worked in the Vilsack USDA, talked to me about this, and he was really, really devastated by that aspect, for the reasons that we’re talking about right now. Because even if the projects that they had designed didn’t immediately have changed things for farmers, or weren’t successful, one of the goals with that was to be collecting all of this data.
And there were requirements for soil sampling on all the farms that were doing these practices, and reporting that data back to the USDA, so that eventually this could be a repository of information that would then help the federal government think about these long-term problems and how to address them better in the future, how to address climate change on farms. And that while the program is still going, that piece is gone. And so, that will be, I think, one of the main losses there.
AOH: Yeah. I think a lot about how any future administration is going to have to choose what to build back and how quickly as far as science and data collection. It seems really challenging. Can you tell us about the regional food business centers that are the subject of the third piece in the series? What was the work they were created to do?
LH: This is the really wonky one. That’s the hardest to talk about. I actually interviewed former agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack when they first announced these. And I remember being like, “What are these? What are you going to do? Is this a good investment?” It was this idea they had that they thought that to build regional food, you needed some sort of hub in these different regions around the country to act as an organizer of these efforts and connect people and farms and kitchens and processors and essentially build back all of the little network connections that used to exist in these regional food systems that over time were just lost as the food system became more consolidated.
And so, I think it’s a hard one for people to wrap their heads around, because it’s a little bit. Yeah, it’s just wonky government speak. But I will say the reason I chose this program to write one of those stories about is because once I started talking to the people who were running these business centers, they were so passionate and so excited to tell me about all of these incredible things they were doing on the ground in their communities. And the actual on-the-ground work is very tangible.
So, the one I talked to in the Midwest, they’re essentially giving these mini grants, like 25,000, 19,000, 30,000 little chunks of money to all these small businesses, so a meat producer can buy a new fridge to store more of their beef. And this little vegetable farm needs a new truck just to get their vegetables to the market. It’s like these tiny little purchases. And then they were creating, not only were they just giving out all this little money to these community scale food businesses and not just farms, also community kitchens, or places that help farms access markets or sell their food to people.
And then they were also creating these strategic plans that were meant to basically try to get these regional food systems more resilient into the future, and to have people support each other in these systems and work together. And I was really struck by how this kind of wonky government thing actually resulted in these people who were just really, really dedicated to working with farmers and small food businesses, and really getting more of this food to people in their towns. And so, I thought it made sense to highlight it, even though it was a smaller program, really just because of that, because the people that were involved and the impact that they were having.
AOH: Yeah, you described the scene in your article. It was a Zoom meeting where the USDA is informing the center managers that their work is being canceled, and the employee leading the meeting said that they’re not going to take any question. And it was just heart-wrenching to read. And it really spoke to the passion that you’re talking about, the people who are doing the work. Have any of them continued in some different kind of capacity to try and keep that work going?
LH: Yeah, that call you’re talking about, a source passed that to me under the radar, and it’s hard to listen to. They were really, really devastated. I keep using this word devastated. I got to get a new word.
But everyone was very upset, and they told them they couldn’t ask questions, but they were all just coming off mute and kind of going rogue. And the one woman just saying, “Can you just let us thank each other for this work we’ve been doing?” And it was really emotional. So, to your question of whether or not they continued, most of them don’t have funding to keep the same level of work going, but a lot. The one, I think the Heartland Regional Food Business Center that I spoke with, they did create another cooperative entity to keep it going.
They just don’t have funding, so it’s a little bit looser. But there’s a nonprofit that’s maintaining the structure, so that it doesn’t all get lost. And I’m sure that they’re more like that around the country. And even the people I talked to at the North Central, in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, they gave me a lot of examples of places where the work had already been used.
Somebody had come and talked to them, and then started a food hub in North Dakota, based on everything that they had helped with. And so, that will continue. And a lot of these small businesses did get their grants, some didn’t, when everything was canceled. And yeah, so I think it’s kind of a mix.
I think some of the work will continue, but not at the same scale.
AOH: Do you have any big takeaways from this series just about maybe where farmers and food systems advocates are going from here or what you feel like is the continuing story or what you’re looking to next?
LH: Yeah, I really don’t know what will happen next. I think what I found was that this past year was really difficult, and that it seems to me that right now the farms and farm groups in this world of regional small farm work, they’re all just kind of finding their footing again, and trying to figure out what the next chapter looks like. And maybe the future of this kind of work is less tied to federal assistance. Maybe there are ways that organizations look to different kinds of funding.
I will say one thing that’s already happening is some states are stepping in. So, I think Minnesota created their own version of this. And just this month or last month, California just announced that they’re going to use state money to fund the LFPA program for another year. So, I guess I think it’ll be, I think what I see as coming next is states figuring out their role in some of this, and organizations and farms just figuring out how to go forward on their own.
I do think it’s going to be a while before people go back to the USDA and say, “We want to apply for another grant.” Yeah, I think there’s, again, just a really big loss of trust. So, I don’t know if that will be just under this administration or if it’ll last longer, but the Trump administration is certainly not the first USDA that a lot of farmers didn’t trust, especially historically underserved farmers. So yeah, it’s hard to know what’s going to come next.
AOH: Do you have anything that you’re working on that you can tell us about?
LH: Oh boy. Well, Civil Eats right now just launched a series called Farming 250 that is looking at the untold stories of the history of American agriculture and this current moment where we’re at in American farming. So, I’m involved in that. It also involves lots of freelancers and everyone on our team.
So that’s, I think, a big focus of Civil Eats‘ year. So, if people want to check that out, I would encourage them to. And we’re going to be covering just federal policy as always, and leading into the midterm elections. There’s a lot to cover.
And as I said, I’m working on a story on climate and impacts on farms right now. And I’m feeling really motivated to do more climate stories this year, because of the kind of shift away from those stories over the last year, which also happened. I didn’t write as many stories about climate, because there was just so much going on. So, I’m trying really hard to refocus on that, because there is a lot happening, and I don’t want it to get lost in the shuffle of all the government policy stuff that takes up all of our time.
AOH: Yeah. Well, we’ll link to this whole series in our show notes as well as that cool video that you mentioned at the outset. Lisa, thank you so much for joining us.
LH: Thank you, Amy. Great to be here.
AOH: We’ve been speaking with Lisa Held, senior staff writer at Civil Eats. Thank you for joining us today at Eat Drink Think. If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and don’t forget to pick up your local Edible magazine. You can find show notes for today’s episode at ediblecommunities.com.
