USDA cuts funding to programs impacting local schools and farmers

In March, the United States Department of Agriculture cut $1 billion in funding, eliminating programs that enabled local schools and food banks to purchase food from local farmers.

“We are always striving to create opportunities for North Carolina products to be served in local schools and communities across the state,” said Steve Troxler, commissioner of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (NCDA&CS). “We are disappointed with this decision, and we will discuss it with the appropriate people to see if there is a way to continue providing opportunities to connect students, children, and communities with local foods and support farmers.”

NCDA&CS was notified via email of the termination of the Local Food for Schools and Child Care Cooperative Agreement (LFSCC) and the Local Food Purchase Assistance 2025 cooperative agreement. This termination would take effect 60 days from March 7.

“The USDA programs that supply food banks with locally grown products added ‘fresh’ food to the mix,” Dr. Peter Morris, recently retired executive director of Urban Ministries of Wake County. “Of course, not all food pantries — the retailers — move their product fast enough to accept fresh foodstuffs. The loss of locally grown fresh food affects the quality of what is available at a pantry and the quality of what is consumed.”

The NCDA&CS is closing out the current cycle of funding from the LFSCC program; the department was anticipating beginning the next round of funding. The LFSCC funding was set to be used over three years starting in 2025.

Launched in 2023, the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) and LFPA Plus programs were funded through Oct. 31, 2025. LFPA25 funds were intended for use over three years. When the agreement ended, NCDA&CS had not received or distributed funds for LFSCC or LFPA25.

“It took years to get this fresh product to the food banks and to schools, and now, with the stroke of a pen (or whatever), local farmers lose an important market, and children and families lose the benefits of fresh foods,” Morris said. “It’s a step backward towards Making America Healthy Again.”

Both programs aimed to increase local and domestic food purchases, unprocessed or minimally processed commodities, from North Carolina farmers and small businesses. Purchases were targeted for distribution to communities. Terminating these funds will impact local schools, food banks, and the local farmers supplying them.

“I’m sympathetic to the idea and goals of this program, but North Carolina has its NC Farm to School Program with similar goals, which policymakers could expand,” Jon Sanders, director of the Center for Food, Power, and Life, at the John Locke Foundation (JLF), told the Carolina Journal. “Similarly, local governments and school districts could also choose to offer their own programs or encourage philanthropic activities toward that end.”

According to a December 2024 announcement, the LFSCC received $12.4 million, which was to be made available to North Carolina from the USDA-Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) to purchase local foods for schools and $6.5 million for local foods for childcare institutions. Together, the department was to receive $18.9 million in federal funding to purchase local foods. Under the same announcement, LFPA25, a total of $11.4 million was to be made available to North Carolina from USDA-AMS. Both programs purchase and distribute food to local communities.

“Urban Ministries benefits from different sources of fresh product, not directly related to the foodstuffs provided to schools and summer feeding programs,” said Morris. “The Emergency Food Assistance Program [TEFAP] provides pallets upon pallets of fresh and frozen protein, vegetables, and fruits to food pantries like Urban Ministries, Catholic Parish Outreach, and North Raleigh Ministries. If TEFAP funds are threatened or cut off, quite clearly, food pantries lose a huge source of their protein and fresh products. Food packages for families would shrink in poundage, and even if generous donors stepped up, food pantries are ill-prepared to create relationships with local growers at the scale that makes it worth it to farmers or possible for food pantries to buy products at wholesale pricing.”

USDA funding was in addition to other programs that distributed local food to schools and communities. One such program is the NC Farm-to-School, which has a long and successful history of distributing local foods to school systems.

The post USDA cuts funding to programs impacting local schools and farmers first appeared on Carolina Journal.