Without USAID's Food for Peace, Kansas grain elevators have no market for sorghum

USA Today

09-02-2025

Without USAID's Food for Peace, Kansas grain elevators have no market for sorghum
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Protest outside USAID offices after Elon Musk vows to shut agency down
Protesters gathered outside the USAID building in Washington, D.C., after Donald Trump and Elon Musk vowed to shut the agency down.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has been shut down by President Trump and Elon Musk.
Food for Peace, a program under USAID that used American agricultural surpluses for foreign aid, has been shuttered.
Kansas farmers, the leading producers of sorghum often purchased for the Food for Peace program, are left with a surplus and no buyer.
The shutdown has raised concerns about the potential loss of export markets and the impact on global food security.
Kansas farmers and grain elevators could be left without a market for last year's sorghum crop after President Donald Trump dismantled a federal foreign aid program.
Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. It housed Food for Peace, which used America's agricultural surpluses to fight world hunger, expand international trade and advance foreign diplomacy.
Shutting down the food aid program could adversely affect the Kansas agriculture industry, which has an overabundance of sorghum, also known as milo.
"Right now, there's no export market for it, and there's no domestic market," said Kim Barnes, the chief financial officer of the Pawnee County co-op in Larned.
Part of his job is purchasing and selling grain, like the sorghum taking up much of the space in the co-op's grain elevators. Sometimes, that has meant selling to Food for Peace when there are calls for contracts.
"We were hoping there'd be another one with as much milo as we have," Barnes said.
Food for Peace used to buy grain from Kansas
Food for Peace, also known as Public Law 480, is a 70-year-old foreign aid program with a Kansas legacy. It was inspired by a Kansas farmer, signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and later championed by U.S. Sen. Bob Dole.
Barnes said taxpayer dollars pay the American agriculture industry for the food that is used in foreign aid. The way the USAID program has worked is the government, through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, sends out a call for contract.
"I've gotten these contract proposals for many years," Barnes said. "They tell you what they're looking to buy and the destination and how much they're looking to buy."
Sometimes, they sell to brokers. Other times, directly to an export house, and they then make the contract with the government. From there, the grain is loaded on a ship and sent overseas.
If the government doesn't buy the sorghum to use as food aid, grain elevators and others in the industry could find themselves stuck with last year's harvest filling up space — and potentially costing them storage interest — heading into this year's growing season.
"It won't go bad — we know how to maintain grain — but storage space is going to get tight," Barnes said.
Sorghum grain stocks are higher than a year ago
Sorghum is a popular crop in western Kansas. Because it requires less water to produce, it has been championed as part of the response to the ongoing depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer.
While Kansas may be better known for wheat and sunflowers, it is the nation's leading producer of sorghum. The USDA reports that Kansas produces 57% of the country's sorghum. Meanwhile, the U.S. is the world leader with 14% of global sorghum production.
Being the nation's leading producer also means Kansas has more sorghum stocks than the rest of the country.
The latest USDA grain stock data shows that as of Dec. 1, Kansas had 151 million bushels of sorghum held at mills, elevators, warehouses, terminals and processors. The nationwide total was 210 million bushels.
The state figure is 26 million bushels — or 21% — higher than the same date a year before.
"The market is just not there to sell it," Barnes said. "We've been buying milo from our producers all along. We have a tremendous company-owned position at this point, just nobody on the other side to sell it to. And it's just not country elevators, it's terminals, it's everybody, because there's just no market in the world today for milo."
The Pawnee County co-op's grain elevator has a storage capacity of 6 million bushels, Barnes said. About 2.5 to 3 million of that is currently full, and the majority of that is sorghum. Compared to this time in past years, grain storage is typically around 2 to 2.5 million, with sorghum accounting for a smaller share.
"This is just a milo issue," he said. "Because corn, soybeans and wheat are finding homes domestically and export."
In the United States, sorghum is primarily used for ethanol or livestock feed. Human consumption is more common internationally. Top export destinations include China, Mexico and Africa.
"If we can't get a chance to move this milo, the basis on milo is just going to deteriorate farther as we get into the future months," Barnes said. "Because if there's no place to go with it, we can't buy something that we can't get fair value on the other side."
More: Will Kansas State lose $50 million in USAID funding for agriculture research?
Donald Trump and Elon Musk shut down USAID
Trump has alleged corruption at USAID, saying, "It's been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we're getting them out." The president reiterated his point in an all-caps post Friday morning on Truth Social.
"USAID IS DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY, AND THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT BECAUSE THE WAY IN WHICH THE MONEY HAS BEEN SPENT, SO MUCH OF IT FRAUDULENTLY, IS TOTALLY UNEXPLAINABLE," Trump wrote. "THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!"
Musk, who lead's Trump's informal Department of Government Efficiency, has said USAID is "beyond repair" and that it is "time for it to die." He called it "evil" and a "criminal organization." After shutting down the agency, he said, "We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper."
When asked about the future of Food for Peace, U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, alleged waste, fraud and abuse at USAID.
"It's something that I want to be part of, but I want it to be efficient, and I don't want the thugs stealing the food and stealing the money as well," Marshall said in response to a question from The Capital-Journal while in Topeka on Feb. 3. "So I think there's a right way to do it; there's a wrong way to do it. I think it's very good to take a pause on all of our money that we're sending outside of this country."
Barnes, who is 70 years old and has worked at the Pawnee County co-op for 51 years, said he has not seen financial impropriety on the grain side of foreign aid.
"I know the discussion was that there was a lot of potential mismanagement of funds," he said. "I don't know that over the whole system, but I know when the award was made, I'm able to see what they get, price per metric ton. I can convert that back to bushel price. I know the freight between here and that foreign country. And I've not seen where a company selling that grain isn't getting above and beyond normal margin."
More: Are Trump and Musk ending a Kansas legacy by shuttering USAID's Food for Peace?
Could Food for Peace be kept alive?
Barnes said putting back in place Food for Peace would help the industry. But he doesn't know whether to expect future calls for contracts or if the program is permanently gone.
"It's unclear today what's going to happen," he said.
Nearly all USAID employees have been placed on administrative leave. There appears to be no way to contact what, if anything, remains of the agency.
Kansas Sorghum Producers CEO Adam York said in a statement to The Capital-Journal that sorghum is a critical crop for national and global food security.
"Throughout changes in administrations, U.S. sorghum farmers have worked to have a seat at the table in international food aid programs housed across many agencies, including over the past several years with officials at State Department," York said. "As the Administration sees reorganization, we absolutely urge the Administration and Congress to prioritize American agriculture going forward as a solution to challenges in both international and domestic policy."
Barnes said he has been in communication with U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran's office.
"U.S. food aid feeds the hungry, bolsters our national security & provides an important market for our farmers, especially when commodity prices are low," said Moran, R-Kansas, in a Friday afternoon post on X. "I've spoken to USDA & the White House about the importance of resuming the procurement, shipping & distribution of American-grown food."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now as acting administrator of USAID. The U.S. State Department didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon on if and when USAID's Food for Peace will resume buying Kansas sorghum.
Speaking to reporters in the past week while in Latin America, Rubio said he would have preferred an approach that identified which ones to keep and which ones to end. But he said that USAID staff were uncooperative, so the administration went a different route.
"The goal of our endeavor has always been to identify programs that work and continue them and to identify programs that are not aligned with our national interest and identify those and address them," Rubio told reporters in on Thursday in the Dominican Republic.
"We are going to do foreign aid," he added. "The United States will be providing foreign aid, but it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest."
More: Without USAID funding, Kansans who help children with disabilities lose jobs
Jerry Moran talks in Congress about foreign food aid
In a Wednesday hearing of the U.S. Senate's agriculture committee, Moran emphasized the importance of agricultural export markets, "because we produce more than we can consume."
Moran raised concerns that "what we believe to be true is that $560 million worth of food commodities is sitting in ports awaiting the ability to be moved to places where people are starving."
The senator said "while there is certainly a moral component to food aid," there is also "a value to farmers" and bettering their economics. He recalled, during the first Trump administration, visiting Kensington where sorghum "piled on the ground was as high as the elevator."
"Any food aid helps in that economic picture for farmers," said Zippy Duvall, a Georgia farmer who is president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. "It is important to realize that we support efficiencies. We want it done in an efficient way and not be wasteful. But we also got to think about the stability of our world."
National Farmers Union president Rob Larew, who is a West Virginia farmer, said that in addition to the humanitarian aspects of food aid, it can help bring market stability.
"And particularly now, with a lot of pressure on all of those commodities, some of those commodities are at risk — should there be major disruptions here — to falling even further," Larew said.
'The breadbasket of the world'
Barnes, with the co-op in Pawnee County, echoed the thoughts shared in Congress.
"My concern is these will be potential markets that we'll lose, and people will go hungry," Barnes said. "They'll look for other sources, and will those other sources not be what we need for safety? We also need to take care of those in need."
Barnes said that foreign food aid opens the opportunity for long-term benefit in exports.
"In other words," he said, "taking that development of that country, getting them on their feet, helping them to be better economics in their countries, with the idea that we help you today, get you back on your feet, and you could be a purchaser down the road."
"The farming community," he added, "believes in raising the crop and providing things for the world and for other people to be able to prosper themselves. We've been the breadbasket of the world for years, and that hasn't changed."
Jason Alatidd is a Statehouse reporter for The Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at [e-mail]. Follow him on X @Jason_Alatidd.