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The United States Department of Agriculture announced Tuesday it had eliminated funding for the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program (LFS), a $660 million initiative intended to help schools and childcare centers to buy food from local farms.
Included in that number is $23 million received by the California Department of Education. According to the California Department of Education, the money is used to “help increase local food purchases in schools and build and expand economic opportunity for local and regional, small and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.”
The cuts could reduce access to school lunches across the country. LFS funding complements but does not replace funding for the National School Lunch Program, which provides free or discounted meals to approximately 30 million students per day.
The School Nutrition Association, a professional organization representing the school food industry, has opposed cuts to LFS and other school lunch programs.
The House Ways and Means Committee has proposed a host of other funding cuts for school lunch programs, including some which would shrink the group eligible for NSLP assistance.
“These proposals would cause millions of children to lose access to free school meals at a time when working families are struggling with rising food costs,” said SNA President Shannon Gleave in a statement.
“Meanwhile, short-staffed school nutrition teams, striving to improve menus and expand scratch-cooking, would be saddled with time-consuming and costly paperwork created by new government inefficiencies,” the statement continued.
LFS funds are also used to help schools meet supply chain challenges they have encountered since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The USDA informed state departments of education last week the funding would cease after a mandatory 60-day waiting period.
The $500 million Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, which provides funds for food banks to buy from local farmers, was also cut.
The cuts come as part of the administration of President Donald Trump’s larger effort to cut costs across the federal government. It is not clear whether it was ordered by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which posts dollar amounts for eliminated grants to its website, but does not describe them.
