DEKALB – The federal government’s cuts to the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program will have a direct impact locally. Heather Edwards, Executive Director of Rooted For Good, said that their organization was chosen as a lead agency for the program and was awarded over $1.5 million. The DeKalb organization supported local farmers by purchasing produce, dairy, and meat at a fair market value.
“There are 15 farmers that we’ve been working with,” she said. “They are all from the state of Illinois. There are many that are very close that live in DeKalb County”
Rooted For Good distributes thousands of pounds of food to 23 organizations, including DeKalb County food pantries, social service agencies, and two Kane County food pantries. Edwards said those organizations serve over 13,000 households experiencing food insecurity with a variety of food choices.
“We’ve been getting ground beef, pork, eggs.” Edwards said. “We’ve been getting yogurt, sour cream. During the growing season we were getting tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, radishes, beets, you know, broccoli. You know, the list goes on.”
Mei Shao is a small mushroom farmer in Sycamore who has been directly impacted by these cuts. Her Sunny Oaks Farm is still trying to recover from a big loss in 2024.
“We had a fire,” Shao said. “I lost all the equipment, our only big warehouse, and all the refrigeration system for the mushroom. It was devastated last year.”
The program that sourced locally grown food provided her much needed income.
“With this program we continued to produce mushrooms and they really helped us survive. But now, suddenly they can switch off our lifeline. It’s tough.”
Rooted For Good said they will not be able to provide the remaining portion of the now defunded grant, around $400,000, to their suppliers.
“Unfortunately, we are not able to continue buying that product without the funding,” Edwards said. “It is going to hurt some of these farmers that had been planning, you know, month to month on us buying whatever that product was.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has told states it will not reimburse them for any costs for cut programs dating back to when Trump took office on January 20th, which means Rooted For Good will not get reimbursed for the over $50,000 they spent in February.
An online fundraiser has already raised nearly $3,500 to help continue the mission of distributing locally grown food to those in need.
For farmers like Mei Shao, who fears some of her mushroom crop may go to waste, this is a very painful decision made by the USDA.
“It really hurt us,” she said. “I hope the government could reconsider, you know, what to be cut, what not to be cut, you know, give us farmers a break.”
