by Joan Eliyesil ·
Friday, March 21, 2025
Two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture notified every state in the country that it was canceling the Local Foods for Schools Program and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program. A USDA spokesperson said in a statement that the programs “no longer effectuate the goals of the agency.”
The end of these programs will have a two-fold impact. Not only will it reduce the availability of local, nutritional foods for schools and food access programs such as food pantries, it will be a financial blow to the farmers, especially small farmers, that supplied the produce, meat, and dairy products to these programs.
The programs were created in 2021 when the food supply chain was disrupted by the pandemic. The Local Food Purchase Assistance program (LFPA) was the larger of the two. The purpose of this program was to provide funds for states to purchase locally sourced food to both increase the availability of fresh, healthy food and to help support local farms. During the three years of its existence, the program in Massachusetts provided food access projects with more than $11 million in funding that was used to purchase food from about 500 farmers across the state. The other program, Local Foods for Schools (LFS), provided funds for schools to purchase local foods, including produce, meat, and dairy products.
In October, the USDA under the Biden administration announced it would continue both programs for three more years, and in December, it said it would fund the programs for $1.3 billion. That funding has now gone away.
The state was slated to receive $12 million for the Local Foods for Schools program and $7 million for the Local Food Purchase Assistance program. “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,” Gov. Maura Healey said in a press release.
Westward Orchards was one of the top five farm vendors benefiting from these programs through sales to the Boston Food Hub. Westward Orchards’ community supported agriculture manager Kerri Green told the Press the school program provided “a significant chunk of our wholesale apple revenue these past couple of years. With this funding program cut we will absolutely be impacted. The season hasn’t even begun, but it’s hard not to worry.”
Shon Rainford, director of the Worcester Regional Food Hub, said Carlson Orchards was a significant supplier of apples and apple cider to the school program through the Worcester food hub, and “there will definitely be reduced purchasing from them.” Carlson Orchards owner Katie Carlson confirmed that the cancellation will cause a financial loss to their wholesale business.
In the 2023-24 school year, the Harvard School District received $5,289 under the program, according to state records. Whitsons Culinary Group, which became Harvard’s school food service in November 2023, was expecting to rejoin the program next year.
Cory Nicholas, Whitsons’ general manager for Harvard, said, “We were looking forward to increasing local food purchasing. … It’s a disappointment.” He said Harvard would likely have been allocated between $4,000 and $6,000.
In Massachusetts, many schools participated in the LFS program through contracts with food hubs such as Boston Food Hub and Worcester Regional Food Hub to make it easier for them to purchase food from local farms. The hubs developed connections with local farmers and purchased food from them, then sold that food to the schools. Each week, the hubs would distribute a list of available foods to the schools, along with the name of the producer of each offering. Schools placed their orders, and the food hubs delivered the food. Farmers received all of the profits from the sale; the nonprofit hubs took only small administrative and delivery fees.
Harvard had a contract with the Worcester Regional Food Hub, which contracted with 95 school systems in the state. In an interview with the Press, Director Rainford said he was not worried about the financial impact on the food hub, but he is very concerned about the impact to the 40 to 60 small, local farmers that his organization buys food from. He said he had just visited one of those farms, Winter Moon Roots farm in Hadley, and the owner told him he expects to lose 30% of his sales this year because of LFS’ cancellation.
Rainford said about half the food the Worcester hub sold to schools over the past few years was through the LFS program. Funding for that program expired in December, and the new funding was scheduled to start in the 2025-2026 school year. “What it means for us,” Rainford said, “is that we won’t be hiring additional drivers, we won’t be buying or renting additional trucks, and my drivers won’t get additional hours.” But the farmers have already been impacted, he said, because they’ve purchased seeds and soil amendments based on anticipated sales to the canceled programs. “I’m more concerned about their well-being than my own,” Rainford said.
Acton-based nonprofit organization Boston Area Gleaners runs the Boston Food Hub. Executive Director Usha Thakrar told the Press in an interview that LFPA funding over the past three years has provided over $1 million in revenue for 56 farmers in six counties through its Boston Food Hub program.
From 2022 through 2025, the money from Boston Food Hub’s LFPA program purchased 767,000 pounds of produce that was distributed to 66 food access partners in 35 communities in this area. The hub’s LFS program was smaller and ran only from fall 2023 through December 2024. It had contracts with 26 schools in 20 communities, and the LSF funds spent by those schools paid for 150,000 pounds of produce and generated $183,000 in revenue for 52 farmers.
Thakrar said no one in the organization was shocked when the announcement canceling the two programs came out, but they were all “deeply disappointed.” Boston Gleaners Director of Strategy Dylan Frazier said the state “really loved” these programs. Thakrar said officials from the USDA visited organizations in the region last summer to meet with growers. They came here, and they talked to a handful of growers about the impact the programs have had on their farming. Frazier said they came to Massachusetts because the state was considered to be “a case study of very good execution of these programs.”
Frazier said the farming impact goes beyond loss of revenue. According to USDA statistics, the average age of a farmer in the U.S. in 2022 was 58.1 years old. Frazier said farming is a tough business, and this program helped the next generation of farmers to get a start (see sidebar). Thakrar added that the programs also helped reduce food waste, because sometimes farms produce too much of some crops, and the programs gave them an additional market for those crops.
In addition, Frazier said, low-income communities that already “have a higher prevalence of nutrition-related diseases” will receive fewer fruits and vegetables. He said “inflation has disproportionately hit the produce industry” as well, making it difficult for low-income households to afford fresh produce. Thakrar and Frazier both said no one knows how much food access groups, like food pantries, will have to cut back on fresh produce offerings because of this action by the USDA.
Two other area organizations had also received over $1 million in funding from the Local Food Access Purchase Program. One, Growing Places in Leominster, started by Harvard residents Kate Deyst and Cindy Buhner, distributes produce grown by small farmers and socially disadvantaged farmers (defined by the USDA as farmers who belong to a group “whose members have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice”). The other, World Farmers in Lancaster just over the Harvard line, operates Flats Mentor Farm, where immigrant and refugee farmers receive agricultural and business training while growing ethnic specialty crops. The farm used to sell a variety of Asian crops at the now-defunct Harvard Farmers Market.
Frazier summed up his comments about the cuts with this statement: “There’s probably nothing more American than supporting small American farmers and feeding the future of America with healthy nutritious food, so I would question the administration’s priorities in making these cuts.”
Marty Green contributed to this article.
How food program helped one local small farmer
Tim Offei-Addo, originally from Ghana, runs Abrantie Farm in Boxborough near the Minute Man Air Field. He works at Boston Area Gleaners and also sells his produce to the Boston Food Hub as part of the Local Food Purchase Assistance program. In an interview with the Press, Offei-Addo explained what the LFPA program has meant to him.
He said growers need two things—a good product and a market to sell it to. He said LFPA funding provided him with a guaranteed cash flow while he learned the business side of farming—things like capacity building, hiring staff, and brand identity. “It gave me an outlet while I was still figuring out the basics,” he said.
Offei-Addo grows some traditional crops, like carrots and ginger, but he also grows a type of eggplant native to West Africa called garden egg. “Everybody there eats that crop,” he said, and he has been selling it not only to Boston Food Hub, but also to the Salem food pantry. Salem has a diverse population that includes West Africans and Brazilians, who are also familiar with garden egg. He believes that the loss of LFPA will translate to fewer ethnic crops reaching populations where they are part of the traditional diet.
Offei-Addo’s farm has expanded from 5 acres to 20 acres. He said the program gave him an avenue to make connections with food banks and pantries in the region, which could help him expand his market. This year he was planning on doing much more extensive marketing, but that plan will now have to be scaled back.
“It’s causing a lot of uncertainty,” Offei-Addo said. “I do wholesale and I talk to a lot of nonprofit organizations—food pantries, food banks, small groceries. It definitely will have an impact on their ability to buy produce and get it into people’s pockets.”
—JE