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Rural Youth Face Funding Cuts for Local Foods for Schools Program [1]

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Date: 2025-04-02

School kids in rural Maine have benefited from a national U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) program bringing local produce, including seafood and Maine-grown grains, to school cafeterias.

Those same rural kids and their families will likely face an increase in food insecurity as the USDA notified states that they are ending the Local Foods for Schools (LFS) program, a national pandemic-era program that provided $660 million for schools to purchase food from local farmers and producers in all fifty states, US territories, and for federally recognized tribes.

This change comes at a time when the USDA is finalizing changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), including adding work requirements, limiting work exemptions, and reducing the benefit amounts, all of which would disproportionately affect rural Americans.

Full Plates, Full Potential is a food advocacy and implementation organization in Maine. They support schools and other organizations that provide food to kids through federal nutrition programs, including supporting schools in applying for federal funds to purchase local foods.

“A lot of our work in Maine has involved ‘how on earth are we going to feed our kids?’,” Anna Korsen, the Policy and Program Director for nonprofit Full Plates, Full Potential, said.

Maine provides free lunches to all students, not just those who qualify as low-income, making the loss of $2.8 million in federal funding for local food purchasing hit the state especially hard.

As most of Maine falls within USDA’s rural designation, most of Maine’s kids and schools are in rural communities.

In Maine, over 179,000 people are enrolled in SNAP, and 34% of SNAP recipient households in Maine include children. With Maine being a primarily rural state, it’s no surprise that 1 in 7 rural households participate in SNAP. In fact, 14.2% of rural Maine households use SNAP benefits, and 20.5% of those are families with Children. Maine also has the highest rate of childhood food insecurity in New England, with 1 in 5 kids unsure of where their next meal will come from.

“For kids who are experiencing food insecurity, the only reliable meals that they have in a day are often breakfast and lunch. Those are also the healthiest meals that they have access to. So when the federal government pulls this funding, that’s going to impact the nutrition and quality of the meals that those kids are receiving,” Korsen said.

It isn’t just students who will suffer. The funding cut will also affect Maine’s agricultural industry, as the funds specifically went to purchase produce from farms that partnered with schools.

“Schools are often the biggest restaurant in a community, especially in rural areas in states like Maine. And so, you know, that’s going to have a big impact on these small farms,” Korsen said.

Full Plates is taking steps to ensure Maine decision-makers understand how important these programs are to kids, families, schools, and farms. They’re also thinking about things like mutual aid, though Korsen admits it will be tough to fill a funding gap that could be billions of dollars without federal support.

Allison Leavitt, the nutrition director for Lisbon Schools in southeastern Maine, has seen benefits from the assistance received through the LFS program. She also noted that in the current economy, they could use more federal help to make their food, not less.

“I’ve already blown through what was budgeted for my regular food allowance as of today, and we have until June to keep feeding kids,” Leavitt said. “Anybody that goes to the grocery store knows that everything is more expensive. So every single little last dollar that we could have, and especially if we can keep it in the local economy, is very much needed.”

The cuts to the LSF program come at a particularly stressful time for rural families. The House GOP has proposed 230 billion in cuts to SNAP benefits in addition to cuts already made to the LSF program.

“We are very concerned that millions of people could be at risk of losing some or all of the food benefits that they need to put food on the table,” Katie Bergh, Senior Policy Analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said.

SNAP helps 42.2 million Americans, or roughly one in eight people in this country, afford groceries, and although the average benefit is only about $6.16 per day right now, it has a huge effect on food security, particularly in rural areas.

In 2023,14.3% of rural households participated in SNAP compared to 11.9% in metropolitan areas, Bergh told the Yonder. In addition to SNAP’s direct benefits to the families who need to put food on the table, it also acts as an important economic stimulus. The Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service estimated that every additional dollar spent on SNAP in a weak economy generates $1.54 in economic activity.

“It is highly effective at reducing food insecurity, and poverty research has linked participation to better health, improved educational attainment, better labor market outcomes, particularly for people who participate in SNAP as children,” Bergh said.

“Those food benefits are federal dollars that go directly to low-income families who then spend them at local grocery stores in their communities. And that’s not only generating revenues for the local grocery store, it’s also supporting jobs throughout the entire food supply chain,” she said.

“School meals are often the most reliable and nutritious meals available to food-insecure kids, so the termination of LFS will negatively impact the quality of food being served to food-insecure children,” according to Korsen.

According to Bergh, everyone involved with emergency feeding networks agrees that charity won’t be able to fill the gap in funding. He also doesn’t think states will be able to pick up the bill.

“The states don’t have the resources to meet those additional costs without having to make really painful trade-offs, to raise revenue or cut other programs and services that low-income families rely on.”

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[1] Url: http://dailyyonder.com/rural-youth-face-funding-cuts-for-local-foods-for-schools-program/2025/04/02/

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