Within the first seven months of President Donald Trump’s second administration, the federal funding panorama has been radically modified — particularly for the individuals who develop, harvest, and distribute meals. Hundreds of presidency staffers had been terminated; complete applications have been stripped down; and a grant freeze has immobilized state, regional, and native meals techniques that depend on federal funding.
In all the turmoil, the communication from the Division of Agriculture itself has lacked transparency and comprehensiveness. We’ve heard time and again from our sources — farmers, meals organizations, agricultural networks, and advocates throughout the nation — that they continue to be confused and searching for dependable info. Of us want readability about what is occurring, help throughout a tough second, and options to the present faltering system.
So, in response to these wants, we’ve put collectively this info information. Under you’ll discover extra particulars concerning the standing of assorted USDA applications; sources for these battling monetary and/or psychological well being hardships; and a few dialog starters that will help you envision a extra resilient meals economic system.
The data under relies on Grist’s earlier reporting on cuts to federal applications run by the departments of Agriculture and the Inside, the Environmental Safety Company, and different federal businesses; and compiled from sources together with congressional paperwork and third-party funding trackers, along with reporting revealed by Civil Eats and Politico. This info information was first revealed on August 6, 2025, and the lists of cancelled and frozen grants will likely be up to date because the standing of insurance policies and funding applications change.
If in case you have info or suggestions concerning funding modifications on the USDA, please contact ahornmuller@grist.org.
Cancelled USDA meals and farming funding
The grants and applications under have been cancelled — partially or complete — by the Trump administration.
Regional Meals Enterprise Facilities Program
This program was established by the Biden administration in 2023 with $360 million awarded to finalists to ascertain and enhance regional provide chains by way of the implementation of 12 business centers, which might administer monetary awards to farms and meals companies all through the nation. This July, when the USDA terminated this system, a 3rd of the facilities were still in the process of launching and had not yet awarded grants — partially as a result of this system’s funding had remained frozen since January. These contracts had been instantly cancelled. The USDA famous in a press launch that the websites which have already awarded grants “will have the option to continue managing existing commitments” by way of Could 2026.
Partnerships for Local weather-Sensible Commodities Grant
This program provided grants for projects that create market alternatives for agricultural and forest merchandise produced utilizing climate-smart practices and strategies for quantification, monitoring, and verification of greenhouse-gas and carbon-sequestration advantages. About $3.1 billion in funding, approved by USDA in 2023 as a linchpin of the Biden administration’s strategy to assist farmers and ranchers mitigate local weather change, was cancelled in April. After all the preliminary grants had been terminated, the funding pot was then repackaged into a brand new program with out fairness, local weather, or sustainability benchmarks, and former grantees had been invited to reapply — on the situation that their tasks meet the new criteria.
Patrick Leahy Farm to Faculty Program Grants
This program was created to deal with rising starvation and dietary wants amongst school-age kids by offering public faculties with funding to supply domestically produced greens and fund meals and agricultural training, supporting thousands and thousands of scholars in tribal, rural, and concrete communities nationwide. About $10 million in funding for 2025 was terminated in March, despite congressional authorization for the funding. As of now, funding awards are anticipated to renew subsequent 12 months.
The Emergency Meals Help Program
This program was designed to complement the diets of lower-income individuals by offering emergency meals help for gratis to them. Recipients get precise meals, not cash. TEFAP additionally distributes “bonus” meals bought by the USDA to help agricultural markets, with extra funding allotted by Congress below the statutory authority of the Commodity Credit score Company. About $500 million of funding allotted for TEFAP was abruptly cut by the USDA in late March, which has diminished charitable meals donations and undercut farmers throughout the nation. It’s not clear whether the USDA plans to make use of Commodity Credit score Company funds for future meals purchases distributed by way of this system.
Native Meals Buy Help Cooperative Settlement Program; and Native Meals for Colleges and Little one Care Cooperative Settlement
Collectively, these two applications provided funding for schools and state, tribal, and territorial governments to buy meals produced inside native and regional ranges to supply extra nutritious meals and assist farmers of their space. In March, Trump’s USDA terminated each applications, halting about $1.1 billion in federal spending.
Working Lands Conservation Corps
This program, below the Biden-era American Climate Corps, offered technical coaching and profession alternatives for younger individuals, “serving to them ship financial advantages by way of climate-smart agriculture options for farmers and ranchers nationwide.” Final spring, the USDA selected 28 organizations nationwide to host members of the company’s Working Lands Local weather Corps, or WLLC, in partnership with the Corps Community. The Corps Community, which oversaw the funding for WLLC, was anticipating $500,000 in annual IRA-authorized funding, earlier than the federal funding freeze and a subsequent termination of funding in early March led to the cancellation of all sub-agreements.
How one can discover out the place your cash stands
In the event you’re having hassle discovering extra details about the standing of your funding, these sources could assist:
Full checklist of meals and farming grants with funds frozen
The grants and applications under have, at one cut-off date, been frozen by the Trump administration. Although some grantees report that funds have resumed, different funds remained gridlocked. There’s not but any indication of whether or not or when all the funding streams under will likely be reinstated. The USDA has not responded to a number of inquiries from Grist requesting standing updates about these frozen funds. As one agricultural policy expert told Grist, the state of USDA communications round funding choices has remained a “black field.”
What are the options?
Within the brief time period, everyone seems to be looking for their very own fixes and help techniques. Listed here are just a few we’ve heard about from a wide range of meals and farming organizations:
Erin Clark / The Boston Globe by way of Getty Pictures
Group land trusts
There are native, regional, and nationwide land trusts which can be privately owned nonprofit organizations devoted to conservation. Many provide financial assist to farmers and agricultural teams working to guard or higher are inclined to native land. You should utilize digital sources like Land Trust Alliance to search out one close to you.
Discovering help networks
- The Heart for Nonprofit Excellence has an in depth checklist of suggestions to bear in mind in case your nonprofit group has been affected by a federal funding freeze, in addition to a e-newsletter to remain up to date. Learn more.
- Many states and areas have their very own farming cooperatives and teams. As an example, the Carolina Farm Trust is a community of city farmers within the Carolinas; Virginia has a number of cooperatives and associations; The California Food and Farming Network, along with internet hosting working teams on farmworker and meals system points, has a e-newsletter devoted to sharing details about what’s taking place to funding, applications, and extra.
- Rural Development Basis Worldwide, or RAFI, gives member sources such because the Farmers of Color Network and the Policy Action Network, and up-to-date advice for farmers with USDA loans or contracts, together with stream charts for farmers who could also be in search of steerage on easy methods to navigate the USDA’s cuts and freezes.
- The Queer Farmers Network is a nonprofit group that holds in-person gatherings, communicates by way of a web-based listserv, and shares info and sources for LGBTQ+ farmers, gardeners, and others working within the meals system. (Learn extra about psychological well being amongst queer farmers here.)
- The Women, Food, and Agriculture Network gives sources, mentorship applications, and storytelling to help ladies and nonbinary farmers, landowners, city gardeners, environmental educators, researchers, and group activists.
- National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is an alliance of greater than 130 member teams working to advocate for sustainable meals and farm coverage on the federal degree. NSAC is carefully following the federal funding scenario because it impacts small and midsize farms, pure sources, rural communities, and meals safety. They repeatedly submit updates to their blog.
- National Young Farmers Coalition is a farmer-led coalition that advocates for equitable land entry and helps younger and various farmers nationwide. The group additionally works to advance and help farmer psychological well being and construct options to deal with the affect of agricultural techniques on local weather change.
- HEAL Food Alliance is a multisector, multiracial coalition made up of 55 organizations representing rural and concrete farmers, fishers, farm and food-chain employees, Indigenous teams, scientists, public well being advocates, coverage consultants, group organizers, and activists. The BIPOC-led coalition advocates for employee, racial, and environmental justice, in addition to public entry to food-supply-chain knowledge.
Native and regional meals hubs
Hyperlocal meals cooperatives and hubs additionally sometimes present community-centric sources and help for small native farmers and meals companies. Within the foothills of Appalachian Ohio, teams like Rural Action provide monetary assist and different types of help for a variety of sectors, together with meals and agriculture, and is a founding member of the Central Appalachian Network. In West Virginia, Coalfield Development is one other instance of a corporation targeted on constructing native financial energy all through community-powered meals networks, whereas the Northeast Tennessee Local Food Network is a nonprofit cultivating a stronger, extra resilient native meals system by connecting farmers, companies, and faculties.
College extension companies
Initially established by way of a partnership with the USDA and universities throughout the nation in 1914, extension companies had been fashioned to construct a bridge between farmers and ranchers and the federal meals and farming businesses. With the help of native and regional consultants, these working within the ag sector with localized recommendation, trainings, and solutions to their farming questions. Extension companies function in each U.S. state, and brokers are sometimes housed at universities, although some companies may be discovered with native workplaces of their very own. Right here’s a useful resource hosted by the Arkansas Extension Service to assist discover your closest extension service office.
Prioritizing your psychological well being
U.S. farmers are three and a half instances extra more likely to die by suicide than the final inhabitants, so psychological well being companies, like remedy, and constructing group are crucial. (Here’s more information concerning the affect of farming on psychological well being.)
Listed here are some choices in case you or somebody you understand is struggling:
- Rural Development Basis Worldwide, or RAFI, operates a hotline for farmers who could also be in monetary disaster or dealing with different distressing points: Name 866-586-6746 Monday by way of Thursday from 9 a.m. to five p.m. Jap.
- The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, a program of the federal authorities, is accessible by way of textual content and telephone name. (Please be aware: The Trump administration has floated the concept of defunding this program, however it’s at the moment nonetheless working.)
- Your state could have a hotline to name in case you’re having ideas of harming your self, or in case you simply wish to discuss. For instance, in Wisconsin, there are a number of sources particularly for farmers.
- The American Farm Bureau Federation gives a Farm State of Mind directory that aggregates a state- and regional-level checklist of helplines, alliances, and organizational sources for farmers and ranchers who may have psychological well being and wellness help.
- The USDA’s Nationwide Institute of Meals and Agriculture operates the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network, a program that “connects people who’re engaged in farming, ranching, and different agriculture-related occupations to emphasize help applications.” (Please be aware that the altering federal funding panorama could have impacted the supply of government-backed sources like these.)
Imagining a sustainable future
A 2024 study discovered that environmental degradation, well being impacts, and biodiversity loss all contribute to trillions of {dollars} of losses yearly. Some of the solutions, the researchers stated, embody investing extra in native and small farms and directing authorities subsidies to each farmers and customers to help an equitable and resilient meals economic system.
The federal funding disaster is just not with out tales of hope and resilience. Listed here are tales to learn as dialog starters about the opportunity of constructing a extra collaborative and sustainable meals system. Observe Grist’s food and agricultural coverage for extra.
Who’re these price range cuts hurting?
There’s a variety of individuals, organizations, and communities that depend on funding from USDA. Listed here are just a few of their tales.
A farming community in Pennsylvania
Simply days after President Trump’s Inauguration Day government orders directed the short-term halt of all federal grants and loans, Hannah Smith-Brubaker, government director at Pennsylvania Affiliation for Sustainable Agriculture, or Pasa, reached out to the group’s nationwide program officer on the USDA. She was apprehensive concerning the standing of their largest grant — about $59.5 million that they had been awarded in 2023 by way of the company’s Partnerships for Local weather-Sensible Commodities program, which supplies monetary help and technical help to some 2,000 farmers in 15 states as they undertake sustainable agricultural practices like cowl crops, silvopasture, and prescribed grazing. It wasn’t till April 14 that Smith-Brubaker obtained discover that the five-year grant was terminated.
The crew at Pasa is currently fighting these decisions by the administration in federal court docket. “How is it attainable that two years right into a five-year grant, simply because there was an administration change, every part that had been promised to those farmers can simply be minimize off?” requested Smith-Brubaker. “It’s been months of simply utter confusion and curler coasters and pondering issues had been shifting forward after which discovering out they weren’t.”
A charity supporting food-insecure households in Appalachia
After confronting months of frozen funding, adopted by the information that one of many USDA applications they counted on had been abruptly terminated, Appalachian Sustainable Growth was compelled to shutter its food-box program in March.
Director of Growth Sylvia Crum described the scenario as “heartbreaking” for the hundreds of individuals all through central Appalachia they feed and the 40 farmers they work with who’ve now misplaced that earnings. “We don’t have the cash,” stated Crum. It prices them roughly $30,000 to fill the two,000 or so bins that, till March 7, they distributed each week.
The tip of this system has impacted people like Mark Broyles, who used to drive 20 minutes from his dwelling in Massive Stone Hole to Duffield, Virginia, to choose up two bins of free, recent meals. The bins was stuffed with issues like lean meat, milk, and an assortment of seasonal produce — a cherished provide in a time when skyrocketing costs have made shopping for groceries much less reasonably priced for Broyles.
“Mountain people are very proud individuals,” Broyles stated. “Mountain people don’t often ask for assist, however typically when assist is obtainable, we reluctantly go to get it. … I hope our president and our representatives can see how essential this program is — as a substitute of utilizing a broad ax strategy to chop a few of these applications, that they’d go extra with the scalpel and trim off the fats.”
A small farmer in Indiana
Final 12 months, a single bulk order of potatoes, inexperienced onions, and beans from a neighborhood meals financial institution would earn Thomas Eich, proprietor of Kankakee Valley Homestead farm, about $3,500. That earnings was made attainable by way of an assortment of USDA grants that at the moment are cancelled.
To attempt to make up for the losses, which characterize round 42 p.c of the farm’s projected 2025 gross sales, Eich has bumped up the variety of farmers markets his crew units up at. However the quantity of gross sales isn’t near the identical, and the earnings nowhere close to as constant. “If we’re there on a Saturday and a thunderstorm comes by way of, then they shut the market down and all of us go dwelling,” he stated. “And now I’ve spent cash driving there and setting as much as make no cash.”
With a view to pay suppliers and payments, Eich has been compelled to take out non-public loans and switch to members of the family for monetary assist. If it wasn’t for that help community, he stated, his enterprise would have gone below by now.
For Eich, the USDA’s funding freezes have “positively destroyed their credibility” in his estimation, and he’s not sure about how a lot he’d be prepared to just accept federal cash sooner or later. Seeing the USDA proceed to launch subsidies for the largest farm companies, whereas curbing funding pots used to uplift native farming and meals techniques, solely pours salt on the wound. “How is it going to be value placing the religion into that, investing into them once more, to have the rug pulled out from beneath you?”
A meals enterprise in Washington
After six months of uncertainty and frozen funding, the USDA introduced on July 15 that the division will cancel the Regional Meals Enterprise Facilities program, established by the Biden administration to help small farms and meals companies across the nation. Kitchen Sync Methods, a corporation that helped set up one of many facilities that had been instantly shuttered, is a consultancy that works with meals hubs and small farmers to produce establishments like faculties with recent meals. The corporate was in partnership to assist launch one of many 12 Regional Meals Enterprise facilities referred to as Islands and Distant Areas RFBC — serving Alaska, Hawai‘i, Guam, Northern Marianas Islands, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands — which have now been shuttered.
Due to the cancellation, based on its founder Elliott Smith, Kitchen Sync will now be compelled to tug the plug on the partnerships it had established with meals hubs across the nation that characterize over a thousand small farmers. Income loss from the contracts alone quantities to about $400,000. “I received to search out another means subsequent 12 months to pay for medical health insurance, to pay for salaries, to cowl the prices, and to proceed promoting the meals,” stated Smith.
The USDA, stated Smith, is “saying very disingenuous issues,” about why the company terminated this system. “They like to beat their chest about this ‘Farmers First’ policy agenda that the company has. I might like to understand how they reckon with the handfuls of farmers which can be screaming proper now, saying, ‘However you promised! You instructed me that this program was going to unravel my market entry issues.’
“By terminating this system and reneging on that promise, the company is immediately contradicting itself.”
If in case you have info or suggestions concerning meals and ag funding modifications, please contact ahornmuller@grist.org.
