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Farmers Fuel IL Stewardship Alliance Calls for Action on Federal Abuses

  • Writer: Bob Benenson
    Bob Benenson
  • Apr 16
  • 5 min read

National Farmer Day of Action Webinar Featured First-Person Accounts


Banner image from Farmer Day of Action organizers
Banner image from Farmer Day of Action organizers

Today (Wednesday, April 16) is Farmer Day of Action, a nationwide campaign to draw attention to the Trump administration's abrupt, unfair, and destructive actions to freeze, cut and gut valuable programs that help small farms survive and thrive. This initiative was inspired by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Alliance, to share stories and plan collective actions.


These programs are being targeted not on their merits, but because they don't conform with the political and ideological agenda of this administration and its USDA.


This morning, Illinois Stewardship Alliance — the leading policy advocate for the state's local food and farm community — presented a webinar to spell out the critical issues that we face and to provide a platform for four farmers and advocates to tell how these federal actions are affecting them.


The farmer participants were:



Their comments are too powerful to boil down to a few quotes. So I'm going to share excerpts from remarks by Alliance Executive Director Liz Stelk. Over the rest of the week, I'll share stories by each of the other webinar participants.


I urge you to read the full article and share it. This matter is that important to our efforts to build a better food system.


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Liz Stelk's Comments


Liz Stelk focused her comments mostly on three program setbacks that have hit Illinois farmers hard.


The first is the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) cooperative agreement, known in this state as IL-EATS, which has helped farmers from historically underserved communities build their businesses by providing market-price purchases of products, which are then aggregated by 15 intermediary organizations around the state and delivered to food banks to help the needy who face food insecurity and hunger.


The program required farmers to pay for expenses with the promise of federal reimbursement. But without warning, the USDA announced in late February that it was freezing reimbursements for any LFPA-related expenses laid out after January 20 (the first day of this administration), leaving farmers at great financial risk and stuck with product inventories that they could not ship to food banks.


The USDA lifted the reimbursement freeze in March, but as Liz said, "Incredible damage has been done to farmers who are expecting [reimbursements], especially dairy and protein producers." And she added that USDA effectively ended the program by cancelling LFPA contracts through June 2026 — meaning that many farmers who made their planting decisions over the winter based on an expectation that the program would continue will almost certainly face the prospect of money-losing surpluses this year.


Liz also noted that USDA cancelled the valuable Farm to School program and Local Food for Schools and Child Care program, setting back efforts to build a better, more local food system and to improve nutrition and health among our youngest eaters. "A hopeful sign," she said, "is that some attorneys general in other states are pursuing litigation to demand that USDA honor those contracts, and we think those are worth fighting for."


Another highlighted program is the Resilient Food System Infrastructure (RFSI) program, from which Illinois was slated to receive $6 million in this fiscal year. Liz said:


RFSI is still frozen and is under review. RFSI was an investment. That was the lesson learned from the pandemic, when many of us witnessed and experienced food shortages and the fragility of our food supply chain for the first time. The aim of this program was to invest in a more resilient food supply chain.


Many farmers, including a number of my colleagues here at the Alliance who are here with us, have substantial plans to scale up their operations with funding from RFSI investments that would have moved us closer to a future that we envision at the Alliance, which is Illinois Farmers Can Feed Illinois [a reference to the fact that while Illinois is a leading farm state, less than 10 percent of the food currently consumed in the state is produced in the state}.


Liz then turned to the third major program area, in which reimbursements to farmers participating in USDA's Climate-Smart agriculture programs have been frozen as the administration moves toward eliminating those programs. (It is no coincidence that all of the above programs were created by the preceding Biden administration, nor that the Climate-Smart programs run counter to the administration's efforts to eliminate references to climate change across federal government agencies.)


Here again is Liz Stelk:


"We know that the climate crisis has shown that we urgently need a just transition to more regenerative, more conservation practices. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act included, really significantly, billions in funding to contract with farmers to support those conservation practices. They produce clean water, they build healthy soil. There's more wildlife and biodiversity, and they make farms more resilient in extreme weather.


"And these programs are all reimbursement based. So the farmer makes that initial investment, and then the USDA reimburses about half. So many farmers... are left holding the bag."


These are just a portion of the important remarks made by Liz Stelk and the other webinar participants. Click the button below to view the full video.



Local Food Forum's next article on today's event will feature takeaways from Jackie de Batista, executive director of the Farmers Rising farmer education non-profit and a 4th generation livestock farmer.

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Calls to Action


Each article in the series will feature the following calls to action issued by Illinois Stewardship Alliance.


Right now through the end of April is congressional recess and so many members of Congress are back in their districts and holding events with constituents. You can make a powerful impact by asking a question at your member of Congress' town hall:


  • Ask your member of Congress:

    What are you doing to protect and restore funding for USDA programs that support local food, sustainable farming, and rural communities—especially after the recent cuts that threaten farmers' livelihoods and our access to healthy, locally grown food?


  • Be sure you are subscribed to their email lists to get alerts about upcoming virtual or in-person town halls. You can look up their website here.


You can also volunteer in the next few weeks to help us plan an action with our coalition partners across the country in National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition on the May Farmer & Eater Action Planning Team.

 

Finally, this is an important moment to build community and join organizations that meet your values. We build people power among farmers, eaters, and food system leaders. Thank you to so many of you who are already a member and a sustaining member. You are welcome to join our farmer-led, eater-powered Alliance during our sustaining member drive this month.




 









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