03/13/2025
UG! Mostly farmers like to kind of stay to themselves and keeping doing what we do while maintaining strong relations with the communities we serve. Especially here in RI where many of us are descendants of the local Founding Fathers and it's a continuance of our legacy. We certainly don't often rant on social media. We don't really complain much, other than the normal grousing about the weather...when is it EVER not too wet or too dry or too hot?! 😄
But this one definitely hurts: "The U.S. Agriculture Department is ending two pandemic-era programs that provided more than $1 billion for schools and food banks...". Especially as we're finally gaining traction in getting past pandemic impacts 5 years later.
We were among the earliest adopters of the RI Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) certification, Local Foods/Farm2School, and Farm Fresh RI. We started with Farm2School in...hmmm, at least 2009ish. I'm not sure what this "pandemic-era programs" is all about, the program predates COVID by at least a decade. It was such a joy sharing health eating and our local produce and heritage into schools where otherwise all the children knew is that food "comes from supermarkets".
Reducing our communities' access to local food is for sure a step in the wrong direction, especially when you're fighting a tariff war to move away from a societal dependency on foreign foodstuffs that government policy fostered for decades Did you know that, until very recently, a Federal planning guideline for local communities called out the importance of ensuring every Town has the capability to feed it's own? This is seen from the Great Depression through the Victory Gardens of World War II through the land use planning through Cold War, to the very fall of the Iron Curtain.
I'm all for increased efficiency and cutting waste, it's centric to Corporate America where I hang out when not on the farm. HOWEVER, I'm an even bigger fan of strategic planning and communication. "We're shutting down this program because it's systemically broken but WAIT...THERE'S MORE! We have an amazing NEW program that will facilitate getting MORE locally grown food into critical societal sectors as we cut back on foreign dependencies." Doesn't THAT sound better?! 🤷♂️
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/usda-cancels-local-food-purchasing-food-banks-school-meals/
