What Happens to School Lunches in the MAHA Era?

"Last year, Harrison Bardwell, the farm's ninth-generation proprietor, was selling thousands of pounds of cucumbers at a time, transportable by pallet and forklift. By this summer, he was struggling to move twenty-pound boxes of the same product. When he realized that he couldn't recoup the costs of picking, packing, and washing the cucumbers, he stopped. He also gave up pulling from his cabbage field. Gleaners from a local anti-hunger group harvested some of the crops to donate to nearby food banks and shelters."

"Prices and markets fluctuate; this year, President Donald Trump's tariffs on Canada have helped to spike the cost of fertilizer and packaging. But, in the case of Bardwell's abandoned cucumbers and cabbages, the mortal blow was struck by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in March, when it abruptly terminated a billion dollars in Biden-era funding that had helped food banks, schools, and child-care centers procure fresh food from local farmers."

Bardwell Farm, a fifty-acre diversified vegetable operation in western Massachusetts, planted seed and began production expecting to sell through federal procurement programs. Federal termination of roughly one billion dollars in Biden-era USDA funding halted purchases by food banks, schools, and child-care centers, removing a key market and revenue of about $200,000 for Bardwell Farms. Additional pressures included tariffs that raised fertilizer and packaging costs and extreme weather that damaged crops. With local gleaners donating some produce and the rest tilled under, the farm abandoned harvesting cucumbers and reduced cabbage production while scrambling to find alternative buyers.

Read at The New Yorker