For the past five years, Patra and David Wise have been growing their farm business, Native Wise, to sell vegetables, wild rice, and honey to their local community in Northeastern Minnesota. In 2021, they added a herd of bison on family land they had acquired within the Fond du Lac Reservation, a step they were particularly excited about since it represented the first time bison were returned to the tribal lands in about 150 years.
However, processing the animals in order to sell the meat locally has been a challenge: The couple currently has to haul the animals to a slaughter facility about four hours away, which is both time-consuming and hard on the bison. So, they’ve been working toward setting up their own local processing.
Last year, they got a boost when the North Central USDA Regional Food Business Center awarded them a $50,000 Business Builder Grant to pay for crucial pieces of equipment. So far, they’ve purchased an industrial cooler-freezer combo that will allow them to store meat for customers until they come to the farm to pick it up.
“We wouldn’t be able to do the farm-to-consumer processing without that type of a freezer,” said Patra Wise, adding that it would have been nearly impossible for them to afford such an expensive piece of equipment without the grant.
“You sign a contract and then you’re trusting the government that they’re going to honor their end.”
Wise was about to purchase a few smaller pieces of equipment with the remaining grant funds, which farmers and entrepreneurs receive by requesting reimbursements, when she heard, at the end of January, that all payments were on hold. She was shocked, she said, because the grant had already been awarded.
“You sign a contract and then you’re trusting the government that they’re going to honor their end,” she said. “For a small farm, that’s life or death, basically, for the business.”
Like many other U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs that support local and regional farms, the Regional Food Business Centers have been put on ice since the Trump administration took office.
In May 2023, the USDA awarded grant funding to local organizations like nonprofits and universities to run the business centers. The centers use that funding to support the local food economy, including by issuing smaller sub-grants to farmers and food businesses like Native Wise.
With $360 million awarded, the Regional Food Business Centers program represents a small slice of USDA spending, so has attracted less attention than bigger projects like the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. (USDA canceled that program this week, but is allowing some projects to continue if they meet new criteria.)
However, the 12 centers have a wide reach, since they were set up to be hubs of business development activity within rural communities across the country. With funding paused, partnerships they’ve formed to provide technical assistance to farms and food businesses have been disrupted, as have grant dollars promised to local farmers and food businesses like Native Wise.
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