• State and federal funds are used to buy items from local producers for The Foodbank, one of the largest purchasers of local produce from independent farmers.
• Federal grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to Central State University have furthered its researchers' ability to help local farmers.
• Federal COVID-19 funds from both President Donald Trump’s first term and former President Joe Biden that were given to school districts helped Jefferson Twp. schools build a career tech agricultural center.
Farm to Foodbank
Sharifa Tomlinson, owner of Arrowrock Farms in Riverside, raised 1,000 chickens last summer and had an agreement with The Foodbank to purchase the processed chickens. Tomlinson said the contract was a key way she made money last year.
But she said since Congress failed to pass a long-term farm bill last year — the existing farm bill was extended through September as part of a deal to avoid a government shutdown — Tomlinson is not likely to be able to raise chickens past this year.
“We have a thousand more chickens, and then, that’s it,” she said.
The Foodbank is a part of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, which assists all 12 Ohio foodbanks and helps purchase locally grown fresh produce using various funding streams.
“Each of these funding streams are critically important to our work and help us procure fresh produce while also supporting local farmers,” said Lee Lauren Truesdale, the CEO of The Foodbank.
She said last year, The Foodbank distributed 18 million pounds of food, 4.8 million pounds of which was fresh produce.
Truesdale said The Foodbank has not experienced any major disruptions to date.
“Information is changing daily, so we do not yet know if we will experience any loss of these funds,” she said.
Truesdale said using state funds to support local farmers is a key way that the state can support its top industry and feed those who need it.
“Ohio is home to thousands of farms and agriculture is a top economic driver in the state,” Truesdale said. “Using state funds to support local farms to purchase locally grown fresh produce not only sustains local farms, it helps feed our community’s food insecure, and buying locally reduces the emissions footprint of sourcing produce from across the country.”
Tia Stuart organized the Regenerative Farmer Collective and heads minority programs for Agraria Center for Regenerative Practices in Yellow Springs. She said the program buying produce from small farmers is a newer one that started in 2022. In 2023, she noticed not many people had participated and decided to help.
The grant required farmers to estimate how much they expected to bring in, but Stuart found that a lot of the farmers were newer and didn’t know what they’d be able to bring in. Stuart said the collective helped individuals set goals but if a single farmer wasn’t able to hit those goals, another farmer was able to make up for that.
The collective also was a way to increase buying power. More people buying more items could purchase at a smaller unit price than the farmers could by themselves, Stuart said.
Stuart said the collective includes all kinds of people and is not exclusive to people of color. She is the daughter of a Black father and Latina mother.
“There’s always been subsidies,” she said. “And this is just another subsidy that helps support the food system instead of just these big conglomerates controlling everything and then when we have a breakdown, like we did with COVID, we have a supply chain issue.”
Education pathways
Central State University did not get status as an 1890 Land-Grant institution until about 10 years ago. U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, and Ohio’s former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown helped the historically Black public university get the status.
1890 institutions came from a law after the Civil War that designated the first set of Historically Black Colleges and Universities as land-grant institutions, which are public agriculture and mechanical colleges. Ohio State University was designated a Land Grant institution in 1870, part of the first wave of universities that got land set aside for public research into engineering and agriculture in the 1862 Morrill Act.
Central State officials declined to comment when asked by the Dayton Daily News about how changes and cuts from the Trump Administration are impacting their current federal grants.
Small business grants
Audra Sparks, one of the co-owners of Guided By Mushrooms, said the small mushroom farming business was recently awarded $6,900 for Marketing Assistance for Specialty Crops Program from the Farm Service Agency USDA. Guided By Mushrooms sells about six different strains of specialty mushrooms at local grocery stores and to restaurants.
The USDA program is meant to help specialty crop producers offset higher marketing costs related to the perishability of specialty crops like fruits, vegetables, flowers and herbs; specialized handling and transport equipment with temperature and humidity control; packaging to prevent damage; moving perishable items quickly and higher labor costs related to the cost of moving the items.
In 2023, Guided By Mushrooms was awarded $30,000 from Ohio Means Jobs, the state’s private job attraction service. David Sparks said at the time that the grant helped them purchase equipment and made the process to grow the mushrooms more efficient.
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