The Department of Agriculture has slashed over $1 billion in funding aimed at helping schools and food banks purchase from local farmers, according to a nonprofit.
“Multiple states” were recently notified of these cuts, the nonprofit School Nutrition Association said in a statement Tuesday.
“With research showing school meals are the healthiest meals Americans eat, Congress needs to invest in underfunded school meal programs rather than cut services critical to student achievement and health,” said the group’s president Shannon Gleave. “These proposals would cause millions of children to lose access to free school meals at a time when working families are struggling with rising food costs. Meanwhile, short-staffed school nutrition teams, striving to improve menus and expand scratch-cooking, would be saddled with time-consuming and costly paperwork created by new government inefficiencies.”
An estimated $660 million in funds through the Local Food for Schools program for 2025 will no longer be available to support childcare institutions and schools, the group added.
“This program will strengthen the food system for schools and childcare institutions by helping to build a fair, competitive, and resilient local food chain, and expand local and regional markets with an emphasis on purchasing from historically underserved producers and processors,” the USDA website says about the Local Food for Schools program.
The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education confirmed it received a notice of termination from the USDA on Friday of the second round of Local Food for Schools grant funding, an award of $12.2 million, claiming that they “determined this agreement no longer effectuates agency priorities and that termination of the award is appropriate,” the state’s governor Maura Healy said in a Monday statement.
The governor suggested the cuts were made as part of a Department of Government Efficiency-led effort to reduce spending in the federal government.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk have declared that feeding children and supporting local farmers are no longer ‘priorities,’ and it’s just the latest terrible cut with real impact on families across Massachusetts,” said Governor Healey. “There is nothing ‘appropriate’ about it. Trump and Musk are continuing to withhold essential funding in violation of court orders, and our children, farmers and small businesses are bearing the brunt of it.”
The Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, which provides food to food banks and organizations that reach underserved communities, was also included in the cuts, Politico reported. An estimated $420 million of federal funds were expected to go toward the program in 2025, the USDA website shows.
A USDA spokesperson told the outlet that funding “is no longer available and those agreements will be terminated following 60-day notification.” The spokesperson added: “These programs, created under the former Administration via Executive authority, no longer effectuate the goals of the agency. LFPA and LFPA Plus agreements that were in place prior to LFPA 25, which still have substantial financial resources remaining, will continue to be in effect for the remainder of the period of performance.”
