Trump Administration Impacts on Local Farms — and CISA’s Committments
Local farm businesses, farmworkers, and our local food economy are under threat.
The Trump administration’s whirlwind of executive orders and administrative actions, and the flood of judicial rulings in response, have introduced uncertainty, chaos, and immediate harmful impacts.
Right now, local farmers who have begun — or even completed — costly on-farm improvement projects are hearing that the federal government may violate their signed contracts and withhold promised reimbursements, leaving them with considerable unplanned debt. In February, we learned that at least $7 million in committed funds for Massachusetts farms had been frozen, and the information about this is changing every day.
Uncertainty is swirling in households that rely on SNAP to feed their families about whether this essential piece of our social safety net will be cut or significantly reduced. Immigrant families are seeing the Trump administration expand detention and deportations, eliminate due process, and strip work authorization from many immigrants, paired with false, villainizing narratives about immigrant criminality.
For more details about these impacts, read our recent opinion piece.
These are CISA’s commitments:
We are here, working every day to help farmers navigate this uncertainty. If you’re a farmer who needs help understanding how your farm might be affected by these possible cuts, please contact us.
We are committed to helping farmers adapt to climate change, even as the Trump administration works to undermine climate protections and the government reneges on its own commitments to respond to and mitigate climate change.
We will not back away from telling the truth about inequities in our food system and working with local leaders and communities to address them. The hateful rhetoric around “DEI” does not change the realities of our history or current inequities in our food system.
We stand with local farm businesses and farmworkers, and we denounce the indefensible actions and rhetoric aimed at terrorizing and dehumanizing our immigrant neighbors.
We believe that everybody should have enough to eat, and we will continue to support food access efforts and engage local farmers as allies in the fight against hunger.
Here’s how CISA is being impacted:
In recent years, the USDA has worked to build programs that acknowledge the importance of small- and medium-scale farms — those most represented here in the Northeast. These programs have included direct support for farms but also a considerable investment in the kind of expert assistance CISA provides around farm viability, climate resilience, and many other topics. As a result, 35.5% of CISA’s annual operating budget currently comes from a variety of federal grants. These funding streams are increasingly precarious, and of course, the information we have about this is in constant flux.
We’re very fortunate to be in a relatively stable position so our staff can continue this work for now, and that is only because of the ways that our community of supporters (that includes you!) have shown up for us in the past. But still, these cuts will diminish CISA’s capacity, along with many of our peer nonprofits. This — along with the firings of local field agents at USDA offices without cause — is a direct threat to the network of support for local farms and our local food system.
What can you do?
This is a moment for the community (that’s you, and each of us) to step up and get involved in sustaining agriculture. For now, here’s what that can look like:
Contact your legislators and tell them how important federal support for our local food system is to you. Here is a toolkit — including contact info and talking points — to get you started.
Buy local. Local farms and other local businesses need your support more than ever. Shifting more of your purchasing to local farms, farmers’ markets, and retailers can’t make up the losses caused by these federal actions, but it matters a LOT to the businesses you support. Check out CISA’s online guide to local food and farms.
Support CISA. Your donations make it possible for us to continue our essential work in support of local farms, communities, and our local food economy. You can donate here.
Talk to your friends and family and neighbors about these losses and what they mean for all of us. We’re in a moment of extreme political division — but these policies and cuts will affect everybody and those impacts transcend political parties.
This is a time to show up, a time to reaffirm our values, a time to be principled. Thank you for being part of our local food and farm community.
