Impacts on our Local Food Systems

How Federal Funding cancelations will impact our community

California farmers, including those in the Davis area, have been hard-hit by the recent federal frozen or terminated funds, and the resulting uncertainty. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has ignored billions of dollars of lawfully obligated contracts across the country — and hundreds of millions in California — that not only threaten the livelihood of our farmers, but also threaten food for our communities, economic opportunities for families, and the conservation of farmland. Over the past few months, farmers and support organizations have faced frequent whiplash, as programs have been frozen and unfrozen numerous times, leaving farmers unclear on whether they can pay the bills.

Davis-based Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) is pressing USDA to honor the contracts they hold with farmers. Of the 30 threatened USDA programs CAFF knows of, three programs that the local Davis and neighboring communities will directly see negative impacts on. Read below to learn more on how these funding cancelations will impact local hunger relief assistance, local & healthy food for schools, and local farm sustainability improvements.

Local Hunger Relief Assistance

Food banks and hunger relief organizations often rely on donations for food. Through Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA, or what we call Farms Together in California), food banks and anti-hunger efforts are able to buy boxes of food from local farmers to provide to local families. While we were able to reinstate the program after a two-week pause, USDA canceled $47 million in additional funding slated for later this year. Yolo Food Bank has worked to deliver food from many of the same farms you know from the Co-op, including Good Humus, Riverdog Farm, Eatwell Farm, Sun Tracker Farm, Terra Firma Farm, Durst Organic Growers, and Full Belly Farm. With the cancelation of future funds means the the Yolo Food Bank will need to rely solely from donations or donors and unclear abilities to help increasing needs-based community members.

Local Food for Schools

Our school children not only deserve fresh and nutritious food, but studies show that healthy food helps them perform better academically. There had been wonderful programs that recently started where schools shifted from packaged food to fresh fruits and veggies from local farms. Unfortunately, with constrained budgets, it is unclear how schools will be able to pay for fresh food from our local farmers. Local Food for Schools (LFS) provides schools with those resources to increase local purchasing, and similarly support aggregation infrastructure through partners like Spork Food Hub. California schools spent $23 million over the last two years and were slated to receive an additional $71.5 million this year, before USDA canceled all future spending. This also comes as USDA recently canceled all federal Farm to School grants for 2025 (applicants were awaiting final award announcements).

Local Farm Conservation & Sustainability

Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities (PCSC) were a significant investment made under the Inflation Reduction Act to help farmers adopt conservation practices and make farms and their soils more resilient, while creating new market opportunities to sell those products. Unlike the other two programs, participants in this PCSC program don’t know whether they will be reimbursed or not, and so they are paralyzed. California has approximately $152 million in frozen grants (some grants are multi-state), including projects with UC Davis and Chico State that benefit Davis area farmers.  

These three programs alone total over $270 million in investments in California and at least $59 million in additional economic activity from LFPA and LFS, due to the economic multiplier. And these are just three. Many other important programs are in uncertain positions and will impact growers across the state, including the Transition to Organic Partnership Program, Organic Market Development Grants, Farm Service Agency Urban Agriculture Cooperative Agreements, Southwest Regional Food Business Center.

What can you do?

Not only do we need to fight to reinstate frozen and terminated programs, including through a comprehensive Farm Bill, and it’s even more important that Governor Gavin Newsom and California state leaders invest in programs funded by the state budget and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

Take action here>> Call your local Congressperson and let them know they should stand up for USDA programs that support family-scale farming.

The Davis Food Co-op, Davis Farmers Market and surrounding farms are some of what make Davis such a wonderful place. Let’s keep it that way. If you want to learn more about what CAFF is doing to support farmers locally and across the state, visit www.caff.org or consider supporting CAFF and farmers during Big Day(s) of Giving, April 17th – May 1st!