YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
Local nonprofit leaders and farmers say they were surprised and disappointed by this month’s announcement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that it is eliminating a pair of federal programs that collectively provided roughly $1 billion in funding to charities and schools to buy locally sourced foods.
The budget cuts eliminate around $660 million in funding this year for the Local Food for Schools program, which is active in Missouri and 39 other states, as well as nearly $420 million for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement program, which helps food banks and other groups provide food to their communities. The programs were started by the Biden administration amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a statement released by the USDA, the decision marks “a return to long-term, fiscally responsible initiatives.”
“With 16 robust nutrition programs in place, USDA remains focused on its core mission: strengthening food security, supporting agricultural markets and ensuring access to nutritious food.”
Community Partnership of the Ozarks Inc. is among local groups affected by the decision. CPO officials say the cuts will essentially cancel its Nourish the Ozarks program this summer. The program, started in 2023, distributes free, locally grown food to communities across 17 counties in southern Missouri. CPO has been financing the initiative as a USDA grant sub-recipient, receiving approximately $850,000 per year, said Justin Lockhart, vice president of community and neighborhood development for CPO.
He said grant funding lasts through June, which will mark the end of its second full year to utilize the USDA funding, adding CPO has partnered with nonprofit Springfield Community Gardens on the initiative. According to CPO, Nourish the Ozarks in 2024 had 464 distributions across 59 locations, purchasing food from 74 farms – including 50,584 pounds of produce, 699 pounds of meat and 895 dozen eggs. Lockhart said the program in February served 4,377 people through 53 distributions.
“The food that we purchased would be distributed directly to communities in need,” Lockhart said, adding he was surprised by the USDA decision as CPO was already planning for the next year of the grant. “We had distribution sites set up all across the 17 counties that we serve in the program. This funding cut will be eliminating a position here at CPO.”
The Local Food for Schools program funding cut’s potential impact on school meal programs at Springfield Public Schools is yet to be determined, according to district officials.
A March 12 post on the Facebook page for SPS Farm 2 School noted the USDA funding cut was “a sad day” for the program.
The program’s mission is to provide local food to SPS students, educate them on the food system and model healthy eating, according to its website.
“Fewer dollars will be spent on locally grown produce as we just simply do not have the funds to support our local food economy the way we would like to,” officials said in the Facebook post.
SPS officials did not respond to additional requests for comment for this story.
‘Slap in the face’
Maile Auterson, founder and executive director of Springfield Community Gardens, said the grant’s elimination means an over $2 million hit to local efforts over the course of the grant’s remainder, which had recently been extended for three more years because of its success over the two-year trial period.
“That’s money that would provide the farmers with fair prices for their food and it would pay for us to pick it up and deliver it and aggregate it and build those very important connections with farmers,” she said. “For them just to take it away, it feels capricious.”
She said some farmers were scaling up operations to provide additional produce for the Nourish the Ozarks program. Acknowledging there’s “a lot of changes going on at the federal level,” referencing the wide-ranging reduction of workforce and spending of the federal government by the Trump administration, Auterson said the USDA grant cut likely undermines farmers’ confidence in the federal government when it comes to supporting investments in their farms.
“It’s a real slap in the face to the promise made to the farmers,” Auterson said. “The farmers were made a promise that if you scale up, we have this [grant] for three more years. We’re going to do this together.”
Curtis Millsap, co-owner of Millsap Farms LLC, a 20-acre urban farm north of Springfield, is among those participating in Nourish the Ozarks.
“We were able to do some expansion based on it, which we’ll be able to carry in the future,” he said, noting his farm added some cold storage equipment and a couple of employees. “We were already planning because we knew that it was unlikely this would be a program to go on forever. So, we had been using it as leverage to do sort of strategic expansion.”
Millsap said his farm made its first Local Food Purchase Assistance sales via the program in June 2023, adding its offerings through the initiative are extensive.
“I bet I could come up with an item of produce for every letter of the alphabet,” he said, adding they sold at least 40 types of produce.
In 2024, its first full year providing produce for the program, he said LFPA sales were around $70,000.
“To put that in perspective, our total farm sales is about $585,000,” Millsap said, adding he typically has 20 on staff in the summer and drops to around six full-time employees in the winter. “So, it was a big shot in the arm, but it’s not going to break us to lose that income.”
Still, he wasn’t expecting to lose that program income so quickly.
“I feel like we weren’t quite ready for the funding to go away,” he said.
Meeting demand
While Ozarks Food Harvest Inc. isn’t directly involved with either of the USDA programs being eliminated, the cuts affect people the nonprofit serves, said Jordan Browning, director of communications. The food bank serves 70,000 people each month with 270 partners covering one-third of the state.
“Here in southwest Missouri, we have one in five children and one in six adults facing hunger in our service area,” he said. “So, when a significant feeding program like that goes away, then we’re going to anticipate that the demand for food is going to be placed on the food bank and our existing network of charities across southwest Missouri.”
OFH is serving roughly 40% more than it did during the height of the COVID pandemic, Browning said.
“The reasons we’re seeing that is due to inflationary pressures, the increased cost of child care, increased cost of housing are all compiling together to make it really difficult for folks to get back on their feet,” he said.
While the nonprofit has continued to meet the demand, it has required the purchase of more food to do so.
“This fiscal year, we’ve spent more than $3 million on food, distribution and transportation for our network of 270 charities, which is an increase of $100,000 compared to last year,” he said.
Shortly after hearing the USDA announcement on March 7, Auterson said she started asking for donations to help her organization continue to do the work tackled through Nourish the Ozarks. To date, donors have given roughly $135,000.
“People are just stepping up and going, ‘Hey, we see you. We see how hard you work, and we know you’re doing the right thing, and we want to help you.’ It’s so important,” she said. “Yeah, it’s very generous. But the need is so great.”
While uncertain if funding might be reexamined by USDA prior to the end of the grant in June, Auterson said her organization is going to keep growing food and serving the community the best it can.
“So, the good thing about being an Ozark hillbilly is you know how to get along with not very much. You’re used to it,” she said. “We’re resilient, self-reliant and we can pivot.”
A food truck that launched last year rebranded and moved to Metro Eats; automotive repair business Mitchem Tire Co. expanded its Christian County presence; and O’Reilly Build LLC was acquired.
