Trump administration cuts to school nutrition program will hurt New Jersey kids, farmers

A March spending cut by the Trump administration will mean about $26 million less in funding for programs designed to purchase locally sourced foods for New Jersey kids and low-income families. On July 4, President Donald Trump signed a budget plan into law that includes Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cuts that experts say will also reduce access to healthy meals for New Jersey school children.

Last year, under President Joe Biden, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced $1.13 billion in fiscal year 2025 funds for a pair of programs to help schools, child care centers, and food banks obtain foods from local producers. After schools and other facilities had begun working out arrangements with local farmers, the Trump administration informed them on March 7 that the programs had been canceled.

A USDA spokesperson told Politico that the $660 million Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program and the $472 million Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program would be canceled because “[t]hese programs, created under the former Administration via Executive authority, no longer effectuate the goals of the agency.”

New Jersey had been set to receive more than $16 million in fiscal year 2025 from the Local Food for Schools program and about $9.9 million from the Local Food Purchase Assistance program.

The USDA did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins told Fox News on March 11 that these were “COVID-era programs” and were not reaching their intended targets, saying that the Biden administration was “trying to spend more and more money”: “Right now, from what we are viewing, that program was nonessential, that it was a new program, and that it was an effort by the Left to continue spending taxpayer dollars that were not necessary.”

Keith Leder is president of the New Jersey School Nutrition Association and works for Maschio’s Food Services, a food service management company that oversees about 200 New Jersey school districts. 

In a phone interview, he told the New Jersey Independent that the Local Food for Schools program had been a great asset for New Jersey kids and food producers.

“Many of the school districts in the state of New Jersey were receiving these funds to be able to purchase not only fresh local produce, but proteins as well — things like beef and chicken and pork — to be able to provide those products to local schools in the state to basically supplement the money that the schools were spending on other items,” Leder said. “What this did is not only provide these items to our students, which was outstanding, but it also kept a lot of our local farms in business, gave them the ability to expand on the services that they were providing. So at this point, when we’re losing these funds, it’s not only taking away from our kids, but it’s taking away from our local economy.”

Leder said that New Jersey farmers had expanded their fields and staff based on their expectations that the program would be funded and are now left with extra space and layoffs. 

“So it’s kind of a double whammy on both ends. It’s taken away from students and it’s taken away from local business. One of the things I like to bring up a lot, one of the people I work with, actually, in his school district was working with a local pizza place to be able to provide pizza dough into his school districts to provide a local dough for the students. They’d make pizza with it. They were basically keeping this pizza place in business. And now that they’re losing these funds, it’s very likely that, unfortunately, this location is going to have to close because it doesn’t have the business it needs to survive,” he said.

Beth Feehan, a sales territory manager with Zone 7, a wholesale food distributor in Ringoes, New Jersey, said in an interview that the company had provided poultry, beef, oatmeal, rice, crushed tomatoes, and many kinds of vegetables to New Jersey schools through the Local Food for Schools program. 

“There’s no sane reason why this funding should be cut,” Feehan said. “It hurts our farms. It hurts the local economies that it supports, and it definitely cut short the ability for schools to serve seasonal food in their meal programs.”

Lima Family Farms in Hillsborough sells produce, pork, poultry, and grass-fed beef. Kate Kadri, who runs operations and business development for the farm, said the Local Food for Schools funding allowed the farm to provide ground beef to New Jersey schools and meant a predictable and steady market for those products.

“Ground beef is almost 50% of the animal. You only get so many steaks and roasts, but a large portion of it is just ground beef, and so we can only sell so much ground beef in the store. So we were left over with ground beef that we had to move and we sell to some restaurants and some other home deliveries,” Kadri said. Working with Zone 7 to provide ground beef for schools, she said, was great for the business. “It worked out well for us, because we would know exactly what we were processing each week. And we knew the end user.”

Leder noted that a bill is pending in the New Jersey Legislature to fund the program on the state level, but that it is a large hole for the state to fill.

“School Food Service operations run on tight budgets,” said Rose Chamberlain, division director at the New Jersey Department of Agriculture Division of Food and Nutrition in an email. “The federal funding provides per meal reimbursements that contribute towards nutritious meals and the operational costs surrounding the program.”

On July 4, Trump signed his massive budget package into law, slashing about $1 trillion from Medicaid and other health care programs and cutting about $186 billion from the SNAP program over a decade, while extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Jordan Baker, senior communications manager for the nonpartisan Food Research & Action Center, said in an email that while the law does not directly cut school nutrition, “cuts to SNAP and Medicaid are cuts to school meals.”

“Children are directly certified for free school meals if their household participates in SNAP, and most states directly certify children for free and/or reduced-price school meals using Medicaid data and a means test,” Baker said. “Since Congress cut SNAP or Medicaid, children could lose their direct connection to free or reduced-price school meals and will have to complete a school meal application. This additional paperwork would burden families and school nutrition staff, and some eligible children will fall through the cracks.“

Bruce Lesley, president of the bipartisan advocacy group First Focus on Children, said in a phone interview that the additional red tape will mean New Jersey kids eligible for free meals at school and over the summer will lose them.

“Let’s say you lost your SNAP in February,” Lesley said. “Schools try to enroll people in September, unless there is this auto enrollment provision. So you would have to go in and apply separately. Families work. People work. I mean, that’s the whole point. That’s what they’re saying, work requirements. Well, how am I now supposed to go in? School is 9:00 to 3:30. How am I supposed to get my kid enrolled in the school meals program that you just kicked them off of?”

“It’s sad,” Lesley added. “It really is, and it’s an administration who claims that what they want to do is get rid of bureaucracy, but they’re imposing it big-time on children and families.”