Lawmaker wants Maine to help farmers hurt by federal funding freeze

Yahoo

01-03-2025

Feb. 28—A state lawmaker has submitted an after-deadline bill to create a state-funded, no-interest loan program to help Maine farmers struggling to survive a federal funding freeze that has left them on the hook for at least $1 million in unreimbursed expenses.
Sen. Stacy Brenner, D-Scarborough, says Maine farmers shouldn't face financial ruin for believing the U.S. Department of Agriculture would honor long-term contracts through agricultural programs that have enjoyed bipartisan support, some of which date to the Dust Bowl era.
Maine can't afford to lose any more farms, said Brenner, who is herself a flower farmer. Famous for its potato and wild blueberry crops, Maine had lost 500 farms and 80,000 acres of farmland from 2017-22, according to the last agricultural census.
"The best way to protect farmland is to keep it in production," said Brenner, who was named president of the Maine Farmland Trust in December. "Our farms operate on very slim margins. We can't expect them to absorb the kinds of losses caused by the federal funding freeze."
A diverse group of farmers from across Maine gathered at Fork Food Lab in South Portland, to protest these federal funding losses. The group included novices and veterans, flower and food growers, and those who tended farms as small as an acre to some who run full-scale dairies.
One by one, they stepped up to a podium above a small green sign that read "honor the contracts, pay the farmers!" to detail their anxiety and anger about the Trump administration's impoundment of promised reimbursements from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Alyssa Adkins, a third-year Freeport farmer, said her partner had just decided to leave his day job to work full-time at Farthest Field Farm. They fear one USDA conservation grant will be canceled and don't know if they'll be reimbursed for tens of thousands already spent on two other grants.
"Starting a farm is very expensive," said Adkins, who could be facing up to $30,000 in losses. "This hampers our efficiency and ability to scale up, which can be crippling for small farms like us. Without help getting off the ground, the number of farms will inevitably shrink over time."
The Milkhouse Farm & Creamery in Monmouth is awaiting reimbursement for money spent installing a 27-kilowatt solar array to offset the cost of electricity needed to operate the 250-acre dairy, beef and hog farm, said co-owner Caitlin Frame. Among other markets, it supplies yogurt to eight school districts.
"Unless this is quickly remedied, it will no doubt put some small farms out of business," Frame said. "Maine dairy farmers are not members of the financially insulated millionaires and billionaires class. Even if these funds are eventually released, the delays alone will be financially catastrophic."
'WHY AM I EVEN DOING THIS?'
Michael Levine, a novice farmer who tends a half-acre of organic vegetables in Hollis, said the freeze has left him feeling disheartened. Without grants, its hard for a beginning farmer to justify expensive conservation practices even though they know the long-term benefits.
"Without subsidies, it takes away the incentive to do it," Levine said. "Honestly, it takes away the motivation to be a farmer when you think your government isn't going to help you out at all. ... Some days you wake up in the morning and you think, 'Why am I even doing this? What's the point?'"
In time, funding cuts and farm closures will lead to higher food prices for Maine residents, farmers said.
"It's something that will creep up," said Kevin Leavitt, an organic vegetable farmer in West Gardiner waiting on a $45,000 reimbursement check for a newly installed solar array. "If we don't have faith in what we're going to have for income, obviously we're going to have to increase prices."
They are among thousands of U.S. farmers, including Mainers, hit hard by President Donald Trump's cost-cutting directives, including an executive order that froze funds from the Inflation Reduction Act, which, among other things, paid farmers to conserve soil and water and adopt renewable energy.
Nearly every farmer works with the USDA in some way, usually on an everyday basis, through technical assistance programs or loans and grants to expand their business, drill wells or adopt conservation methods, said Sarah Alexander of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, which organized the event in South Portland.
Most USDA grant programs require farmers to sign a government contract detailing conditions to be met to get reimbursed for costs of approved projects. But last month, the USDA joined other federal agencies in announcing it was freezing funds — even those already promised — while it reviewed its programs.
The funding freeze was announced on Jan. 27 when the Office of Management and Budget sent a memo requiring agencies to identify and pause funding to programs that violated Trump's executive orders on topics ranging from foreign aid to "woke ideology" and the "green new deal."
YET TO BE PAID
A federal judge has ordered those federal funds to be released, and the USDA has said it plans to comply, but Alexander said Friday that Maine farmers have yet to be paid — and the amount of unreimbursed expenses for projects already approved by signed USDA contracts exceeds $1 million.
That is just a fraction of the amount owed Maine farmers in these multiyear USDA contracts, Alexander said. One conservation program alone distributed $12 million to Maine farmers in 2024, she said. When all is considered, the contractual losses likely exceed $100 million in Maine alone.
Brenner said her proposed bill won't solve all of these farmers' problems, but, if approved and funded by the Legislature, it might help the farmers survive until the Trump administration finishes its program review and the USDA abides by a court order to disburse its contractually obligated funds.
The bill is so new that it has yet to be printed. Because it was submitted after the Jan. 10 deadline for new legislation, the bill needs approval from the Legislative Council before it can be presented to the Legislature for likely referral to the Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee.
Even if allowed in, there are still a lot of details in the bill to be worked out, including how it would be funded, if the loans would be forgiven if the federal funds are never released and who is eligible to apply, those promised USDA grants or only those who have already spent contractually obligated funds.
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