Foreign aid cuts could impact agriculture industry in Pa. and other states, advocates say

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Norwood Farms in Henry County, Tennessee, on Sept. 19, 2019. (USDA Photo by Lance Cheung)
Federal cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development assistance programs will hurt American farmers and the safety of their crops, said several agricultural research leaders at a forum hosted by U.S. Senate Democrats.
'These cuts are clearly problematic for our standing in the world, our leadership in the world, our security, our trade relationships,' Sen. Amy Klobuchar said. 'But it also socks us here at home.'
Klobuchar of Minnesota, Senate Agriculture Committee ranking member and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member, hosted a forum to discuss the relationship between foreign assistance programs and the U.S. agriculture market.
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Through the Food for Peace program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture facilitates purchases of American crops and partners with non-governmental organizations to distribute these surplus crops to crisis areas around the world. Under the 2026 fiscal year budget request, this program will see major cuts, which may impact American farmers, forum speakers said. Additionally, the reduction of funding to agriculture innovation labs at public universities may leave U.S. crops vulnerable to future diseases.
Dr. David Hughes, director of the USAID Innovation Lab on Current and Emerging Threats to Crops at Penn State University, said funding cuts impact his team's ability to study potential threats to U.S. agriculture in 'safe spaces' around the globe.
His innovation lab, along with the Food Safety Program at Purdue University, the Livestock Systems Program at University of Florida and Peanut Production, a program addressing malnutrition at the University of Georgia, are among the universities that will see cuts under the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE.
Hughes said his team members study threats to agriculture overseas, to 'quickly deploy' mechanisms against those threats when the time comes. One threat the team is studying is thrips, a small insect that poses a risk to the U.S. floral industry. His team uses a space in Nepal to reduce risk to local crops.
Additionally, Hughes and his team at Penn State have been developing an artificial intelligence system called PlantVillage which provides advice to help farmers cope with climate change to increase the yield and profitability of their crops.
He says many American and European scientists are 'decamping' to China because they fill a space of 'research excellence' left by cuts to research in the United States.
'You want to make sure if you do have an AI system giving knowledge to American farmers, you better be sure it's not a made-in-China system.' Hughes said.
'To be able to count on that institutional market that comes from food assistance is a significant benefit to the U.S. farmer,' said Thoric Cederstrom, International Food Aid representative on the U.S. Dry Bean Council.
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Cederstrom said he doesn't think there is any organization that 'stands ready to fill that void,' left by USAID. He argues there is 'enlightened self-interest' in the purchase of American crops from farmers to be used as aid abroad. This purchase helps in 'stabilizing demand and prices for farmers across the heartland' and 'offset the risk of unpredictable market, trade disruptions and climate variability.' The USAID programs create a market that farms can respond to to turn a profit and 'generate income that keeps their businesses active.'
'There couldn't be a worse time to lower our guard,' said Kevin Shea, former administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service at USDA. 'African swine fever in the Dominican Republic, very close to our shores, very easily just one trip away from getting here. That's just one example. Foot and mouth disease, eradicated a century ago in America, is now appearing all around the world for the first time in many, many years. Another big concern for us. And screwworm has breached the barrier in Panama for many years and has made it into Mexico.'
Shea says that the inspection service has lost nearly 1,300 or around 15% of the workforce has left 'in the past few months' and with the additional cuts under the FY26 budget request 'APHIS can not do its job.'
Both Hughes and Shea talked about citrus greening disease, which has impacted the citrus industry in Florida as an example of the need for research and inspection programs.
Sarah Charles, former assistant to the administrator of USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, said despite the cuts, the career staff left at USAID are working 'furiously' to move food kept in warehouses around that globe, 'even knowing they have been fired,' to areas in need.
She also said the U.S. government response to crises, such as the 2025 Myanmar earthquake, has been 'limited' because the capacity has been 'taken offline by the Trump administration.'
China showed up in a major capacity, but many of its outreach programs are through the government, so the networks built by the U.S. with non-governmental partners and civil society organizations have been 'abandoned,' Charles said.
'Food rations that could supply three and a half million people for a month are rotting in warehouses around the world because of USAID cuts,' Shaheen said. 'Sadly, people are going hungry while farmers are losing a critical buyer for their crops.'
Tom Foley is an intern reporter for Iowa Capital Dispatch.