Are USDA cuts undermining plans to ‘Make America Healthy Again’?

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Early in the morning on a recent Monday, a group of third graders huddled in the garden of Mendota Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin. Of the dozen students present, a handful were busy filling up buckets of compost, others were readying soil beds for spring planting, while a number carefully watered freshly planted radishes and peas. The students were all busy with their assorted tasks until a gleeful shout rang across the space. Everything ground to a halt when a beaming boy triumphantly raised his gloved hand, displaying a gaggle of worms. The group of riveted 8- and 9-year-olds dropped everything to cluster around him and the writhing mass of invertebrates. 

“They’re mending the soil one week, and then the next week they’re going to start to see these little seedlings pop through the soil, because they’re healthy and they’re happy and they have sunshine, and they’ve watered them,” said Erica Krug, farm-to-school director at Rooted, a Wisconsin nonprofit community agricultural organization that helps oversee the garden. 

Krug stopped by the school that day to join the class, which her team runs together with AmeriCorps. Outdoor programming like this, said Krug, positions students to learn how to grow food — and take care of the planet that bears it. 

First established some 25 years ago, in a historically underserved area that has long struggled with access to healthy food, the small but thriving garden is now a mainstay in the Mendota curriculum. The produce grown there is routinely collected and taken to local food pantries.

Later this spring, the third grade class plans to plant watermelon and pumpkin seeds. Come summer, the garden will open to the surrounding community to harvest crops like garlic, tomatoes, zucchini, collards, and squash, and take home what they need.

Farm-to-school work, said Krug, isn’t limited to partnering with farmers to get locally grown foods into school meals, but also includes supporting schools in lower-income neighborhoods with working gardens, and providing students with agricultural and health education they won’t get otherwise. That can take the shape of after-school gardening clubs, field trips to local farms, and cooking classes.

“We want kids to understand where their food comes from. We want them to be able to have that experience of growing their own food,” she said. “It’s really, really powerful.” 

Back in January, the Rooted team applied for a $100,000 two-year grant through the Department of Agriculture’s Patrick Leahy Farm to School program, intended to provide public schools with locally produced fresh vegetables as well as food and agricultural education. Rooted had plans to “use a huge chunk of those funds” to continue supporting school garden activities and food programming at three local schools, including Mendota. 

Then, late last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent them an email announcing the cancellation of funding for grants through the program. The email, shared with Grist, noted that the cancellation is “in alignment with President Donald Trump’s executive order ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government and DEI Programs and Preferencing.’” 

The loss of the funds is “so upsetting,” said Krug, and the reasoning provided, she continued, is “ridiculous.” 

“When they talk about ‘Make America Healthy Again,’ ” Krug argued, “they don’t mean everybody. Because if they’re saying that they’re canceling this program because it’s ‘radical’ and ‘wasteful’ and ‘DEI,’ then that means that they don’t want non-white kids having access to fruits and vegetables.” 

Scenarios like these are playing out across the nation as the USDA, working with the initiative known as the Department of Government Efficiency, continues to cancel funding for multiple food and farm programs. Five USDA programs have had their funding pulled since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, while at least 21 others remain frozen. 

Last month, the agency terminated some $1.13 billion slated to be distributed through the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program and Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program. The move has had a resounding impact on the livelihoods of thousands of people, as charitable organizations have shuttered food donations, regional food hubs cut staff, and small farmers have gone bankrupt. The cancellation of this year’s farm-to-school funding was announced roughly two weeks after the USDA ended the billion-dollar funding stream. 

In prior years, Krug said, “we were being asked ‘What are you doing to address equity? To address diversity? How are you making sure your project is for everyone?’ And now we’re going to be penalized for talking about that.”

The team at Rooted is now working overtime to find other funding sources to continue the work, including hosting a fundraising drive and benefit concert next month at their urban farm site. Krug hopes the proceeds will help offset some of the loss. “We’re not ready to say, without this funding, that we’re going to abandon this program, because we believe so strongly in it,” she said. 

First established by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, passed in 2010, the Patrick Leahy Farm to School program was created by the Obama administration to address rising hunger and nutritional needs in public schools. The program has since awarded over $100 million in grants to schools that support millions of students in tribal, rural, and urban communities nationwide. 

Nutrition advocates and legislators are calling the USDA’s decision to cancel the farm-to-school funding contradictory to the stated goals of the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again commission. Many see it as a sign that the government is dismantling local food systems — hurting people and the planet. The fallout, experts say, will be gradual, but no less devastating. 

Advocates are also questioning whether it’s legal.

“This program is authorized. It’s a direction from Congress for USDA to carry it out. So carrying it out is not optional,” said Karen Spangler, policy director of the nonprofit National Farm to School Network, which advocated for the program. 

From its inception, the program has had a $5 million baseline allocation every year that the legislation mandates, and lawmakers have the ability to add discretionary funds. A total of $10 million was allocated to it for this fiscal year. 

To some policymakers, watching as the USDA revoked the funding came as a shock. A letter penned by federal lawmakers on April 4 urged Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to clarify why the administration “abruptly” cancelled the grants. The letter, spearheaded by longtime anti-hunger advocate Representative James McGovern of Massachusetts, and signed by 37 other House Democrats, also asked Rollins to explain the scope of the cancellation and to clarify “the authority” the agency is using to terminate funding, “given that Congress directed USDA to carry out this program.” 

Though an April 11 deadline for response was given, McGovern told Grist that, as of the time of this story’s publication, they have not received an answer. 

“The Trump Administration is slashing programs that help support our farmers and provide people in communities across the country with better access to local food. It’s pathetic,” said McGovern, who is also a senior member of the House Agriculture Committee. “Termination of these programs has caused tremendous uncertainty for schools, food banks and pantries, farmers, and hardworking families.” 

Grist reviewed the official notice shared with grantees and applicants from the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, which stated that the agency will not review applications, nor will it award grants this year. The agency did, however, note that it was “making plans for an improved competition funding opportunity.”

In an email, a USDA spokesperson told Grist that, in alignment with Trump’s executive order, the agency had “paused” this year’s Patrick Leahy Farm to School Program competition, and is now “revising the application” for the next fiscal year. 

“Secretary Rollins and the Food and Nutrition Service are committed to creating new and greater opportunities to connect America’s farmers to nutrition assistance programs and Farm to School is a critical component of this work,” the spokesperson added. They also noted that the “updated” application will provide “opportunities to support bold innovations in farm to school that encourage more applicants and better impacts, which reflect the realities of the intent and tremendous progress in farm to school made by states and communities over the past 15 years.” 

The USDA did not address Grist’s requests for clarification about the authority the agency is using to withhold the money, and did not clarify when or how it plans to award it. 

Sophia Kruszewski, a lawyer and deputy policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, explained that the USDA may technically have the legal authority to cancel this year’s grants through the program. In both the underlying statute and the appropriations text, there is language indicating that the funding for this program is to be “available until expended,” which, in most cases, gives the agency the ability to roll over unobligated funding from year to year. 

But Kruszewski isn’t convinced the move is in line with the spirit of the law. “It seems highly doubtful that Congress intended to give the agency carte blanche to simply choose not to spend any of the money directed toward the program,” said Kruszewski, “particularly when the call for proposals has already happened and applicants have spent significant time developing and submitting proposals.”

All the while, Rollins has publicly championed the president’s national nutrition overhaul. Earlier this month, the agriculture secretary joined Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at an elementary school in Alexandria, Virginia. The two spoke to students, staff, and onlookers about the importance of advancing nutrition in public schools.

The event took place a little more than a week after the cancellation of the farm-to-school funding. 

“Secretary Kennedy and I have a unique once-in-a-generation opportunity to better align our vision on nutrition-related programs to ensure we are working together to advance President Trump’s vision to make our kids, our families, and our communities healthy again,” said Secretary Rollins in a press release. “Our farmers, ranchers, and producers dedicate their lives to growing the safest most abundant food supply in the world and we need to make sure our kids and families are consuming the healthiest food we produce. There is a chronic health problem in our country, and American agriculture is at the core of the solution.” 

Kennedy, for his part, championed the end of ultra-processed foods in public schools and tightening nutrition program restrictions. During the visit, Rollins underscored how the USDA should be supporting “moving farm-fresh produce, as much as is possible, into the schools.”

Katie Wilson, former Obama administration USDA Deputy Under Secretary of Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, and executive director of the Urban School Food Alliance, argues that the event, and the USDA’s bigger MAHA campaign, are nothing more than a “facade” to distract from the agency’s subtler efforts to do the opposite. “Having these little kids around you — it’s a camera opp. So that’s the distraction, while I’m over here slicing and dicing the program, right?” Wilson said. “Just remember this funding was for unprocessed, local, fresh food, and so it’s about as healthy and as wonderful as it can get.” 

As for Rollins’ stated goal to bring more local food into schools, Wilson only sees more contradictions.

“We’ve been doing that, but you just took the rug completely out from under us,” she said. For larger school districts, planning for budgets, programs, and things like meals runs typically a year out. The loss of the farm-to-school grant and uncertainty about the future of the program means that schools across the country are now scrambling to find money, said Wilson. “Contracts don’t go away just because your funding got cut. Where does that money come from? Do you raise the price of school meals for kids? I mean, what do you do? Do you cut staff?”

For decades, advocates and policymakers have looked to strengthen local food systems as a plausible solution to rising hunger rates. Localized food systems have also been championed as a climate solution.

The climate footprint of transportation in the food supply chain, or the movement of crops, livestock, and machinery, contributes considerably to global agricultural emissions. Long-distance shipping of perishable fruit and vegetables in particular ramps up the amount of CO2 emissions generated. The same goes for emissions-intensive food waste: The longer the supply chain, the larger the proportion of food typically lost or thrown away. 

According to Jenique Jones, executive director at global nonprofit WhyHunger, small and regional producers are not only much less of a strain on the planet, but they also address systemic issues caused by the “monopoly” that a handful of national producers have on America’s food supply. Localized food systems allow for small farmers to be paid fair wages, she said, and healthier, better quality food to be made accessible to their communities. 

The gutting of grants through this program, along with other recent funding decisions by the USDA, signals to Jones that the administration is intentionally dismantling local food systems — which she believes will bring in big costs. The legislation that underwrote the Leahy program, for one, mandated that the agency prioritize geographic diversity and equitable distribution among tribal, rural, and urban communities. Between 2013 and 2024, roughly one in every 20 farm-to-school projects supported Native communities. 

These cuts show the administration’s priority, she said, which is “definitely not local food systems, and more importantly than that, it’s not people.” 

Among those that may feel some of the harshest burdens from the loss of farm-to-school funding are communities in lower-income, rural swaths of America. One such place is just outside of Bolivar County, in the heart of the Mississippi River Delta, where Sydney Bush has to travel 20 or so miles just to buy fresh vegetables. The closest grocery store is a 40-minute drive from her house. 

Bush works in food justice with the nonprofit Mississippi Farm to School network. Early this year, in partnership with the Cleveland School District, the organization submitted an application for almost $50,000 in a farm-to-school grant. That money would have been used to launch a pilot project to establish procurement plans between regional farmers growing fresh food and the district’s 10 local schools. It would have supported more than 2,800 students. 

The cancellation of the funding pot, a crucial lever in achieving truly local food sovereignty and remedying nutrition inequity across America’s resource-strapped rural communities, said Bush “isn’t just about this pilot not happening, it’s about what comes after.” Without it, groups like hers will have to work twice as hard to fill in the gaps. “Food is power,” she said. “There are folks in this country that don’t have the same access to nutrition as everyone else. It’s a systemic problem.”

Now, because of the rescinded grant, that dream of a localized food chain, the culmination of work that started in 2020, appears to be over before it even began. 

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/trumps-latest-usda-cuts-undermine-his-plan-to-make-america-healthy-again/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org