This week, farmers in New Hampshire took to the State House to call out precarious farming conditions, following recent federal cuts and delays to federal grants which helped support small farmers.
NHPR’s Julia Vaz has been talking to farmers and activists in the state. She joins NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa to explain what this moment is like for farmers and their demands.
Transcript
Farming has always had thin margins and oftentimes, farmers have relied on federal grants to complete big projects. But those funding streams have either been pared back or stalled because of workforce reductions in the federal government. How have farmers here been navigating that over the last few months?
That’s right. So several farmers I spoke with had some big projects lined up for this year that they won’t be able to complete because of those cuts and delays in grant processing. You know, some of that federal money was helping farmers pay for more modern equipment and also to make their farms more climate resilient. But just this week, for example, the USDA seems to also be scaling back on a grant which allowed small farmers to install solar.
Sarah Cox is an organic farmer in Lee. She had won a grant to build a shared kitchen, which would allow multiple farms to make value-added products and host events. But because of delays from the US Department of Agriculture, she’s not sure when she’ll complete that project and she’s facing higher costs to build it because of tariffs.
Cox told me she’s looking to turn to private donations:
[Cox]: To help try to meet this big gap that will be there in completing the project.
Her experience kind of points to this compounding effect farmers told me about, where cuts and delays to different programs, combined with other federal actions have led to slimmer profit margins this year.
You’ve mentioned grants and delays in funds because of federal workforce reduction. As you’ve talked with farmers, have you heard of other challenges in the last few months?
Yes. So cuts to funding for other food programs, like food banks, has had ripple effects for farmers here. Some farmers told me that because New Hampshire doesn’t have as strong policies that require or incentive local food purchases as other New England states, they relied on the extra income provided by these programs.
So let’s take the New Hampshire Food Bank. It was anticipating a nearly $1 million federal grant to continue a program that—just last year—had purchased food from nearly 200 farms to provide fresh food for people. But that grant was terminated in March.
Elsy Cipriani, who leads the food bank, told me that means their ability to buy from local farmers is way down.
[Cipriani]: We have been able to raise some money, but we are not even close to the levels that it was.
Liz Willey is one of those farmers that has benefitted from food access programs which recently lost funding.
[Willey]: I sold $20,000 worth of produce last year to food banks through this program.
But this year, that amount has been cut in half. She also said she has seen impacts after the Granite State Market match program scaled back this year due to funding uncertainty. Many of her customers that came to her farmer’s market booth were SNAP beneficiaries that used the New Hampshire program to buy local produce. Now those customers are disappearing, she said.
Are these changes affecting farmers across the state equally?
Organic farmers specifically said it is a particularly hard time for them.
In New Hampshire, for example, the Northeast Organic Farming Association operates a program which helps farmers transition to an organic certification by matching them with paid mentors, but the money for it came from a USDA grant. Julie Davenson, a board member of the organization, told me that while they will still receive funding, their timeline has been cut short. And after next year, the grant will end completely.
[Davenson]: There's a lot of ripple effects to these termination of grant programs that, you know, the average person who doesn't work in agriculture wouldn't see.
And this isn’t the first hit organic farmers in New Hampshire have taken recently. Davenson explained costs have gone up for them since last year, when New Hampshire decided to stop issuing organic certifications, meaning those farmers have to get that from other states. And income in general has come down since the pandemic.
That’s a lot. With so many challenges, how are farmers you talked with feeling about the future?
The folks I’ve talked with have had a similar response: family farming and being a small farmer has always been hard.
During Joe Biden’s administration, because of the Inflation Reduction Act and other policies, farmers saw a bigger influx of money available to them, but it’s not like they weren’t dealing with lack of funds or cuts before that.
So no one is ready to give up. For many farmers, their work is not just a source of income, but also part of their identity, which also makes them want to fight a little harder. This is how retired dairy farmer Sarah Gilliatt put it.
[Gilliatt]: We're trying to come together and harness the energy of that indignation to point to a more life affirming future that is worthy of future generations
What farmers pointed out is that, ultimately, they are not the only ones being affected by these federal policies. More challenging farming conditions means consumers might have to deal with less options and a more industrialized food system.
A policy farmers say could cause the most impact at the state level is expanding the market for local growers, so that they don’t have to rely on federal money. That could look like the state requiring public institutions, like schools, hospitals and jails, to source from local, sustainable producers.
