“Attack on Small Farms”: Valley Farmers Gather to Protest USDA Cuts

3/23/25 Farmer Press Release

Clad in muck boots and dirt-flecked Carhartts and arriving on tractors and leading goats, over 300 farmers, farmworkers, and their family members and supporters from across Western Massachusetts gathered in front of the town hall in Hadley, MA on Sunday to protest recent USDA funding cuts and announcements to close local USDA offices, including in Amherst and Pittsfield. “Restore funding for our small farms; keep our rural farm support offices open,” said Kerry Taylor, one of the organizers, in her address to the crowd. Taylor farms with her husband Max Taylor at Brookfield Farm in Amherst, which produces mixed vegetables and livestock on 120 acres in Amherst. “Let’s send a message loud and clear to Secretary Rollins down in D.C.”

An impressive turnout of farmers on a sunny day in the spring, the crowd rang cowbells and waved signs glued to pitchforks with slogans like, “Farms feed us,” and “Muck out Musk.” Across the street, several tractors, trailers, and flatbread trucks brandished American flags and banners that read, “Trump Hurts Farmers,” and “No NRCS No Farms No Food.”

Following Taylor, Congressman Jim McGovern, who represents the 2nd Congressional District and sits on the House Committee on Agriculture, addressed the crowd, “Farmers are the backbone of America. You don’t just grow food—you keep our country alive, you fill up the food banks, you supply our school cafeterias, you take care of our land, our water, our soil, you feed the future. In a very real sense, food security is national security.” He concluded with a message to President Trump and Elon Musk: “”You picked the wrong fight; you picked the wrong farmers; you picked the wrong state.”

The rally comes on the heels of several orders from the Trump administration to cancel leases on USDA offices—including the MA state headquarters in Amherst—and to freeze or cancel previously-approved funding for farmers and food access programs. In January, the Trump administration issued an OMB memo to freeze a number of programs, including those that supported conservation practices on farms through the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), an agency founded in the 1930s with the intention of preventing a second Dust Bowl. While some of that funding has been recently released, farmers expecting payments or reimbursements through the Climate Smart Commodities Program (CSP) and/or Rural Energy Access Program (REAP), have still not seen a penny of contracted federal funding. Both CSP and REAP received an influx of funding through the Inflation Reduction Act.

Anne Diemand of Diemand Farm in Wendell, which raises turkeys, chickens, eggs, and beef on 200 acres, told the crowd that her farm stood to lose $120,000 from the government’s breach of her REAP contract—money the farm has already borrowed on the promise of reimbursement and had started to spend in compliance with their contract. “If this funding isn’t released, it’s a whole lot of money we’re going to have to come up with. Bottom line, we borrowed a lot of money and we may have to pay it all back. It’ll take us a long time, but we’re farmers, and we pay our bills.”

Loss of Funding for Food Access Programs

Earlier this month, the USDA also announced that it would cancel $1 billion in funding for the Local Purchasing Assistance Program for fiscal year 2025. Schools, food banks, and other food access programs in Massachusetts were counting on $12 million for this second half of FY 2025. This program provided funding to schools and other organizations to buy food directly from local farmers.

Harrison Bardwell, whose 50 acre Hatfield farm provides a range of vegetables to institutional partners through LPAP says that the effects of this cancellation on his farm are significant. “We have bills to pay and employees to support. This loss in sales has a large impact on our farm.”

Manufactured Funding Disaster “on Top of the Natural Disasters We’re Facing”

At his turn on the mike, Ryan Voiland of Red Fire Farm in Granby outlined a series of natural disasters that local farmers have faced in the last few years, from the catastrophic and widespread flooding in 2023 to the record-breaking drought last year. He said that these disasters make it harder for farmers to survive. “Massachusetts lost 4,000 acres of farmland last year,” he said, explaining that farmers operate on “razor thin margins.” He said that on top of the effects of increasingly extreme weather, the impact of these funding cuts would be severe.

“This will result in Americans deprived of nutritious food, a more degraded environment, food systems that are less reliant to climate change, and more farms going out of business. All just so the richest billionaires can get more tax cuts?”

Voiland co-manages Red Fire Farm in Granby with his wife Sarah Voiland. They grow on nearly 200 acres to supply diversified vegetables around the valley through CSA, markets, and wholesale. He elicited cheers and cowbells from the crowd when he announced that they had joined a lawsuit with the lawyers at EarthJustice to “sue the Trump administration for freezing and attempting to discontinue our REAP grant for making solar energy for the farm.”

Another speaker affected by these cuts was Suna Turgay of Flowerwork Farm in Florence, who was expecting funding through the now-frozen Climate Smart Commodities Program, which she explained is an investment in soil health, because it would support practices that protect water supplies, prevent soil erosion, and preserve natural resources. Turgay says that practices that build soil are a win-win, because they also help farmers’ bottom lines: “Increased soil health means increased productivity.”

“Programs like Climate Smart are a good investment,” Turgay said, adding that while they represent a small piece of national funding for agriculture, “they can set a farmer like me up for a lifetime of success.”

The freeze has led to furloughs in several organizations who administer grants under these programs, including the Pennsylvania Sustainable Agriculture Association (PASA), under whom hundreds of Massachusetts farmers like Turgay and Voiland were expecting to receive support for climate smart practices over the next four years. Two different courts have ruled that the Trump administration release these funds, but farmers say that neither the farm support agencies nor the farms themselves have been given any indication that the funding will be restored.

“Farmers face enough uncertainty on a day to day basis— floods, droughts, freezes, locusts—” said MA State Representative Natalie Blais, addressing the crowd, “to have the federal government cut these programs and add to the anxiety and uncertainty is absolutely unforgivable.”

Elected Officials Stand Behind Farmers

“Together, we’re fighting for food security,” said State Senator Jo Comerford, closing out the rally with several of her colleagues from the state legislature. Senator Comerford represents a farming-heavy district that encompasses much of Hampshire, Franklin, and Worcester counties and serves as Senate Vice Chair of the Joint Ag Committee.

Standing and speaking alongside Senator Comerford were MA State Representatives Natalie Blais of 1st Franklin District, Mindy Domb of the 3rd Hampshire, Aaron Saunders of the 7th Hampden, and Homar Gomez of the 2nd Hampshire District. Representatives Saunders, Blais, and Gomez are all members of the Joint Ag Committee in the Massachusetts legislature, with Blais serving as House Chair and Saunders as House Vice Chair.

“Unity is our weapon,” said Rep Domb, “If you come for one of us, you’re getting all of us.”

Representatives from Senator Elizabeth Warren’s and Senator Ed Markey’s offices also addressed the crowd. Reading a message from Senator Markey, Jesse Lederman was met with cheers when he concluded with a message aimed at the Trump administration, “Release all the USDA funding without further delay and honor contracts with our farmers, or we’ll see them in court.”

Farmers just hope that something changes before it’s too late. Calling on the broader community to band together to help farmers, Voiland concluded his speech by saying, “We need to do everything we can to resist and limit the damage as we endure the next few years of Trump.”