The U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a letter March 7 that it will eliminate 2025 funding for the Local Food Purchase Assistance and Local Food for Schools programs.
The programs were created during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of a farm-to-school initiative that provided fresh food to schools facing food insecurity, according to CNN. The programs also provided food to pantries and food banks to support both underserved communities and farmers.
Recipients of this letter were given a 60-day notice of the programs’ terminations, according to the letter.
Farmers who are now left without contracts will have to reassess which crops they choose to grow and how they will engage in the marketplace — possibly leading to less diversity of producers, according to University of Wisconsin assistant professor of agricultural and food policy Andrew Stevens.
“I think you might see fewer types of small, diversified producers, which some people think are really the key to a thriving agricultural environment,” Stevens said.
Some people may lose access to high-quality and nutritious foods because there is a debate among whether food assistance should be focused on calories rather than the quality and freshness of foods, according to Stevens.
The LFPA and LFS programs also helped farmers who may not be experienced in marketing still sell products, according to UW assistant professor of agriculture and applied economics Jeff Hadachek.
“Programs like this provide an infrastructure to insure that if farmers produce local foods — that there is going to be a consumer on the other side to purchase those foods,” Hadachek said.
About 48.5% of Wisconsin farms sell less than $10,000 in terms of volume. This means it is often small and disadvantaged farms who benefit from the programs most — rather than larger corporate farms, Hadachek said. These farms generally don’t have marketing wings and expertise in advertising their products, so these programs gave them an outlet to ensure they would have consumers, according to Hadachek.
These USDA programs were especially necessary when they were created during the pandemic when there was a significant amount of unexpected food insecurity, Stevens said. People who lost their jobs faced temporary food insecurity but many of those affected have since restabilized financially.
Despite this, Stevens said it is hard to know what the scale of the negative impact will be and how it is going to have a positive impact in the short term.
Stevens advocated for the benefits of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as “food stamps.” SNAP gives money to low income individuals and households to buy food and is the most important program for anti-hunger public policy, according to Stevens.
SNAP is different from the LFPA and LFS programs in that the budget expands or shrinks based on how many people currently qualify for the program, Stevens said.
The elimination of LFPA and LFS may impact access to local foods not only for individuals facing food insecurity but for other Wisconsin residents as well, Hadachek said.
Hadachek said events such as the Dane County Farmers’ Market — the largest producers-only farmers market in the country — may be impacted if local farmers lack the resources necessary to promote their products, according to Hadachek.
Aside from the termination of these programs, farmers are also expected to face challenges with recent tariffs created by the Trump administration, according to Hadachek.
“It’s difficult to see that there will be positive economic impacts — particularly in the short run as a result of these tariffs,” Hadachek. “One might argue there could be benefits in the long run, but that requires a log of assumptions.”
Hadachek also said it is unlikely agricultural conservation programs will receive additional funding during Trump’s time in office.
Hadachek gave the example of the Tribal Elder Food Box, a Wisconsin program that provides culturally appropriate foods to Native Americans struggling with hunger and gives farmers who provide this food an opportunity to market their item. There is a risk this program could be negatively impacted by cuts in funding, Hadachek said.
Additionally, because of how recent the LFPA and LFS programs were created, it is difficult to assess how the food network in Wisconsin may change with their elimination, according to Stevens.
“If you think about 2020 to now, we haven’t had a whole lot of time with these programs, so it’s hard to assess what life without them will look like,” Stevens said.
The common denominator with all these programs is that food insecurity exists throughout the country and Wisconsin, according to Stevens. Many people believe this is an issue most commonly found in urban areas but it does exist everywhere, he said.
Stevens said the public favors these programs because their benefits are prevalent for a large portion of the population — all people who go to school.
“There’s a reason people really like these school food programs because everyone of a certain age has to go to school, so there’s a place where you can ensure people have the resources they need,” Stevens said.