Federal Budget Cuts Shake Vermont's Local Food Movement

Beef cows grazing at Boyden Farm in Cambridge Credit: Courtesy

For the past couple of years, cafeteria lunches served to about 83,000 youngsters in every Vermont public school and some private schools have included more local foods, thanks to a federal funding boost of almost $334,000.

Instead of frozen, often precooked commodity beef, students eat fresh-grilled burgers from Boyden Farm in Cambridge and spaghetti sauce made with beef raised by Keith Farm Meats in Elmore. Salad bars boast colorful peppers, carrots and cucumbers grown on farms such as Norwich’s Honey Field Farm and Joe’s Brook Farm in Barnet. Veggie variety has expanded with tangy pickled beets and lime-ginger carrots from Burlington’s Pitchfork Pickle.

“Kids high-five me when I go to pick up my children after school and say, ‘Great carrots!'” said Joe’s Brook Farm co-owner Mary Skovsted, 44.

Everyone was high-fiving when the feds directed another $1.2 million to Vermont for 2025 through the national Local Food for Schools and Childcare program. Almost another half a million was allotted to the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, which supports food banks and other community-feeding nonprofits. Between 2022 and 2024, Vermont received almost $1.4 million through the two programs, the vast majority of which went to the bottom lines of more than 100 local farms and food producers.

Mary Skovsted planting tomatoes at Joe’s Brook Farm in Barnet Credit: Courtesy

Four regional food hubs across Vermont coordinate orders and deliveries to help schools take full advantage of the funding. Their purchases of locally grown and produced foods shot up more than 70 percent, to $726,704, for the 2023-24 academic year.

Boyden Farm sales director Kevin Hildreth, 50, said the revenue helped the family-owned beef operation purchase more animals from about 12 small Vermont farms, which it finishes raising in Cambridge. Boyden added about two cows weekly to the 15 to 17 it processes on average and kept 30 employees busy across the farm and its New Hampshire processing plant.

In early January, the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets signed agreements with the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the $1.7 million. Farmers, schools, childcare centers and nonprofits started planning.

“Just smelling fresh-grilled hamburgers really helps our kids connect with the joy of food.” Jen Hutchinson

Jen Hutchinson, 45, school nutrition manager for Barre Unified Union School District, had used her initial $9,000 award to bring on several new local food vendors, including Boyden. The funding helped Barre’s kitchen teams do more from-scratch cooking, and she was excited to continue down that path.

“Just smelling fresh-grilled hamburgers really helps our kids connect with the joy of food, which can be hard in the middle of a school day,” Hutchinson said.

Then, on March 7, the state learned that President Donald Trump’s USDA had terminated the two local food-purchasing programs because each “no longer effectuates agency priorities.”

“It was pretty shocking to hear that this wasn’t going to be a priority,” Hutchinson said. “I don’t understand why our kiddos and our local agriculture aren’t a priority.”

Honey Field Farm crew members harvesting arugula Credit: Courtesy

The abrupt deletion of an almost $2 million boost to Vermont’s local food system is a prime example of how Washington, D.C.’s cost-saving crusade poses a serious threat to the momentum of Vermont’s vibrant local foods movement. And the future of many federal resources that support Vermont farmers and those working to strengthen local and regional food security feels tenuous at best.

At least a dozen local USDA agricultural service jobs have reportedly been cut, including Natural Resources Conservation Service engineers, who supplied much-needed technical support. Some environmental grant programs have been effectively ended by nonpayment. The Northeast Dairy Business Innovation Center, a regional hub that serves farmers and dairy processors from Vermont, experienced a worrisome three-week funding freeze.

As the growing season starts, farmers are reevaluating planting, animal husbandry and staffing plans. Others are sweating over how to squeeze needed infrastructure investments from meager cash reserves. School nutrition managers and nonprofits are scrambling to find replacement funding or ways to stretch tight budgets to keep offering local food.

“There is anxiety. There is disruption. Everyone is just trying to navigate it.” Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts

It all adds up to a stressful time for farmers and others working in the local food system, said Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts — and that’s without the looming on-again, off-again shadow of tariffs that could hobble Vermont agriculture.

“There is anxiety. There is disruption,” Tebbetts, 59, said. “Everyone is just trying to navigate it.”

The blows keep coming. On March 25, the national School Nutrition Association confirmed that the USDA’s $5 million in 2025 Patrick Leahy Farm to School grants have been eliminated. That 12-year-old program was renamed in 2023 for the Vermont senator who championed the farm-to-school movement after his state became an early leader. Over the years, it brought home almost $1.4 million for school gardens, cafeteria veggie taste tests and educator training. Almost as important, it spread Vermont’s local foods gospel nationwide.

Spaghetti with local beef Bolognese sauce served at Johnson Elementary School Credit: Courtesy

It’s not unusual for programs to run their course without renewal after an administration change, Tebbetts said. What’s different this time is that everything seems to be up for review. Even programs with signed agreements, such as the USDA local food pair, are being “stopped midstream,” he said.

Last Friday, U.S. Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and 15 Democratic colleagues introduced the Honor Farmer Contracts Act, legislation aimed at releasing withheld funding for all frozen USDA contracts and canceled agreements.

Tebbetts said it’s too early to predict how the new administration will impact Vermont agriculture. “They say they want to be farmer-focused,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “but programs that were discontinued were very farmer-focused, and they were also getting food to places of need.”

One might reasonably ask which kinds of farmers the USDA will prioritize under Trump. A week and a half after cutting $1 billion previously promised to local food programs across the country, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced $10 billion in direct economic assistance to farmers of commodity grains, cotton, legumes and oilseeds.

Advocates for small, sustainable farms, such as the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, doubt the current USDA is looking out for them.

“It’s not that, like, without the Local Food for Schools program, there will be no food in schools. It’s just Tyson will have 100 percent of the contracts,” NOFA-VT executive director Grace Oedel said, referring to the massive food corporation headquartered in Arkansas. “These meager public benefit programs are a small bulwark against those trends of consolidation.”

Tebbetts and fellow members of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture are lobbying hard for the USDA to reinstate the local food programs. Boyden Farm’s Hildreth hopes they succeed.

“It’s small family farms. It’s small business. It’s feeding our kids.” Kevin Hildreth

Anticipating the funding jump in 2025, Boyden had planned to double capacity, buy more animals from local farms and staff up. “We were just rocking and rolling,” Hildreth said, adding that the money was a bright spot during a tough time in the beef industry, when cattle prices are record high.

Hildreth admitted that the cancellation surprised him. “It’s small family farms. It’s small business. It’s feeding our kids,” he said. “It checks all the boxes.”

Nour El-Naboulsi, codirector of the People’s Farmstand in Burlington, was also taken aback by the termination of the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, which funded feeding the underserved through food shelves, pop-up markets and community-supported agriculture shares.

Vegetable distribution by the People’s Farmstand in Burlington Credit: Courtesy

Although 2025 awards had not yet been made, El-Naboulsi, 31, had hoped to land $10,000 to $15,000, as he had for the past two years, to buy produce such as East African eggplant, Nepali mustard greens and hot peppers from Hyacinthe Ayingeneye of Mama’s Farm in Williston. He and colleagues distributed the food for free last summer to more than 55 largely new American families in two Burlington neighborhoods.

Losing the federal funding was “a big blow,” El-Naboulsi said. He could not risk waiting to see if efforts to reinstate it would succeed. NOFA-VT helped him find funding for this year.

The NOFA-VT team has been working furiously to help fill funding holes, answer an endless stream of worried emails and phone calls from members, and ascertain status of missing grant payments and pending contracts.

Even programs that are not technically terminated have been effectively halted due to payment issues and lack of clear communication. Those include USDA grant and cost-sharing arrangements that help with costly infrastructure projects to improve soil health and water quality.

For example, Oedel of NOFA-VT explained that almost all Vermont farmers with signed contracts for the USDA’s Climate-Smart Farming & Marketing Program would normally be paid through Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, a Pennsylvania nonprofit. But in January, the USDA ceased reimbursing Pasa with no explanation, throwing the program into disarray.

Students in the garden at Champlain Elementary School in Burlington Credit: Courtesy of Sarah Webb

Oedel, 36, fears the writing is on the wall given President Trump’s dismissive stance on climate change. “Newer programs that have things like ‘climate’ in their title are the ones we are bracing for being cut,” she said. Meanwhile, the uncertainty has “a chilling effect on the work,” she said.

Organic dairy farmer and cheesemaker Sebastian von Trapp of von Trapp Farmstead in Waitsfield spent almost three white-knuckle months waiting for a $45,000 reimbursement for the latest phase of work in a multiyear USDA grant, for which he’d previously received prompt payments.

“We just don’t have that extra cash,” said von Trapp, 45. “$45,000 is a big deal for a small business like us.”

The entire contract would run about $200,000 if completed and improve how von Trapp’s herd of 90 cows moves through pastures for optimal grazing, soil health and water management. He said the Vermont NRCS has assured him that payment will go smoothly in the future, and he believes the upgrades are the right thing to do, so he’ll plug away.

“It contributes to good land stewardship, which everyone in our community enjoys,” von Trapp said.

“These grants are absolutely necessary to do proactive projects,” said 44-year-old Barnet sheep farmer Amber Reed, who noted that farming margins are razor-thin. In early January, Reed scrambled to complete paperwork for a $22,000 Climate-Smart grant to plant native trees and shrubs for animal shade and better water management on her Maplemont Farm, but she has little hope the funding will come through.

Reed is also a University of Vermont Extension grazing specialist and consults for almost 150 farms a year. She knows of four farmers who have lost a total of about $200,000 in grants for critical infrastructure to protect land and water, similar to the von Trapp project.

Justin Cote and Ansel Ploog innoculating logs with mushroom spores at Flywheel Farm in Woodbury Credit: Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

People sometimes ask her, “Why are farmers getting these programs to help their businesses?” Reed said. She noted that commodity farmers get plenty of subsidies. Vermont farmers not only feed their neighbors, she said, they’re also trying to care for the land.

“One of the reasons people come here from away is it looks like Vermont: There are farms and animals in fields,” Reed said. “It’s good for the whole economy.”

Like Reed, Ansel Ploog, 39, and her co-farmer at Flywheel Farm in Woodbury were “in a flurry trying to sign things” back in January for about $21,000 worth of Climate-Smart grants. The farmers planned to do flood mitigation, which included planting trees along a stream on their small organic fruit and vegetable operation. To diversify, they also hoped to try cultivating mushrooms in the farm’s woods.

In absence of the funding, Ploog said they’ll prioritize mushrooms, since those will generate income. They’ll do flood mitigation “piecemeal” as they can afford it. “It adds a level of precarity,” she acknowledged.

But what troubles Ploog more deeply than the grant loss is what she believes is a fundamental threat to Vermont’s local food system. A farm is similar to the mushrooms she hopes to grow, she said: “It’s like the fruiting body that you see on the surface, and underneath is this incredible network of workers and customers; publicly funded science and organizations like NOFA-VT; and other farmers, educators and suppliers.”

So many of the connections and nourishment that sustain small farms are under fire, Ploog said. “That’s what really upsets me.”

The original print version of this article was headlined “Local Losses | Federal cuts, funding freezes and uncertainty threaten the momentum of Vermont’s local food movement”