Schools, Food Banks and Farmers Feel the Sting of Federal Cuts

Mike Manning is puzzling over how he will get fresh produce to the 55,000 residents of 11 parishes around Baton Rouge, La., who depend on him to provide it.

The recent cancellation of a Department of Agriculture program created to support purchases from local farmers — the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA and LFS) — means a $2 million funding cut for the organization he leads, Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank.

Louisiana has one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the country (see map). The agricultural sector in the area Manning serves is largely focused on soybeans and corn. “When you start talking about other produce, it’s a real challenge,” he says.

More than 11 million households in America experience food insecurity, but the scale of the problem is largely unrecognized. “It never touches a lot of people,” Manning says. “It’s not like cancer, where they know somebody who has it.”

Federal dollars had enabled his group to purchase vegetables from small farmers at risk of financial hardship, including the loss of their farms. The food is distributed to more than 200 outlets, including shelters, local food pantries, soup kitchens and homes.

Manning is hoping the state will provide some funding and is looking for donors and grants to continue his work. His worry that children and seniors will go hungry is compounded by the likelihood that cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will increase the need for his services.

It's not just food banks that will suffer. Cuts will also affect a program that provided fresh food for school lunches. In total, the two programs provided $1 billion in purchases from local farmers.

Lunch Trays Will Change

Low-income children depend on school breakfast and lunch programs for the majority of food they eat in a week, says Alexis Bylander, a child nutrition policy specialist at the Food Research & Action Center. The more than $600 million cut from the school lunches program could affect those meals’ nutritional value.

“The local school food agreements really played an important role in helping schools access agricultural products in their area that we believe helped make the meals more fresh and appealing to students,” she says. The changes coming to school lunch trays minus this local produce will be noticeable to students and parents.

Nine out of ten households with food insecurity include children. Experts say limiting their access to nutritious food at school will have numerous negative health impacts.

Food prices rose faster than inflation between May 2024 and May 2025, up by almost 3 percent. Schools are already struggling to stretch their meal budgets. “Now is the time to bolster efforts that improve access to affordable and healthy foods, not to gut them,” Bylander says.

Setbacks in Every Direction

Farmers have made investments in anticipation of future federal funds to buy locally grown food, says Ryan Betz, policy specialist at the National Farm to School Network. They’ve been blindsided by the elimination of the federal programs. Farmers in West Virginia have gone as far as to say they won’t be able to survive the cuts.

Food service directors at schools are scrambling to rethink menu plans that had been aligned with what they expected to receive from local farms.

Ironically, food insecurity can be even greater in rural areas. The area around Baton Rouge that Manning serves isn’t the only rural area more focused on industrial agriculture than local production of produce for homes and schools. Betz says it’s a similar situation where he lives in rural Mississippi.

“I run the local farmers market in our town, and it’s taken 25 years to get even a handful of growers to come out to our market,” he says.

Pushback

The cuts to local farm programs haven’t gone unnoticed. “There’s been incredible response in the media covering this story,” Betz says.

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins was asked in a Fox News interview why funding for food banks and school programs would be cut by $1 billion. She responded that the changes were a response to Biden-era expansion of programs designed for the COVID-19 pandemic that weren’t getting funds to the right people.

But, she added, “If we are making mistakes, we will own those mistakes and will reconfigure.”

This “reconfiguring” may be in sight. In mid-July a bipartisan bill was introduced in the Senate that could restore federal support for food purchases from local farmers and bring fresh produce to school lunch programs. The Strengthening Local Food Security Act would “catalyze new market opportunities for local farmers and food businesses while providing nutritious foods to communities in need,” said its sponsors in announcing the legislation.

Betz expects a similar bill to be introduced in the House, and possibly other legislation that wouldn’t reinstate the LFPA or LFS, but create new programs that could accomplish the same things without Biden-era “equity” framing.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Danilo Burgos co-sponsored a bill, the Keystone Fresh Act, that would provide grants to help schools in his state continue to purchase from local farms. It made it through the House with bipartisan support.

“A lot of our schools have to buy food from outside the state,” Burgos says. Funding to purchase from local growers is especially needed in rural areas.

Burgos hopes his bill will raise awareness that urban and rural areas need one another, and urban buying power can help local farmers. It’s possible it won’t make it through the Republican-led Senate.

He’s working to achieve the bipartisan support that got the bill this far. “The last thing we lose is hope,” Burgos says. “I’m doing whatever I can within my ability.”