Ag budget includes funding to replace canceled federal grants, but food banks say it cuts assistance
When the Trump administration cut funding for a program that gave food banks money to buy and distribute food from local farmers, Minnesota lawmakers decided to continue the program at the state level.
The two-year, $115 million state agriculture budget has been approved by the House and Senate and is awaiting the signature of Gov. Tim Walz, and sets up a modest state program to replace the one cut by the federal government.
But Second Harvest Heartland, the biggest hunger relief organization in the state, says the budget still partially defunds the Farm to Food Shelf program, which allowed Second Harvest to purchase excess produce from Minnesota farmers at a steep discount. (The budget boosts funding for a related program for dairy.)
Rep. Fue Lee, DFL-Minneapolis, carried a bill to create a state program that mirrors the endangered federal Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program. Schools, food banks, governments and businesses can apply for grants to purchase food from Minnesota farmers and distribute it for free. Grant recipients must purchase 70% of the food from small farms — those that bring in less than $100,000 per year — or from farmers who rent their land.
Lee's bill ended up in the budget, with $1.4 million over two years directed to the Local Food Purchasing Assistance grant program — around half as much as the federal government gave to Minnesota last year for the program.
Minnesota Farmers Union, Land Stewardship Project and Minnesota Farmers Market Association were among the bill's supporters.
Zach Rodvold, a lobbyist for Second Harvest Heartland, said the net effect of the budget is a cut in overall food assistance — on top of other federal cuts to food aid, as well as proposed cuts to SNAP, which helps low-income people buy groceries.
'What they voted for was a cut that will cost almost 4 million pounds of produce every year indefinitely,' Rodvold said.
That's partly because the dollars that went to the Farm to Food Shelf program stretched farther — the food banks were paying pennies on the dollar for produce that farmers didn't intend to sell in traditional markets. The new state program, called the Local Food Purchasing Assistance grant program, pays farmers the market price for their produce.
The Local Food Purchasing Assistance grant program will also allow recipients to contract with farmers for future production, creating a secure market for small Minnesota farmers.
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