https://www.rawstory.com/real-devastating
Farmers now warn that Trump plans risk tanking entire rural economies.The executive director of Northern New Mexico’s food bank, The Food Depot, says the recent U.S. Department of Agriculture’s elimination of a program that connected food banks to local food producers is “devastating.”
The Regional Farm to Food Bank program, created under the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, is currently funded through the USDA Local Food Purchase Assistance, one of two federal programs the USDA recently canceled.
According to a news release from The Food Depot and the New Mexico Farmers Marketing Association, last year, the RF2FB program accounted for 34% of all institutional purchases from small and midsize producers in the New Mexico Grown program.
Under the program, officials say, more than 200 farmers, ranchers and other food producers have sold close to 900,000 pounds of locally grown food since January 2023, providing 749,502 healthy meals distributed across all 33 of the state’s counties.
The USDA announced in October of last year a $500 million extension of the LFPA plan, with $2.8 million designated for New Mexico. Then, on March 7, the USDA informed the New Mexico Department of Agriculture the program that agreement would be terminated, the news release said, and the program will end when the current program ends at the end of June.
Organizers say 94% of last year’s RF2FB purchases came from socially disadvantaged and historically underserved producers.
“Without this support, we risk losing more than income; we risk losing the ability to sustain our land, our families, and our way of life,” Manny Encinias, owner of Trilogy Beef and Buffalo Creek Ranch in Moriarty, New Mexico said in a statement. “This decision doesn’t just impact ranchers. It threatens the entire rural economy, including locally owned businesses like our USDA meat processing facility, which depends on ranching families like us to stay in operation. Perhaps most concerning, it makes it even harder to bring the next generation back to the ranch.”