Trump radically remade the US food system in just 100 days

This story is part of a Grist package examining how President Trump’s first 100 days in office have reshaped climate and environmental policy in the U.S.

Despite its widespread perception, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is involved in much more than farming. The federal agency, established in 1862, is made up of 29 subagencies and offices and just last year was staffed by nearly 100,000 employees. It has an annual budget of hundreds of billions of dollars. Altogether it administers funding, technical support, and regulations for: international trade, food assistance, forest and grasslands management, livestock rearing, global scientific research, economic data, land conservation, rural housing, disaster aid, water management, startup capital, crop insurance, food safety, and plant health. 

In just about 100 days, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins have significantly constrained that breadth of work. 

Since Trump’s inauguration, the inner workings of the agency have been in a constant state of flux — thousands of staffers were terminated only to be temporarily reinstated; entire programs stripped down; a grant freeze crippled state, regional, and local food systems that rely on federal funding. 

What’s more, the USDA has broadly scrapped equity and climate resilience Biden-era scoring criteria from dozens of programs across multiple subagencies by banning language like “people of color” and “climate change” and tightened eligibility requirements for food benefits. The agency has also announced the cancellation of environmental protections against logging to ramp up timber production, escalated trade tensions with Mexico, eradicated food safety processes like limiting salmonella levels in raw poultry, and begun rolling back worker protections in meat processing plants.  

In order to report on the full scope of the downstream impacts of these actions, Grist interviewed farmers, food businesses, and agricultural nonprofits across seven states about what the first 100 days of the administration has looked like for them. Nearly all of them told Grist that the agriculture department’s various funding cuts and decisions, as well as the moves to shrink its workforce capacity, have changed how much trust they have in the agency — and, by extension, the federal government. 

Food policy analysts and experts throughout the nation also told Grist that this swift transformation of the USDA is unprecedented.

“Multiple parts of our food systems are now under attack,” said Teon Hayes, a policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy. At the same time, food prices and overall costs of living are continuing to rise. The result, she fears, will be escalating hunger and poverty, which will “come at the expense of Black and brown communities, immigrants, and other historically marginalized groups.”

Elizabeth Lower-Basch, who served on the USDA Equity Commission during the Biden administration, called the decisions made by the USDA in the last 100 days “deeply disheartening” and “unprecedented, even when you compare it to the last Trump administration.” 

It is of significant consequence to note that the money being withheld from grant programs isn’t merely not being spent. Experts say the agency is taking support away from local and regional food systems while at the same time showering industrial agricultural operations with billions of dollars, eliminating nutrition safety nets, and rolling back environmental protections. How will this change the fabric of the nation’s food supply? 

As Rollins and Trump charge forward in undoing how the federal government has long supported those who grow and sell our food, and climate change continues to deepen inequities and vulnerabilities in that very supply chain, one thing is obvious: The USDA, and the communities that rely on it, won’t look the same once they’re done.

January 20

During his first week back in the Oval Office, President Trump issued a series of executive orders that would have far-reaching effects across the nation’s food and farming systems. The first of these actions set out to undo efforts by President Joe Biden to prioritize diversity and equity across the federal government. Signed on January 20, the order “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing” mandated federal agencies terminate all equity-related plans, programs, grants and contracts within 60 days. 

Accordingly, on January 27, the White House Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, released a memo calling for a temporary halt to all federal grants and loans. Agencies promptly scrambled to comply. 

The next day, Hannah Smith-Brubaker, the executive director at Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, or Pasa, reached out to the organization’s national program officer at the USDA. After hearing about the OMB memo, she was worried about the status of their largest grant — over $55 million that they were awarded through the agency’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program to provide financial support and technical assistance to some 2,000 farmers in 15 states as they adopt sustainable agricultural practices like cover cropping, silvopasture, and prescribed grazing. (Last year, the USDA increased the award to $59.5 million.) According to the terms of the grant, the organization received some of the money as reimbursements, while other funding was used to pay for expenses in advance. Smith-Brubaker asked the program officer whether they should proceed with the work they had planned. The officer didn’t answer directly, but told them that they were waiting on additional guidance.

Barely two days after it issued the memo, the OMB walked its guidance back after a federal judge blocked it. But much damage was already done: Federal payments to recipients were halted and agencies had begun reviewing existing grants for compliance with the executive order.

No one at the USDA ever officially notified Pasa that their grant was frozen, according to Smith-Brubaker, but within days of the initial memo, the online payment portal for the grant was down. She had to read between the lines. 

February 13 

Brooke Rollins, a longtime Trump ally who served in several roles in his first administration, was sworn in as the 33rd Secretary of Agriculture. Within 24 hours, thousands of workers were fired across all of the agency’s departments and offices, a figure that would climb to nearly 6,000 by the end of the month. At least 10 percent of employees at the Agricultural Research Service were laid off, an estimated 1,200 Natural Resources Conservation Service employees are believed to have lost their jobs, and hundreds of loan officers at the Farm Service Agency were let go. Thousands of other workers took buyouts. 

Following this initial set of layoffs, the U.S. Forest Service dramatically downsized its workforce, cutting about 10 percent of its workers, including around 700 people who make up the backbone of the country’s wildland firefighting force. Job cuts at the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service affected officials researching the bird flu outbreak in the nation’s poultry supply chain that has decimated poultry flocks and skyrocketed egg prices at the supermarket, and prompted the departure of several hundred scientists working to prevent disease and invasive pests outbreaks. 

In time, after legal opposition, some USDA staffers would be reinstated to their positions, albeit many temporarily. Others still remain on paid leave and have not been invited back into workspaces. Because of the constant fluctuations, a verifiable, up-to-date public count of the agency’s laid-off workforce does not exist. 

Rodger Cooley, executive director at Chicago Food Policy Action Council, described these “challenges created by the personnel cuts,” as “a huge loss,” especially for rural communities and the agricultural workforce in those places. Meanwhile, said Cooley, the situation is “changing everyday…the biggest issues have been the unknown, and the constant transitions and shifts, trying to monitor what’s going on,” he said. “Information has been inconsistent and hard to know.”  

Looking back, it’s all too clear that the layoffs were just an early signal of the Trump administration’s intentions to overhaul the USDA. Efficiency — the tech-world mantra heralded by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — would also come to justify the agency’s decisions about its vast funding apparatus. That in addition to, the Trump administration has claimed, rooting out corruption and overspending.

In the process, the administration has sped up a deepening trend of farm consolidation, and triggered a domino effect that has been felt throughout the whole food supply chain. 

February 20 

Secretary Rollins announced the release of $20 million in conservation funding that had been withheld from recipients because of the agency’s ongoing review. The tranche of funding represented less than one percent of money owed. All the while, farmers from coast to coast were left waiting on payments and reimbursements, with no clarity on when — and even if — they would get their money. 

“Black box” is how National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition policy specialist Richa Patel described the state of communications from the agency under the new administration. “There’s so little communication and transparency as to how decisions are being made,” said Patel, “and it’s in a field especially where the timing throughout the year is incredibly important.” 

Patel said the coalition, which works with rural farmers nationwide, has been consistently trying to get information however they can, including from the USDA itself. “We’re trying to go through our members of Congress, constituents are reaching out, and it’s very difficult to get answers.”

March 10 

The USDA sent shockwaves throughout the country when it ended future rounds of funding through the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program. The two programs were slated to dole out $1.13 billion to states, tribes, and territories this fiscal year, which would then trickle down to emergency food providers, childcare centers, and schools. 

Without its portion of that funding, a program, in Duffield, Virginia, that provided free, fresh food boxes to those facing food insecurity was forced to shutter.  

In Athens County, Ohio, one food hub is now stuck bearing similar burdens. Over the last two or so years, Shagbark Seed & Mill has distributed nearly 300,000 pounds of locally-grown goods like organic black beans to 12 food banks across the region, which was made possible because of the funding pot. Michelle Ajamian, the principal owner, and her team are confronting what the loss of it means for their work. “We’re going to close 2025 in the red. We’re going to have major losses in revenue,” said Ajamian. “I really like to see the silver lining, and I’m having a hard time doing that here.”

“I mean, I’m just up really late at night and really early in the morning working on this and thinking ‘Okay, how are we going to pivot? How are we going to sell the crop that we have promised to buy? How are we going to keep people employed? How are we going to feed people in our community?’” she said. “This is devastating. And I don’t use that word lightly.”

For Midnight Sun Farm in Capron, Illinois, a village of 1,300, the future appears volatile. A little more than a year ago, the small farm, run by Becky Stark and her husband Nicholas, began to sell their fresh goods like cabbage, turnips, okra, free-range eggs, and tomatoes to a local food pantry. In that time, they provided food for hundreds of community members in need. Those sales were only made possible through the USDA’s local food system grants. 

The fact that the agency established the program to begin with had given Stark “a lot of hope for the future of the USDA.” It was, she said, evidence that the government was finally reaching farmers who have traditionally not received assistance from agencies like the USDA because they don’t have a big enough plot of land or weren’t commodity crop producers. “This was a way where money from the USDA was getting directly to small farmers like me,” said Stark. “This money — it stays in the rural community. It allows us to be in a place where we can raise our children, and where other people can raise their children, with enough food.”

At the end of last year, the two had decided to scale up the amount of crops they would provide the food hub. They had their plan in place and their seeds bought. “And then March happened,” she said. 

March 18

Shortly after cancelling that billion-dollar funding stream, Rollins announced that the USDA was issuing up to $10 billion of assistance directly to the nation’s agricultural producers. But there was a catch: The money — just a third of the disaster assistance Congress had approved — was only intended for farmers growing traditional commodities, such as corn, cotton, and soybeans. Payouts were determined by multiplying a flat commodity rate, based on calculated economic loss, with acres planted. The bigger the farm, the bigger the bailout. 

“I got, like, $160,” said Thomas Eich, a small farmer in Walkerton, Indiana. “I was so insulted.” 

Following the USDA’s announcement, Eich received a letter from the agency, which included a payment application form. Instead of returning the form, he burned it. “I probably shouldn’t have. I need that 160 bucks,” he said. “But I was so mad I just burned it.”

Last year, just one of the food banks Eich supplied earned him about $3,500 for a single bulk order of potatoes, green onions, and beans, which was only made possible through USDA grants that are now cancelled. 

The federal funding freeze and the USDA’s decision to terminate local food programs almost forced Eich into insolvency. In order to pay suppliers and bills, Eich has been forced to take out private loans and turn to family members for financial help. If it wasn’t for that support network, he says his business would have gone under by now.

To try and make up for the losses, which represent around 42 percent of the farm’s projected 2025 sales, Eich has bumped up the number of farmers’ markets they set up at. But the volume of sales isn’t close to the same, and the income nowhere near as consistent. “If we’re there on a Saturday and a thunderstorm comes through, then they shut the market down, and we all go home,” he said. “And now I’ve spent money driving there and setting up to make no money.”

The administration’s decisions, said Eich, “definitely destroyed their credibility” and his willingness to participate in the programs should this or the next administration bring them back. Seeing the USDA continue to release subsidies for the biggest farm businesses, while curbing funding pots used to uplift local farming and food systems, only pours salt on the wound. “How is it going to be worth putting the faith into that, investing into them again, to have the rug pulled out from underneath you?” 

March 19 

Pasa, alongside 10 other community organizations and six U.S. cities, filed a lawsuit against Trump, the USDA, Rollins, and several other federal agencies. The plaintiffs are challenging the legal authority of the government’s grant funding freeze. They are not seeking punitive damages, but rather to be paid for the expenses under these programs that they have already incurred and a reinstatement of the programs and award amounts.

Though Smith-Brubaker is “pretty confident” they will win the case, she’s less certain it will change anything, citing the escalating friction between Trump’s executive branch and the nation’s judicial branch. 

“How is it possible that two years into a five-year grant, just because there was an administration change, everything that had been promised to these farmers can just be cut off?” said Smith-Brubaker. “It’s been months of just utter confusion and rollercoasters and thinking things were moving ahead and then finding out they weren’t.”

Between late March and early April, “we had to use every last penny of our reserve funds just to get through about a three-week period,” she continued. 

Similarly, a coalition in Charleston, West Virginia, which isn’t a party to the Pasa lawsuit, began confronting what they fear may be lasting impacts on their farmer relationships. The funding freeze has left the team at the West Virginia Food & Farm Coalition with a stack of unpaid bills and increasingly frustrated vendors and suppliers. The decisions by the administration, said executive director Spencer Moss, have also delayed their project launches, backed up programs, and perhaps most importantly, eroded farmer trust. 

March 24

State agencies were notified by the USDA that the $10 million that Congress authorized to help bring fresh food to school cafeterias had been cancelled. 

Then, the next day, the USDA announced that it would release some of the grant money that it had frozen earlier in the year. It was the agency’s first real public move regarding gridlocked funding. But, once again, there was a catch.

In the announcement, the USDA invited organizations that had been awarded money through one of three clean-energy programs to voluntarily revise their proposals to align with Trump’s executive order by “eliminating Biden-era DEIA and climate mandates embedded in previous proposals.” 

By this point, however, some of the organizations had already laid off employees, delayed projects, or shut down entirely. Meanwhile, dozens of other grants remained locked in limbo. 

Heading into the year, the nonprofit Rhode Island Food Policy Council, which helps farmers and food businesses get started and expand their work, was a team of eight. Because of the freeze, they had to lay off three employees — a decision executive director Nessa Richman described as “heartbreaking” and “gut-wrenching” — while also scrapping plans to hire additional team members. 

April 7

Several USDA officials shared the agency’s plans to slash its D.C. headquarters and “relocate those it does not layoff,” as reported by Government Executive. By this point in Trump’s second term, at least 16,000 of the USDA’s employees have volunteered for a deferred resignation. 

April 14 

Following almost three months of paused payments, the USDA announced the “cancellation” of the climate-smart commodities program — the pool of money that held a portion of what Pasa was suing to be released. In total, the climate-smart commodities program had earmarked nearly $3.1 billion for 135 projects. 

The term “cancel,” in any case, is something of a misnomer. In the same announcement, the agency noted its plan to review existing projects under new scoring criteria to ensure they align with the administration’s priorities and create an entirely new program to distribute the money. That criteria now requires applicants to ensure that a minimum of 65 percent of their funds go directly to farmers, that they enrolled at least one farmer in their program by December 31, 2024, and that they have made a payment to at least one farmer by that same date.   

Later that day, the Pasa team received an email, shared with Grist, from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service that told them the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant program was being “relaunched” and their agreement was being “reviewed” to ensure it aligned with the administration’s new criteria.

About two hours after that, they received a second email. Because Pasa, as the agency claimed, “failed” to reach the 65 percent benchmark, its funding had been terminated. Smith-Brubaker contends that figure is closer to 75 percent, and says that the organization most often pays contractors, who, for instance, help farmers develop business plans, aggregate and sell products through a cooperative, or expand their business through marketing support.

The second email included an invitation for Pasa to resubmit its grant application. However, according to National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition’s policy director Mike Lavender, that tactic poses what he dubs the “big question”: Will reapplying be a waste of time?

Smith-Brubaker asserts that up until this point, the Pasa team had been told by USDA staff to continue working on the project, but with “no guidance on when we will get reimbursed for our expenses.” As of the end of March, she claimed they were owed $3.5 million through the climate-smart grant alone. Because of it all, the nonprofit has been forced to furlough 60 members of their staff. Just 12 employees remain.

April 15

A day later, the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island directed the USDA to immediately resume funding under the IRA and the bipartisan infrastructure law, granting a preliminary injunction. A status report later filed on behalf of the USDA, as well as the other federal agencies involved, noted that the USDA had previously already begun the process — but asserted that even after the agency finishes its review of pending payment requests there may be some grants “that remain paused.” 

By this point, five USDA programs have had their funding pulled since President Trump’s inauguration, while at least 21 others remained frozen. 

April 23 

Much like any regular morning, Smith-Brubaker woke up early and got ready for the day. But this was not a typical Wednesday, and Smith-Brubaker was not on her pastured-livestock farm in Mifflintown, Pennsylvania, but hundreds of miles away in Charleston, South Carolina. Coffee in hand, she left her rental home and strolled down the city’s cobblestone streets, awash in hints of jasmine drifting from the gardens and archways she passed. 

Thirty minutes later, she rounded the corner to her destination: a granite courthouse flanked by a legion of oaks. She was there for the first hearing of Pasa’s ongoing case. 

She paused in front of the fountain in the courtyard, and her gaze locked on the cascading water. Just then, she said, “it really hit me how monumental this might be.”

“It just seems pretty clear that the federal government doesn’t seem to have any substantive information or evidence available, or at least shared, regarding why the money was frozen, and why some of the grants are being terminated,” she later told Grist. Though Pasa has finally begun to receive payments on some outstanding reimbursements and expenses, as of this story’s publication, Smith-Brubaker says they are still owed $1.96 million across nine federal grants.

Any day now, Rollins will appear before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee focused on agriculture, which oversees USDA spending. It will be the first public opportunity for lawmakers to ask the secretary about the USDA’s workforce cuts, following up on two letters that Democrats have sent to her to voice their opposition to the layoffs.

After multiple requests, the USDA declined to comment to a series of questions regarding all of the events described here.

April 30 

In a press release, the USDA celebrated how, in the first 100 days of the Trump administration, the agency has “put farmers first”; “unleashed American energy dominance through expanded access to mining”; and “sought out and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in all USDA programs.”

“At USDA, I have made bold changes to improve the lives of American producers and consumers,” said Rollins in the release. “I look forward to continuing our work to bring America into a new golden age of prosperity, with American farmers and ranchers leading the way.”

Must the rest of us follow?