South Dakota News Watch
BOX ELDER, S.D. – Montana Roem is worried that a proposed $1 billion cut to federal food programs that aid schools and charities will hurt her family on two fronts.
As she waited in a line of cars at a Feeding South Dakota mobile food bank in Box Elder on March 27, Roem said she was well aware of the U.S. Department of Agriculture move to eliminate two programs that paid for locally grown foods to be provided to food banks and for school meals across the U.S.
Taken together, she said, the proposals will make it harder for her to get food staples for her family and make it more difficult for her son to get healthy meals at school.
“It seems like cutting food banks is just the tip of the iceberg because now it’s lunches at schools being cut,” said Roem, 54, who lives on a low income while raising an 11-year-old boy with special needs. “I wonder what kind of country we live in because a lot of us are going to end up homeless on the streets.”
The outcomes of the proposed cuts could be far reaching in South Dakota, with less food being provided to charities and schools. Eliminating the programs will also reduce federal spending at roughly 55 farms in the state, many of them smaller operations that shipped fresh foods to schools, food banks and tribal charities.
“Those dollars went directly to the producers, and the food went directly to people facing hunger,” said Stacey Andernacht, vice president of public affairs at Feeding South Dakota, the state’s leading charitable food provider.
In mid-March, the USDA said it was eliminating 2025 funding of two pandemic-era initiatives: the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) and Local Food for Schools (LFS) programs, which operated in 40 states, including South Dakota.
Taken together, the initiatives approved under former President Joe Biden would have paid U.S. farmers more than $1 billion to supply fresh, locally grown foods to food banks, pantries and schools.
In a statement sent to News Watch, a USDA spokesperson said the agency will fund the LFPA through the end of the current funding period, adding that it is making “a return to long-term, fiscally responsible initiatives.”
The spokesperson said that 16 other USDA food programs remain in place, noting that “USDA is prioritizing stable, proven solutions that deliver lasting impact. The COVID era is over — USDA’s approach to nutrition programs will reflect that reality moving forward.”
The cuts are part of a widespread effort by the Trump administration and its Office of Government Efficiency to reduce federal spending and identify and eliminate waste.
Data from Feeding South Dakota shows that the number of charitable meals provided by the agency has risen by 6% over the past year. The agency has seen attendance at mobile food pantries jump by 17% this fiscal year. And the number of food backpacks it provides to children jumped by 11%. Meals provided to school pantries also rose by 5% this year, agency data shows.
James Lay, 67, came to the Feeding South Dakota mobile food pantry in Box Elder on March 27 with son Sam, 27, to get some extra food for the month. “I always found life to be tough enough already,” said Lay, who lives in Rapid City. “Costs are up, expenses are up and wages are down,” he said.
Andernacht said Feeding South Dakota will lose $1.2 million in funding it expected to receive from the LFPA program this year, which equates to about 1% of the agency’s annual food budget. However, she said, the USDA also has paused funding under The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which could reduce Feeding South Dakota’s food inventory by almost 14% moving forward, she said.
Some South Dakota school districts have seen the effects of the inability of parents to pay for school meals for their children. Several districts are running deficits as they try to keep feeding students who don’t qualify for free lunches.
Meade County Schools, facing an unpaid student meal balance of about $23,000, announced this month that it would match future parent payments for school lunches due to an anonymous donation of $115,000 made through the Black Hills Area Community Foundation.
The loss of LFPA funding will place a new burden on the Mitchell Food Pantry, which used the funding to pay area farmers to provide milk to about 400 children a month, Andernacht said.
Eliminating the funding will also make it harder for the food pantry in Brookings to provide low-income families with fresh meats and vegetables raised at local farms, said Bill Alsaker, advisory committee member at Feeding Brookings.
“It’s something we’ve had for the last couple years and it was very helpful for us,” Alsaker said.
The LFPA was a boost to the bottom line of dozens of South Dakota farms, many of them small specialty producers who don’t have the benefit of operating with large economies of scale.
Peggy Martin, co-owner of Cedar Creek Gardens in Mellette County, said the federal program paid her business to provide fresh meats and vegetables to schools and local pantries, including on the Rosebud, Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River Indian reservations.
But the loss of federal funding will likely result in less fresh food being provided to low-income people throughout the central South Dakota area she serves. Martin said the LFPA funding also allowed for greater stability at her farm southeast of Belvidere and enabled some expansion.
“It was a great avenue for many of us to ramp up production a little bit because you don’t have to have acres and acres in production to help build the resiliency of the local food chain.”
This story was produced by South Dakota News Watch, an independent, nonprofit organization. Read more stories and donate at sdnewswatch.org and sign up for an email to get stories when they’re published. Contact Bart Pfankuch at [email protected].