How can farmers, millers and dairies respond to the termination of the programs that asked them to sell local food to food banks in their state?
An announcement in March that the $1 billon Local Food Purchasing Agreement [Assistance] program will end in June, two years early, means farmers, millers, meat processors and dairies will suffer. Some will go bankrupt.
These programs started to fulfill a campaign promise that American farmers would feed American people.
At Shagbark, we had to deliver that news to the farmers who grow the black beans and corn we send to Ohio’s 12 food banks, lay off one of our best workers and cut the hours of two others.
Certainly, spending $1 billion on a program like this is a good idea. Why not spend $3 billon, or even more on American farmers, American businesses and American citizens?
We hope the feds will reinstate the Local Food Purchasing Agreement [Assistance] program. After all, it was enacted by a bipartisan Congress.
