The Trump admin cut money for Wisconsin schools to buy local produce. What now?

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Rural Schools Struggle to Rebuild Fresh Food Programs Cut by Trump

“Most of these farmers, because they’re not commodity farmers, have never had access to subsidies, and so this was kind of the first time that they could grow and know that they had a guaranteed market,” says Anne Massie, co-executive director of the Northwest Indiana Food Council.

Bull says some school districts will continue to buy from local farmers they purchased from with LFS funds, but only well-funded school districts will have that luxury.  “It will probably be the districts that have additional resources to spend on higher price and higher quality ingredients,” says Bull. “Those that really benefited from the additional funding, maybe in low-income communities, won’t have that opportunity.”

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly denounced ultraprocessed foods and encourages Americans to eat more fresh, organic produce in his Make America Healthy Again messaging. But decisions to slash programs that deliver fresh produce straight from farms to schools bring into question the administration’s commitment to making America healthy. “With the rhetoric of making America healthy again being so strong, it feels a bit hypocritical to then take funding away from a program that was really successfully doing this,” says Bull.

Local food growers in Wisconsin hit hard by Trump cuts