USDA cancels a billion dollars in food funding for schools and food banks supporting local farms

 Need a reason to call Congress today?

Yesterday, the United States Department of Agriculture cut two programs for the current fiscal year: one, the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, that nationally is about $500M, provides support for local food banks; and the Local Food for Schools program, that nationally funds $660M for schools. Both were the result of a December expansion of prior programs to provide for locally-grown, minimally-processed food from local farmers to go to local food banks and schools.

Per Politico, USDA:

...confirmed that funding, previously announced last October, “is no longer available and those agreements will be terminated following 60-day notification.”

The spokesperson added: “These programs, created under the former Administration via Executive authority, no longer effectuate the goals of the agency. LFPA and LFPA Plus agreements that were in place prior to LFPA 25, which still have substantial financial resources remaining, will continue to be in effect for the remainder of the period of performance.”

I personally fail to see which aspects of USDA's goals aren't "effectuate[d]" through funding local farmers to provide healthy food for the hungry. 

In Massachusetts, this is $12.2M. Asked yesterday about it, Governor Healey's response was a harbinger of where we're at here: 

When she was asked whether the state had a plan to backfill that loss of federal support, Healey, flanked by Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, state Senate President Karen Spilka, D-Middlesex/Norfolk, and House Speaker Ronald J. Mariano, D-3rd Norfolk, didn’t mince words.

“Are you kidding?” she shot back.

“I think people have got to understand the scope of what we’re talking about here ... the scope is so vast when you’re talking about federal funding,” she said. “We’re talking about tens of billions of dollars,” she continued.

Healey’s $62 billion budget proposal for the new fiscal year that starts July 1 is premised on more than $16 billion in assistance from Washington.

That money funds a host of programs, including MassHealth, as Medicaid is known in the Bay State, as well as public education.

“And that’s not even accounting for the funding that doesn’t even come to us,” Healey continued. “There’s money that comes directly to not-for-profits, and to organizations and to school districts directly that is also subject to just being cut completely. So, the numbers are so huge that there is no way the state can begin to fill the void and pick up the tab.”

It is important to note that even Massachusetts, even with $8B in the rainy day fund, does not have the capacity to make up for the full weight of federal funding. We could try; we could do some things; we cannot do it all.

Something to complain to your reps and senators about. in particular because this is the first time we've seen USDA funding for school nutrition cut or frozen. That does not bode well.