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Farmers feel impact of discontinued USDA food programs
The sudden termination of two USDA food programs has some producers seeking new marketing channels.
Federal officials ended the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program and the Local Food for Schools Program, which provided a direct marketing pathway for many meat, vegetable, and honey producers. One of them is Mike Miles from Luck, Wisconsin who raises pasture-fed beef and chicken. “I was able to put all of the beef that I produced into LFPA, and what I really liked about that is that it was directly going to food pantries and food shelves.”
Miles says the program offered him a fair price and allowed him to spend less time marketing through other channels, but the sudden end of the LFPA leaves him with another problem. “I have twelve hundred pounds of frozen beef in a meat locker in my small town ready to go, and now, it’s not going anywhere.”
Ryan Sullivan from Sullivan Family Farms near Manitowoc, Wisconsin raises vegetables, grass-fed and finished lamb and beef, organic-fed pasture poultry, and raw honey. He tells Brownfield the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program helped his farm increase the size and number of orders. “It did definitely help that we had the contract to sell into. We knew we had that amount that was going to be available, and it was a huge boost.”
Sullivan says he will have to spend more time and effort marketing into other channels, but he has made some valuable contacts while in the LFPA program. “We have been able to network. We have been able to grow our connections and really have a lot more opportunity now to provide our products to other places that we did not know before we started working with this program.”
Miles and Sullivan are members of Wisconsin Farmers Union, and along with Marbleseed, The Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative, Feeding Wisconsin, and Hunger Task Force are urging USDA to reinstate the food programs.
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