Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...Small farmers in the North Bay are celebrating a tentative agreement reached by California legislators this week to revive a canceled federal program that helped food banks purchase produce from local farms.
The state legislative budget approved June 15 contains $15 million, pending the governor’s signature, to partially fund a new program and replace what farm advocates say was a lifeline for producers and local food banks.
Farmers across the country were rocked mid-season last year by the news that the Trump administration through the U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture had canceled contracts between local food aggregators, food banks and farmers. Since 2022, California has utilized more than $88.5 million in USDA funds to help local food banks purchase produce from farms across the state and distribute nutritious food to their communities. But the federal government terminated the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, including California’s $47 million share, which ended contracts including at Sonoma County’s Redwood Empire Food Bank.
Cutting the program “hurts everyone, from our local food banks who are losing sources of high-quality food, to our local farmers who are losing reliable buyers at a time when business is tough,” Rep. Mike Thompson, a Democrat who represents California’s 4th Congressional District, said in a statement. “The minute these cuts were made, I heard concerns from food banks across our district.”
It was a shock for small-scale producers like Alex Kuhn, farm manager at New Family Farm in Sebastopol, who said the contracts with food banks provided farmers with a steady revenue stream.
“It was a safety net on both ends,” Kuhn said. “Growers could be scared to try something, like grow a new kind of cucumber, but we would say ‘try this and we will do our best to sell it.’ If it didn’t, it could go to the food bank. It mitigated risk. It allowed every year to be a good year.”
Farmers launched a lobbying campaign through several organizations asking legislators to step in with state funds to resuscitate the program.
This week, those farmers received welcome news – the state legislative budget approved June 15 contains one-third of the requested $45 million, to continue funding contracts between food banks and small farms. The budget bill is on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk for negotiations, according to Community Alliance with Family Farmers, a nonprofit policy advocacy group.
Kuhn and other small-scale farmers told The Press Democrat they benefited from partnering with Sonoma County’s FEED Cooperative, a food hub network of more than 50 farms, which used about $1 million each year from the federal government to purchase their produce for the local food bank under California’s Farms Together. He and other wholesale farmers typically do most of their business through working with distributors like FEED – which accounts for about 80% of New Family Farm’s business – and with grocery stores and restaurants.
Farms Together contracts made it simple to move “large volumes of product” when there are few other available outlets to do so, Kuhn said, and ensuring that most of the fruits and vegetables produced did not go to waste.
“It gave us the ability to sell an entire pallet of kale or cucumbers and make sure that food is actually going to be used,” Kuhn said. “Now, we find ourselves harvesting sometimes at a loss. It (the program) really acted as a safety buffer.”
According to FEED Cooperative, the federal government acquiesced to swift pushback last year and let the contracts last through the end of 2025, which Kuhn said helped farmers prepare. But since the start of 2026, producers have seen a loss of up to 20% of their revenue without those contracts in place, according to FEED’s wholesale manager Dylan Stein.
Stein said when he first learned of the contract opportunity in 2024, “It sounded too good to be true,” because it opened a new pathway “for a food bank to pay people fairly for food.” The annual $1 million allocation made a huge difference for small-scale producers, he said.
Stein had hoped the program could go on for at least three years. The federal government since 2023 spent nearly $60 million engaging more than 830 farmers, 45 food hubs and small local aggregators and 50 food banks and community organizations across the country. More than 70% of participating farmers were defined by USDA as small, mid-scale or socially disadvantaged.
Rachelle Mesheau, director of marketing and communications for Redwood Empire Food Bank, said the program was relatively new but “demonstrated real promise and impact.”
“For example, during last year’s flood threats, LFPA funding allowed us to quickly purchase produce from local farmers who were at risk of losing their crops, helping salvage that food and distribute it to the community within days,” Mesheau said. “It was a powerful example of how this kind of program can simultaneously support farmers and expand access to fresh, local food.”
That’s why Stein said the lobbying effort which has been underway since January garnered so much support, with hundreds of farmers and food hubs from across the state advocating for state support for the program in Sacramento. He praised Assemblymember Damon Connolly, a Democrat who represents Marin and southern Sonoma counties, for his local support.
“I’ve seen firsthand how important this program is through local tours and discussions with farmers in the district,” Connolly said in a statement. “At a time when Californians up and down the state are facing food insecurity and reduced CalFresh benefits, I am pleased to have protected LFPA funding in the state budget.”
After 12 years working with small wholesale producers, Stein said “It so often feels like, for the farms we work with, the deck is stacked against them.”
He said the federal program was “a significant market improvement”: “It injected that necessary demand into the system to allow people to seek everything they wanted.”
Additionally, Stein said the funding rescission took place against a backdrop of cuts which the federal government began in 2025 and are taking place this year under the sweeping federal tax-and-spending package dubbed “The One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Farmers said they were confused and frustrated to see cuts taking place given the Trump administration’s avowed focus on healthier foods for families under the “Make America Healthy Again” banner.
“Hearing them (federal officials) say something and watching them implement it are two very different things,” Kuhn said. “It’s easy for them to say they want to make people healthier … but that results in sending produce that’s from big agriculture, that is not the most nutritious and comes from really far away and has a really big carbon footprint.”
The governor must sign the 2026-27 budget by June 30, and farmers and advocates say they’re hopeful, given Newsom’s appeal of the federal decision last year. The governor this year already allocated other funds to help food-insecure families using California’s SNAP program to purchase local produce.
If approved, the state’s annual allocation for Sonoma County may only total up to $300,000 annually, Stein said. Kuhn said he had hoped that if the state could fully fund the old program, it would help farms like his have a secure revenue source “at a margin that would bring us some amount of profit.” He said it is hard to know at this stage how the funds, if approved, will be allocated, since it’s unclear how the state program will be structured.
But he called it “encouraging,” adding “Hopefully, this is just the beginning of continued support for this kind of statewide program.” He said he thinks supporting local, organically grown produce aligns with the state’s initiatives to provide nutritious food to vulnerable communities, especially given the widespread likely impact of curtailing SNAP and other benefits. SNAP helps about 39 million Americans – about 1 in 9 – buy groceries, but beneficiaries decreased by nearly 4.3 million from January 2025 to January 2026, according to preliminary government data.
In Sonoma County, there were more than 27,000 households or almost 43,000 people enrolled in CalFresh last September. The new state budget proposal includes $100 million for CalFresh, compared to last year’s $80 million.
“It’s expensive to grow things and buy things. A lot of low-income individuals rely on these things from the state or federal government, and this really unique program put produce on the tables of these low-income individuals,” Kuhn said.
Redwood Empire Food Bank’s Chief operations Officer Alison Smith said she was very encouraged by the state funding decision, although she hopes it will be a temporary bridge to support the work with farmers until the federal government provides more aid.
“The benefit of this funding for us is so multi-layered. It’s supporting our local farmers and helping them support the whole community.”
She said the governor will determine how the new program will work, as it will be administered under the state food and agriculture department (CDFA) rather than under the USDA.
But she said the local partnerships are already in place even if the program structure is not yet certain. It’s also a significantly lower funding amount than under the USDA, and she said she hopes when the Farm Bill passes within the next several months that federal support for the contracts will return.
“We’re ready for however it looks. We’re game for it.”
*Staff Writer Natalie Hanson reports on business and agriculture for The Press Democrat. She can be reached at natalie.hanson@pressdemocrat.com or at 619-665-5887. *