Trump spending cuts force Farm Fresh RI to lay off staff, other food programs in danger
The Providence-based nonprofit, which connects local food producers to consumers, receives about 40% of its budget from federal funding that pays the organization to help get fresh produce, dairy, meat and seafood to public schools, food pantries and people who use food stamps.
But earlier this month the U.S. Department of Agriculture notified recipients of money for the school and food pantry programs that it was terminating funding for them. The grant awardees weren't given prior notice.
The programs support some 90 farms and fishing businesses in Rhode Island, said Farm Fresh Executive Director Jesse Rye during a meeting Wednesday with Congressman Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island.
'These programs had a very far reach and supported a lot of small businesses,' Rye said.
Magaziner, a Democrat, called the administration's moves illegal.
'The effect on the ground is real,' he said. 'It is impacting farmers, it is impacting fishermen, it is impacting small businesses. And of course, it's impacting kids and seniors and others who need access to fresh food.'
Both programs were created by the Biden administration during the coronavirus pandemic in response to concerns about the vulnerability of food supplies.
They aimed to not only make people's diets healthier, but also ensure that local food producers stay in business. In Rhode Island, in particular, farming can be difficult because of high costs that include the most expensive farmland in the nation on average.
But Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins called the programs 'nonessential' in an interview with Fox News.
'It was an effort by the left to continue spending taxpayer dollars that were not necessary,' Rollins said.
Rhode Island had about $2.8 million in remaining funding for the two programs, known as Local Foods for Schools and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement.
Farm Fresh essentially acts as the middle-man for the programs in Rhode Island, fulfilling a critical distribution role that most small food producers aren't capable of.
The 19-year-old organization had staffed up to meet the needs of the programs, hiring drivers and warehouse workers to handle the additional amounts of food coming into its Olneyville storage facility that then had to be distributed to some 80 new delivery locations that included schools, food pantries, churches and other hunger relief groups.
Rye said that the recent staff cuts at Farm Fresh came through a combination of resignations and layoffs.
The Agriculture Department's decision came just a few months after the Biden administration announced that it was renewing the program.
'I think people felt a certain amount of confidence moving forward,' Rye said. 'So to have that taken away pretty quickly, it leaves people in a pretty tough spot.'
One of the farms that's benefited from the school program is Steere Orchard in Greenville.
John Steere, whose family opened the apple orchard in the 1930s, said his proceeds from the program are 'substantial.' It's helping him mainly by creating more of a market for smaller apples that are generally harder to sell.
Those small apples are exactly the kind that schools need for their children.
'The last few years we've seen a big increase in selling school apples,' said Steere.
Meeting that demand hasn't meant planting new trees, but it has required him to change how he cares for the trees he has. Steere would usually thin out as many trees as he could to concentrate their energy in growing larger fruit. But smaller apples grow on trees that have been less aggressively pruned.
He doesn't know what to do now. The cuts by the Agriculture Department are being challenged in federal court, so there's a chance the school program may continue.
If it doesn't, Steere may have to take an older grove with denser trees out of production. And he expects to sell fewer small apples.
'I expect we'll still be able to sell some, but maybe half as many as in recent years,' he said.
Narragansett Creamery sells cheese and yogurt through the school program.
Owner Mark Federico said his business will see an impact from losing what was a significant market for its products.
'We had made a commitment to allocate a certain amount of our production to service the program,' he said. 'Now we have to go out and fill that production capacity somewhere else.'
For schools, Federico said, having local dairy products means they can reduce what gets shipped in from other parts of the country and cut down on their carbon footprint. It also means that the Narragansett Creamery products can be made without preservatives, he said.
Federico said the program has broad benefits for dairy farmers, a segment of the local agricultural sector that has experienced steep declines due in part to the incentive to sell farmland.
'The program was a win for local farming because so many of the farmers are mom-and-pop operations,' he said. 'This helps keep the land agriculture-based as opposed to being developed.'
The Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island has been using money through the food pantry program to help buy fresh, local seafood to give away for free to those in need.
Last year alone, the program donated 203,000 pounds of crabs, scup, mackerel and other fish, said executive director Fred Mattera. Over the course of five years, the donations have totaled 630,000 pounds.
'The beauty of this is it's locally caught,' Mattera said. 'We're not importing anything. This is coming right off the boats in Rhode Island, and we're paying good, fair-market value.'
The program makes it easier for fishermen to sell their catch. The foundation has its own refrigerated truck and picks up the fish whole to deliver to Farm Fresh and other stops. Mattera said it saves fishermen the trouble of trucking seafood to fish markets in Boston or New York.
Much of the seafood goes to refugee families, said Mattera.
The bulk of the program's funding comes from a single anonymous donor, but the cancellation of the food pantry grant will create a $93,000 shortfall in funding over the next two years.
'We're not going away,' Mattera said. 'We'll find a way.'
Farm Fresh could be facing further cuts.
The organization gets another grant from the Agriculture Department to promote farmers markets in Rhode Island. But it's been frozen out of the federal agency's online portal to seek reimbursements for that work since the day before President Trump's inauguration in January.
Farm Fresh is still owed another $150,000 on that grant through September and has heard only that the administration is reevaluating the program.
The fate of a larger program that Farm Fresh manages for recipients of the federal Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, is still uncertain. Farm Fresh oversees a regional program funded by a $5 million grant that expires next year that pays for what's known as Bonus Bucks, a dollar-for-dollar match on any SNAP payments made at farmers markets.
Magaziner said the national Bonus Bucks program could be eliminated to pay for the Trump administration's proposed tax cuts. He said that he and other Democrats will try and talk to Republicans in farming areas whose constituents would be impacted in an effort to preserve the program.
Meanwhile, Farm Fresh is reaching out to private donors and foundations to try and make up for its gap in funding. Things, however, aren't looking good.
'It's just not possible for the private sector to make up for the massive gap in funding from federal sources,' said Delite Primus, director of advancement for Farm Fresh.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Farm Fresh RI slashes workforce after Trump administration cuts funding
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