USDA cuts program that brought locally-grown food to schools, pantries

After 26 years in the U.S. Air Force, Ryan Sullivan decided to try something different — starting a farm in Manitowoc County.

His family grows vegetables, grazes sheep and cattle, and keeps poultry and bees on their 5-acre regenerative farm.

“We’re chemical-free,” he said. “And we are constantly working to build soil.”

In 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture started paying Sullivan to deliver meat and vegetables from his farm to a local food pantry, Grow it Forward in Manitowoc.

Now, the USDA is cutting that program as well as a similar program aimed at schools.

In an email to WPR, a USDA spokesperson called the initiatives “pandemic-era” programs with “no plan for longevity,” and said the department was returning to “long-term, fiscally responsible initiatives.”

Under the programs, the USDA had sent money to states who used it to act as wholesalers — buying produce from farmers and distributing it to local schools and pantries.

“It’s disappointing,” Sullivan said of the discontinuation.

Wisconsin farmers got around $11.5 million through the programs. The state was slated to get almost $17 million in fiscal year 2025 — that funding now canceled.

The state Department of Public Instruction found out about the cut in a Friday email, a spokesperson said, adding that the department had been “eagerly anticipating” another year of funding.

Local produce made a difference in food banks

In the Wausau area, nonprofit United Way of Marathon County distributed the state-purchased food to individual local pantries.

“When we think about food pantries five years ago, there was not these walls of fresh produce that was grown right here,” said Ben Lee, United Way’s Director of Community Impact.

Some customers came to pantries specifically for the fresh produce, Lee said. He doesn’t believe demand for pantries has gone down since the pandemic.

“It’s gone up,” he said.

The USDA’s most recent food security report, released in fall 2024, found that 13.5 percent of American households were food insecure in 2023. That’s higher than pandemic-era numbers. Its 2021 report said they were 10.2 percent in 2021 and 10.5 percent in 2020.

Stacey Botsford is one of Lee’s suppliers, delivering food grown on her 36-acre organic farm in nearby Athens. She said she was already delivering produce to local pantries when the “very large amounts” of federal money came along.

“That made it possible for us to expand these programs, and they really took off,” she said.

When she got news of the cuts, she’d already planned her 2025 season based on previous year’s USDA program demand.

“A contract with the United States government does not feel like something is going to go away,” she said. “We planned accordingly.”

Lee stressed that his United Way chapter has non-USDA farm-to-pantry programs that will continue without federal funding.

“We’re resilient. We’re farmers. We know that we can move through this,” Botsford said.

Farmer says program gave new skills, connections

Sullivan — the Manitowoc County farmer — says he’ll be able to adapt to life without the USDA program, in part because of what it’s already taught him.

He said the program worked to get farms like his “to the next level.”

That includes farming for wholesale, working on a contract, doing more logistics and meeting other farmers and potential clients.

“That work is going to continue,” he said.

Thanks to the USDA program, vegetables from his farm arrived at Manitowoc’s Grow it Forward pantry within 24 hours of harvest, Sullivan said.

Sullivan hopes customers will donate money to help continue sending his produce to the pantry, which he plans to provide at a discounted price.

“Getting exposed to what things can and should taste like, and how they should make you feel when you eat real food,” he said.

On Tuesday, the pantry announced some schedule changes on its Facebook page. Starting April 3, it would limit visits from once per week to once per month, and community meals would no longer have a take-out option.

In its post, the pantry wrote the changes were “due to significant reductions in food supply caused by cuts or eliminations of certain federally funded food programs.”