With the clock ticking down to lunchtime, middle school kitchen staff pulled trays of baked potatoes out of the oven. They splashed lemon juice on apple slices and stocked the salad bar with freshly chopped lettuce, carrots and purple turnips.
This produce was grown within a 200-mile radius of Clear Lake, according to Julie Udelhofen, the food service director for Clear Lake Community School District. On other days, the menu may include local tomatoes and peppers or squash and parsnips. The rainbow shifts with the season.
“It just makes my heart so happy to see these kids’ trays full of beautiful food,” Udelhofen said.
Bringing local ingredients into the school district started in 2022 when the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched the Local Food for Schools (LFS) Cooperative Agreement Program. Another one, the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) Cooperative Agreement Program, supported food banks.
Former Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said that these programs were intended to cement local and regional markets for producers.
“Because they’re very, very important to the 90% of farms that are small and mid-sized operations that struggle financially, even in the best of times,” Vilsack said recently on an IPR’s River to River.
The USDA programs funneled $7.8 million to Iowa between 2022 and 2025. The funding benefited 169 school districts and over 300 farms and 951 pantries and community partners, according to Iowa Valley RC&D, a nonprofit that supports beginning farmers and works to strengthen local supply chains.
In October, the USDA said it would extend the programs with a $1.2 billion investment over the next three years and allocate funds specifically for child care facilities. An estimated $8.3 million was earmarked for Iowa schools and child care facilities; $3 million was pegged for food banks and pantries.
Udelhofen said she expected around $40,000 for the school district.
“We were pretty excited that with that amount of money coming in. We were going to handle local beef and local chicken,” Udelhofen said. “Our school has not handled raw meat for quite some time. It’s processed, pre-processed, pre-cooked.”
But in early March, the USDA decided to end both programs.
When asked about the terminations on Fox News March 11, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said they were COVID-era programs.
“As we have always said, if we are making mistakes, we will own those mistakes and we will reconfigure. But right now, from what we are viewing, that program was non-essential, that it was a new program, and it was an effort by the left to continue spending taxpayer dollars that were not necessary,” Rollins said.
A spokesperson from the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) said the discontinuations “should not come as a surprise,” since the programs were announced by executive action, rather than approved by Congress.
But Chris Schwartz, executive director of the Iowa Food System Coalition, said cutting these programs “left people out to dry” and could not have come at a worse time, especially for farmers.
“Seeds have been purchased. You can visit greenhouses across the state, and the veggies are already sprouting up, waiting to be transplanted this spring,” Schwartz said. “The planning has already been done under the premise that the government was going to continue to be a partner.”
Michelle Kenyon, executive director of the Iowa City-based regional food hub Field to Family, said it was “shocking and devastating” when she found out the USDA would end the LFPA program.
Field to Family had worked for months to scale up its operations to aggregate and distribute food to the Hawkeye Area Community Action Program food bank.
“And of course, we were close with our producers. We talked to them about projections and plans for the year and to prepare. They made investments,” Kenyon said. “That demand is now in question.”
Kenyon said Field to Family purchased food from 73 producers last year. Despite the setback with the federal program, she said no one wants to lose momentum.
“We’re going to continue to look for ways to continue on that trajectory,” Kenyon said. “People want to eat the food that’s grown here.”
At First Lutheran Food Pantry in Clarion, director Missy Loux walked past storage rooms filled with pantry staples, diapers and laundry detergent made by volunteers.
Before the USDA ended the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, Prudent Produce food hub delivered fruits and vegetables, along with milk and sometimes meat and yogurt.
“This allowed [pantry visitors] to have that healthy food and stretch their dollars,” Loux said.
Loux added that she and her partners are always looking for ways to provide more fresh produce. In 2021, they started food pantry gardens, which have since produced over 3,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables.
She said they also give out seeds, plants and containers and provide education for people to grow their own food.
“We don’t believe in handouts, we believe in hand-ups, and so do our recipients,” Loux said.
But the number of people needing a hand-up has increased since 2022. She said four food pantries and homebound deliveries in Wright County used to serve 200 to 300 people per month. Now it’s nearly 1,000.
“Things are just incredibly expensive, especially eggs and dairy and other items, and so we are seeing and hearing of those increased needs,” Loux said.
State programs and the Farm Bill
A spokesperson with IDALS said in an email that "programs designed to forge relationships between Iowa farmers, food hubs, food banks and schools are important.”
The state recently announced a pilot program similar to the USDA’s Local Food for Schools. It provides $70,000 in matching grants for schools to purchase food from members of Choose Iowa, a state brand that promotes food, beverages and other products.
Last year, the state launched Choose Iowa’s Food Purchasing Pilot Program for Food Banks and allocated $225,000.
While organizations like the Iowa Food System Coalition applaud these state programs, it says the current level of funding cannot backfill what was lost with the promised federal dollars. It's pushing for a greater investment in the Choose Iowa Purchasing Program this legislative session.
“It would be perfect timing for the state to step up and fill the gap that the federal funding left,” said Jason Grimm, a farmer in eastern Iowa and the executive director of Iowa Valley RC&D.
He said farmers and agricultural leaders are also trying to add local food purchasing programs to the next Farm Bill. But even if it is passed later this year, Grimm said there would be a lag before programs are implemented.
A lot of farmers could go out of business before then, he said.
“It’s very inefficient,” Grimm said. “We have the systems built right now to administrate these programs. We were building in systems to become less reliant on the federal funds over the long term.”
Building the infrastructure
A key part of those local food systems are food hubs. Grimm said it wouldn’t make economic sense for a small dairy farm to haul a couple cases of yogurt from northeast Iowa to southwest Iowa. But a network of warehouses and trucks across the state can keep the cost per unit low.
Teresa Wiemerslage, who specializes in supply chain logistics, food hubs and on-farm food safety as a field specialist with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, said some food hubs in Iowa sprung up a decade ago specifically to help connect farms and schools.
Instead of ordering small amounts of food from individual farmers, schools could work with one food hub that aggregated products from multiple farms.
“We really saw that when we added that middle of the supply chain, aggregation distribution piece, the school purchases drastically increased,” Wiemerslage said.
But Wiemerslage said the shift often requires financial incentives for at least two years.
“Once they hit that third year, [schools] start buying more with their own food service budget, because they recognize the value, whether it's a social value or nutritional value,” Wiemerslage said.
She added that schools buying large quantities of local food can create ripple effects in rural communities.
“Now that there's a truck coming to a small town every week or every other week, that provides an opportunity for other businesses in the community to purchase more local products,” Wiemerslage said.
A larger group of customers spreads out the costs and expands market opportunities for farmers, she added.
Jan Libbey, a farmer in north central Iowa and long-time local food advocate in the state, said the USDA funnels billions of dollars to commodity crops each year. Supporting food purchasing programs can be a catalyst for a new generation of farmers.
“We know we're losing young people from our communities," she said. "We know the local food system has been attractive to folks who say, ‘I see some opportunity.’”
