The program, which supports business development for local and regional farms, has been put on ice since the Trump administration took office.
X
The program, which supports business development for local and regional farms, has been put on ice since the Trump administration took office.
April 16, 2025
David Wise, co-owner of Native Wise LLC in Minnesota with his wife, Patra, has been raising bison in recent years to bring local food to residents. (Photo credit: Scott Streble)
July 15, 2025 Update: The USDA announced today it has cancelled the Regional Food Business Centers program.
Expand your understanding of food systems as a Civil Eats member. Enjoy unlimited access to our groundbreaking reporting, engage with experts, and connect with a community of changemakers.
Already a member?
Login
For the past five years, Patra and David Wise have been growing their farm business, Native Wise, to sell vegetables, wild rice, and honey to their local community in Northeastern Minnesota. In 2021, they added a herd of bison on family land they had acquired within the Fond du Lac Reservation, a step they were particularly excited about since it represented the first time bison were returned to the tribal lands in about 150 years.
However, processing the animals in order to sell the meat locally has been a challenge: The couple currently has to haul the animals to a slaughter facility about four hours away, which is both time-consuming and hard on the bison. So, they’ve been working toward setting up their own local processing.
Last year, they got a boost when the North Central USDA Regional Food Business Center awarded them a $50,000 Business Builder Grant to pay for crucial pieces of equipment. So far, they’ve purchased an industrial cooler-freezer combo that will allow them to store meat for customers until they come to the farm to pick it up.
“We wouldn’t be able to do the farm-to-consumer processing without that type of a freezer,” said Patra Wise, adding that it would have been nearly impossible for them to afford such an expensive piece of equipment without the grant.
“You sign a contract and then you’re trusting the government that they’re going to honor their end.”
Wise was about to purchase a few smaller pieces of equipment with the remaining grant funds, which farmers and entrepreneurs receive by requesting reimbursements, when she heard, at the end of January, that all payments were on hold. She was shocked, she said, because the grant had already been awarded.
“You sign a contract and then you’re trusting the government that they’re going to honor their end,” she said. “For a small farm, that’s life or death, basically, for the business.”
Like many other U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs that support local and regional farms, the Regional Food Business Centers have been put on ice since the Trump administration took office.
In May 2023, the USDA awarded grant funding to local organizations like nonprofits and universities to run the business centers. The centers use that funding to support the local food economy, including by issuing smaller sub-grants to farmers and food businesses like Native Wise.
With $360 million awarded, the Regional Food Business Centers program represents a small slice of USDA spending, so has attracted less attention than bigger projects like the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. (USDA canceled that program this week, but is allowing some projects to continue if they meet new criteria.)
However, the 12 centers have a wide reach, since they were set up to be hubs of business development activity within rural communities across the country. With funding paused, partnerships they’ve formed to provide technical assistance to farms and food businesses have been disrupted, as have grant dollars promised to local farmers and food businesses like Native Wise.
Because the projects were intentionally crafted to build the connective tissue that local supply chains rely on, a break in the chain has larger ripple effects. For example, one of the North Central Regional Food Business Center’s other grants went to a kitchen facility in Fargo, North Dakota. Until payments were paused, the facility was using its grant funding to expand its kitchen space, which would have enabled more farms and small food businesses to cook and process there to bring products to market.
“So, it’s not just about the awardee, it’s about everyone around them, too,” said Candice Zimmerman, a regional development planner at Region Five Development Commission, an economic development organization that runs the North Central Center, which serves Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
Last week, nine of the 12 organizations running the centers sent a letter to members of Congress highlighting the impact of the work they’re doing, explaining that they are not getting reimbursed for money already spent based on their USDA contracts, and pleading for help. The letter was shared with Civil Eats.
“If there ever is a program that really deserves bipartisan support across the spectrum, it’s this program,” Paul Freedman, the director of the Appalachia Regional Food Business Center, which supports food producers across seven states from Pennsylvania to Tennessee, told Civil Eats. “Our middle name is business. Our goal here is to help businesses bring food to market so that it’s available at a fair price and so that producers, processors, and farmers can actually make a living doing this.”
In response to increasing food-system consolidation and the supply chain shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, President Biden’s USDA created a suite of new programs with the intention of building back what policy wonks call the “mid-tier” of the food system. It’s the landscape of farms and food businesses that support regional wealth and that have been the most hollowed out over the past several decades as corporate consolidation has pushed for a “get big or get out” farm economy.
“If there ever is a program that really deserves bipartisan support across the spectrum, it’s this program.”
Biden’s USDA wanted to put some of the work of building back those regional markets onto local organizations that might better understand each region’s unique needs. A former USDA official who worked on the program—who did not want to be identified because of current policy work she is engaged with—used an analogy: Just like the local agents of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service helped growers understand their particular soil profiles, the Regional Food Business Centers would help farmers understand, access, and build local markets.
The USDA tasked the centers with coordinating regional food efforts, offering comprehensive technical support, and providing small financial grants to further build local food capacity. “Success will be if we’re able to create additional market opportunities so that mid- and small-sized operators still have a chance of staying in the business,” former Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told Civil Eats at the time.
Five-year grant agreements to 12 centers were finalized in 2023. In an October 2024 progress report, the USDA reported that as a result, 2,800 individuals received technical assistance, 1,500 new partnerships were formed, and 287 businesses reported increased revenue.
In the letter to lawmakers, the Northwest and Rocky Mountain Regional Food Business Center—which serves Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Oregon—reported that in its first year, its technical assistance programs helped establish 30 new companies, and 50 farms and businesses that worked with the center reported increased sales. The center cited its support of the development of Wyoming’s Food Freedom Markets, which one dairy farm reported enabled it to increase sales four-fold.
Because the Northwest Center is run by Colorado State University, it is continuing its work and honoring contract payments despite the current lack of USDA reimbursement, with staff hoping funding will resume soon.
When the Trump administration took office, the USDA stopped paying Regional Food Business Center grantees for any work done after January 20. For the North Central Center, the freeze has been devastating.
“We’re not getting paid, and we’re not being told when that review will be done,” said Cheryal Lee Hills, executive director of the Region Five Development Commission.
In addition to not being able to reimburse grantees like Native Wise for work done under already-signed grant contracts, Hills had to cancel 31 subcontracts to organizations working with the center to provide technical assistance across Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota. That assistance might look like helping farmers market their foods, meet food safety requirements, or access capital to grow.
Some of those organizations have had to lay off staff as a result, Hills said. Now, with more than three years left on their contract, the organization is essentially treading water and isn’t getting any information from the USDA as to what might happen.
The USDA did not respond to questions about the freeze, its impacts, or whether the Regional Food Business Center program might be cancelled.
“I don’t have a good answer of how long we can hold out,” Hills said. “I’m hoping that they just either pay us . . . or terminate the thing so that we can all move on with our lives, because right now, it’s like we’ve been cut by a knife, and we don’t know how bad we’re going to bleed or for how long.”
One of the explicit aims of the project was also for the USDA to reach farmers and food businesses that historically had trouble accessing its programs and services. That could mean small, diversified farms that don’t fit the commodity mold, or Black farmers who faced past discrimination. With the pause and confusion, Hills said, many of those who are new to working with USDA grants are now demoralized, and even for those who have long accessed USDA’s services, confidence in the agency is plummeting.
When the Trump administration took office, the USDA stopped paying Regional Food Business Center grantees for any work done after January 20.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to apply for another USDA grant,” she said.
The Appalachia Center was not as far along in its work. Last fall, it closed the first round of its Business Builder Grants, selected 62 as awardees, and then sent the list to the USDA early this year for approval. Among those on the list are grain farmers who want to sell more of their grains directly to their communities and a food business working to more effectively process pawpaws. Now, they’re all in limbo.
Since the grants hadn’t been finalized, none of the farmers have spent money yet, so are not waiting for payments. Still, Appalachia Center Director Paul Freedman said the grants are time sensitive. Many of the applications included detailed cost estimates that depend on equipment pricing that changes over time. And the farmers are starting the season without knowing, now, if they’ll be expected, later, to start the projects and honor the contracts. Freedman has also paused a second round of Business Builder Grant applications and has stopped paying the Center’s 17 partner organizations for technical assistance.
“The longer it goes, at some point, more and more staff and more and more [of those] partners fall off,” he said. In other words, the longer his center is unable to get reimbursed for its work, the harder it is to keep supporting local farms and food businesses—who may have to call it quits on working with the center. Freedman said that moment feels imminent.
It’s a shame, he said, because one of things he thinks makes the Regional Food Business Centers effective is that each region is able to come up with its own “unique solutions to unique problems.”
In Ohio, that might mean helping an orchard get into cider production to boost revenue. On tribal lands in Minnesota, it might mean building the infrastructure to process bison.
What the centers have in common, said Freedman, is that they’re all working to counter the extractive forces like corporate consolidation that have long pushed farmers to hang up their hoes. “[The Regional Food Business Centers help] to overcome that and make small farms viable, and by doing so you’re getting more local food, which makes us more resilient, whether there’s a natural disaster, another recession, another—heaven forbid—a pandemic. It isn’t a blue or red issue.”
April 17, 2025 Update: This story has been updated to include the status of the Northwest and Rocky Mountain Regional Food Business Center’s work.
July 30, 2025
From Oklahoma to D.C., a food activist works to ensure that communities can protect their food systems and their future.
The Northwest Rocky Mountain Regional Food Business Center, through the leadership of Colorado State University, is honoring all contract payments, regardless of USDA reimbursement status. Work in this region is continuing with the hope that the freeze will thaw and the critical work of supporting supply chains will resume quickly.
You can see our upcoming technical assistance and events here - https://nwrockymountainregionalfoodbusiness.com/news/