President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and freeze federal spending is wreaking havoc on the bottom lines of farmers all across the nation.
Prior to Trump ordering the closure of USAID and the firing of its employees – an act that was carried out by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency – the agency ran food aid, disaster relief and disease prevention programs in over 100 countries on a $40billion annual budget.
American farms supply 41 percent of the food that USAID then goes on to distribute around the world to populations often near starvation, according to a 2021 report by the Congressional Research Service.
Trump also de-fanged USAID through an executive order pausing all foreign aid for 90 days to make sure the money going out is consistent with US foreign policy. Two lawsuits were filed this week by nonprofits seeking to overturn the order, calling it an ‘unlawful and unconstitutional exercise’.
A disempowered USAID means thousands of farmers who once relied on the agency to buy food from them have lost a crucial segment of their business practically overnight.
A separate January 20 executive order from Trump cut off money for ‘climate smart’ infrastructure projects that the federal government was subsidizing through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
Farmers who signed cost-sharing contracts with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) are now out tens of thousands of dollars because they already spent money on environmentally-friendly upgrades to their land that the government has yet to reimburse them for.
Since Trump’s flurry of executive orders, farmers have also told DailyMail.com that loans from the Farm Service Administration have not come through, making it difficult for some to get their farms ready for spring planting.
The joint effort from President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to dismantle USAID has left thousands of farmers in the lurch. Many of them depend on USAID to buy their crops
Nick Levendofsky, an executive director with the Kansas Farmers Union, said farmers in his state ‘are waiting with bated breath’ to see if USAID can somehow be saved
Numerous federal judges have deemed Trump’s actions unconstitutional after lawsuits were filed by blue states claiming the president is violating Congress’s power of the purse.
Despite courts ordering Trump to unfreeze funds and immediately halt the layoffs of 2,200 employees at USAID, farmers are expressing unease over still not getting federal dollars they were counting on while also losing one of their biggest customers.
Nick Levendofsky, an executive director with the Kansas Farmers Union, said the farmers he represents ‘are waiting with bated breath’ to see if USAID can somehow be saved or rolled into another government agency.
‘Here in Kansas, we’re a major producer of grain sorghum, which is one of the main crops that is purchased for USAID, and in fact, a lot of the grain sorghum that is grown in Kansas goes directly into this program,’ Levendofsky told DailyMail.com.
Sorghum, sometimes called milo, is a type of grass that can feed livestock and can be made into flour.
Kansas leads in sorghum production by far, producing more than double the amount Texas does, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Food for Peace, USAID’s food assistance program, was the specific entity purchasing much of this sorghum before the White House shut down the agency.
Grain elevators all over Kansas (pictured) are filled to the brim with sorghum now that export markets are fading away
Getting rid of USAID has only exacerbated the oversupply, according to Kim Barnes, the CFO of the Pawnee County grain co-op in Kansas (Pictured: An Ethiopian woman stands next to sacks of wheat distributed by USAID)
Levendofsky explained that Kansas was already sitting on plenty of sorghum before this. But now, last year’s harvest is filling up the state’s grain elevators in a way that’s never been seen before.
Kim Barnes is the chief financial officer of the Pawnee County grain co-op, which buys crops from farmers it later sells to domestic and foreign purchasers.
He told DailyMail.com that the 1.7million bushels of sorghum currently in his elevators typically ‘would have all been gone by now’.
‘With no export market and now with no Food for Peace, there’s just no place for it to go. And we’re not the only elevator. It’s all over the state of Kansas,’ Barnes said.
On the national level, almost $500million of food sitting in ports, ships and warehouses is at risk of spoiling after Trump cut off funding for USAID, according to a February 10 report.
Paul Martin, the USAID inspector general behind the scathing assessment, was fired by Trump two days later.
When asked if Food for Peace had been the Pawnee County co-op’s main purchaser of sorghum, Barnes said, ‘very much so.’
On top of losing Food for Peace, Barnes also said the Chinese export market has completely slipped away in the last six to nine months.
Paul Martin, the USAID inspector general, said Trump’s dismantling of USAID has led to almost $500 million of food being at risk of spoilage. Trump fired him two days later
Levendofsky said farmers were already struggling, even before USAID went away. Low commodity prices and high input costs to run farms contributed to the hardship, he said
Trump first placed heavy tariffs on China in 2018 and ever since then, the country has been steadily buying fewer agricultural products from the US. Joe Biden, who once slammed Trump’s protectionist trade policies, kept most of his rival’s tariffs in place while he was president.
Experts expect China to continue buying less from the US now that Trump has slapped the country with a 10 percent across-the-board tariff, something China quickly responded to with tariffs of their own on American imports.
Levendofsky said farmers are already dealing with historically low commodity prices for things like corn and wheat. At the same time, the things they need to run their farms like seed, chemicals, fertilizer and fuel, are more expensive than ever.
‘Farmers are not making much, if any money. So they’re struggling. And they don’t need any more struggle added to this already tough situation,’ he said.
The efforts of farmers in both red and blue states have long been subsidized by tax dollars in the form of direct payments, loans from the USDA and crop insurance.
The idea is, it’s in no one’s best interest for farms to go out of business when everyone needs food.
But according to Will Westmoreland, a agroforestry farmer in Missouri and a longtime organizer for the Democratic party, small farms will eventually go under if they don’t receive their USDA loan money or don’t get reimbursed for work they already did through federal cost-sharing initiatives.
‘Farmers and ranchers are just going to be forced at some point to pay off these funds [they didn’t get], or to pay off these loans,’ he said.
‘And they’re going to have to do that by selling their cows, which they need for calf crops, or by selling off machinery or using money that they had set aside to pay for fertilizer and seed and inputs.’
Will Westmoreland, a agroforestry farmer in Missouri and a longtime organizer for the Democratic party, warned that many farms will go under if Trump’s freeze on federal funds persists
Iowa soybean farmers are collectively owed at least $11 million from the federal government after they signed contracts promising to convert to greener agricultural practices (Pictured: A soybean field in Iowa)
Westmoreland said the Iowa Soybean Association is in ‘panic mode’ as they wait for millions of dollars to come through from a five-year agreement it signed with the USDA.
‘Without reimbursement, participating farmers who are contractually owed $11million for practices implemented in 2024 will lose the investment they made in equipment and operations to implement new practices,’ the association wrote in a press release.
Individual Iowa farmers are owed sums as large as $22,700 for converting to greener agricultural practices such as not excessively tilling their land.
DailyMail.com approached the association for comment.
Missouri cattle rancher Skylar Holden is another farmer who had a cost-sharing contract with the USDA.
In December, he signed a $240,000 contract through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which helps farmers improve their water quality and soil conservation.
In numerous TikTok videos that have gone viral, Holden explained he fronted the cost of building fences and a well. He also implemented new seeding and irrigation practices.
‘Per the contract, I knew that I was going to get cost-sharing refunds on the stuff once completed, but now that it’s completed they’re saying that they’re unable to provide the funds because of the freeze on the Inflation Reduction Act funds,’ Holden said in a video.
Skylar Holden, who has gone viral on TikTok for sharing his struggles as a cattle rancher, said he could lose his farm if the government doesn’t hold up its end of the cost-sharing contract he signed
Now Holden is out the $80,000 he already spent on materials and labor he believed would be partially paid by the government.
Laura Beth Resnick, who runs a flower farm in Maryland, said the USDA agreed to cover half of a $72,900 solar panel installation, the Washington Post reported.
Despite signing a contract, she was told in late January that her reimbursement payment was rejected because of Trump’s executive order.
Levendofsky, who lives on a five-acre farm in north central Kansas, said he too applied for a Farm Service Administration program that would provide him partial funding to cut down dead trees and replace them with new, healthy trees.
Like Holden, he used the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and applied right before Trump was inaugurated in January.
‘I applied for a farm number that you have to have in order to qualify for these farm programs,’ Levendofsky said.
‘There’s some cost share involved, not a lot of money, but it helps, especially with the tree removal. …But I have yet to find out whether I even got a farm number. And you you don’t get access to those programs if you don’t have that number.’
Unlike Holden, who already spent money as part of the cost-sharing agreement, Levendofsky has yet to get started on chopping down the trees.
Both Holden and Levendofsky applied for the same program prior to Trump becoming president and have both experienced disruptions to it after he was sworn in
As widespread confusion persists, some farmers have expressed hope now that the courts are stepping in.
On January 31, US District Judge John J. McConnell, a Barack Obama appointee, sided with a coalition of 22 states that sued the Trump administration and temporarily blocked the federal funding freeze.
The judge cited a now-retracted memo from the Office of Management and Budget that directed federal agencies to ‘temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.’
Judge McConnell said on Monday that the Trump administration had violated his earlier order and once again instructed the government to ‘immediately restore frozen funding.’
McConnell said his temporary restraining order on Trump’s actions applied to the OMB memo that he said was rescinded ‘in-name only’ as well as the executive order that paused money for farmers.
The Trump administration told states prior to the ruling that it believed the executive order didn’t apply to certain environmental and infrastructure spending, but admitted that some payments were delayed for ‘operational and administrative reasons.’
This confusion is precisely the problem, according to Levendofsky.
‘There’s still a lot of confusion about what the executive order covers and what’s exempt and what’s not,’ he said.
Some farmers, even ones who are Republicans, are upset with the Trump administration for its handling of federal funds so far, Westmoreland told DailyMail.com
Both Levendofsky and Westmoreland told DailyMail.com that to their knowledge, farmers have not yet seen USDA money arriving in their accounts, even after the rulings against the White House.
‘I haven’t talked to anybody that’s received the funds, but I’ve talked to some farmers that have been told that the funds have been released,’ Westmoreland said.
‘What does that mean the funds have been released? To me, that’s kind of like the old axiom, the check is in the mail, you know? So, no, I haven’t heard of any dollars appearing in pockets.’
Levendofsky received an email Wednesday from Dãnia Davy, who runs an organization that helps farmers receive private and public financing for climate-related projects.
In it, Davy wrote that funding is still being withheld despite the court orders from Judge McConnell.
‘There continues to be confusion between the executive, judicial, federal and local branches of government agencies. As a result, conservation, climate, and other critical program funding continues to be withheld,’ Davy wrote in the email reviewed by DailyMail.com.
‘Groups with Federal funding should continue to remain compliant and document on-going requests for access to any program funding currently being withheld,’ she continued.
Westmoreland said the current state of affairs has some farmers who are die-hard Republicans upset with the Trump administration only weeks into its existence.
Data shows that most farming-dependent counties in the US – mostly clustered in the Midwest – overwhelmingly voted for Trump not just last year but in 2020 and 2016 as well. This has led to a lack of sympathy for farmers among leftists and liberals
‘I’m the only Democrat at the table sometimes,’ Westmoreland said. ‘Before all of these freezes went in place, I always heard from my Republican friends, “He’s not going to do any of these things to us. He’s only going to deport criminals. He’s not going to freeze funds for agriculture because he’s just going to eliminate government waste. And agricultural funds are not government waste.”‘
Data shows that the most farming-dependent counties in the US – mostly clustered in the Midwest – overwhelmingly voted for Trump not just last year but in 2020 and 2016 as well.
Now that some farmers have taken to social media to share how their livelihoods are being threatened by Trump’s policies, many liberals and leftists have flooded their comment sections with their go-to line of FAFO (f**k around and find out).
Holden, who has said he voted for Trump, is a prime example. When he released a video on TikTok last week asking people to ‘save my farm and many other farms,’ he got an avalanche of comments proclaiming he got what he voted for.
Levendofsky, who is not a Trump supporter, said he disagrees with this philosophy.
‘Yeah, they voted for the person, and yes, they voted for some of this person’s policies, but I don’t think they voted to take food out of hungry people’s mouths,’ Levendofsky said in reference to food aid that used to be administered by USAID.
‘And I don’t think they voted to end programs that give expanded markets to farmers across this country,’ he added.
Dissatisfied farmers need to reach out to their members of Congress, according to Levendofsky.
Farmers who rely on steady business from USAID may be encouraged by a bill making its way through Congress that would give the Food for Peace program a new home within the USDA (Pictured: Soybeans growing in an Iowa field)
‘If they’re struggling with getting payments through USDA, or if they’ve lost this market that’s important to them…then those members of Congress need to know that, or at least their staff need to know that,’ he said.
‘We’re doing everything we can as a farm organization to represent the best interest of farmers,’ he added.
Farmers who rely on steady business from USAID may be encouraged by a bill making its way through Congress that would give the Food for Peace program a new home within the USDA.
The bill was introduced Tuesday and has four Republican cosponsors in the House of Representatives.
Agriculture groups have already come out in droves to support the legislation, including the American Soybean Association (ASA) and National Sorghum Producers (NSP).
ASA President Caleb Ragland said the bill will ‘ensure US grown commodities’ will ‘continue to feed vulnerable populations around the globe.’
Amy France, a chairwoman at NSP said: ‘National Sorghum Producers supports this legislation that would move US food aid programs under the US Department of Agriculture.’
She added that the move ‘makes sense and would ensure the long-term viability and success of these programs by continuing to provide a critical market for American sorghum farmers and the ability to move grain from our fields to the hands of those in need around the world.’
