Tucked away in the Bottomlands of the Missouri River in Boone County, Emily Wright and her partner Paul Weber farm four acres of what Wright describes as an ecological experiment. Three Creeks Farm and Forest supplies restaurants and grocery stores around the region with a diverse array of seasonal produce.
Their success and growth over the last decade has been significantly supported by the array of grants and assistance programs provided to farmers by the USDA, many of which have sat in review since the Jan 20 executive order by the Trump administration which froze all USDA spending stemming from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Rural Energy for America Program. And for Wright and Weber, the freezes mean missing out on tens of thousands of dollars in investment for their farm.
“A lot of projects are just in limbo, I’ve been using the term bureaucratic purgatory, we just don’t know what's going on,” Wright said.
Wright and Weber applied for the Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure Program Grant through the state of Missouri last year to build an aggregation facility at Three Creeks so the farm could become a hub for other small farmers and ag producers in the area. After funding was finally allocated at the state level in February of this year, they received word that the funding would be on hold indefinitely until the program had been reviewed by the USDA. Wright said that these programs, while not essential for them to stay afloat, due to their steady direct to restaurant and store business model, help small farms to get off the ground and expand.
“If we want to sort of work towards our larger mission and support fellow farmers and really build a local food system, we do, that effort will be dependent on some of these programs that have been frozen. And so as much as we would like to just keep moving forward, we just, we're not sure that that's feasible without the support from those programs,” Wright said.
The USDA office in Boone County did not respond to requests for interviews. The USDA has not released a comprehensive list of the programs that remain frozen indefinitely.
Three Creeks has also been selected for the Heartland Regional Food Business Center’s Business Builder Grant which distributes funds allocated through the USDA and also remains in limbo under the federal spending freeze. Katie Nixon is the co-director of the Business Center and a farmer herself, she said that the federal funding freeze has significantly disrupted the non-profit.
“I cannot do my job. Like I just feel so paralyzed. I want to help farmers. And that's what I do when I'm not farming. I help farmers and we offer them business counseling and, you know, help them expand, And farmers need that. I know because I'm a farmer. Just not knowing for three months now, I mean, it's just really wears down on you…”
Three Creeks is one of the 90 finalists out of nearly 500 applicants for the Business Builder Grant program.
“Those 90 applicants have not been able to sign their contracts and start their projects because we have no idea whether or not we could reimburse them if they had expenses,” Nixon said.
Mike Lavender is the Policy Director for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition which advocates for increased sustainable agriculture policy at the federal level and said that the disruption caused by the abrupt spending freezes will have ripple effects.
“Introducing uncertainty into the agricultural marketplace is the opposite of what we should be doing if we want to promote the next generation of farmers and ranchers, if we want to make sure that folks have thriving domestic markets and supply chains to rely on for their livelihood,” Lavender said.
After the cancellation of programs such as the the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement and Local Food for Schools programs which helped connect non-profits and schools with locally produced food, producers across the country are left wondering whether the programs that remain frozen will be honored.
“One of the questions that’s been [asked] is can someone rely on the government to come through on their word, right? If there’s a lawfully held contract can the department of agriculture be trusted to come through on its word and I think one of the messages that’s been sent over the past few months is no, not necessarily,” said Richard Oswald, a corn and soybean farmer in Northwest Missouri. He's the Vice President of the Missouri Farmers Union and said farmers who typically vote conservative are still in shock.
“I think a lot of people are still in limbo. A lot of farmers voted for President Trump, and so there's not a lot of criticism right now from farms in general, I think, because of that. I think there's still a hope that this will all right itself, but given the polarization of politics in America today, it's pretty hard to have an honest, open conversation about things like this and what the reasons for things like this are.
"I think over the long term, that's going to change. If there's not some sort of a reversal in USDA's approach to these things, then I think that over time, there will be a lot of negative sentiment come out. But it's one of those things that this is relatively new. We're just a little over three months into this administration. And I think a lot of people are just kind of in shock about what's going on,” Oswald said.
Nixon said that small farmers like her feel abandoned by the USDA.
“By damaging the USDA, we are damaging the future of our food system and our food security. And for small farmers, for the first time we felt seen and acknowledged, now we are back to square one. It feels like a little bit that we're back to this sort of like, okay, well, I guess we'll just figure this out on our own like we did before.”