Small-scale farmers of color in Fresno hurt by USDA cuts to food bank program
Before the sun rose on an autumn morning, farmer Donald Sherman loaded crates of bell peppers into a refrigerated truck. The vegetables had been picked just the day before, still cool from the night air.
By dawn, they would be stacked inside the Central California Food Bank, one of the buyers that keeps his small-scale farm and produce market in Fresno afloat through the federal Local Food Purchase Assistance program.
Sherman grows everything from onions and kale to strawberries, squash and melons. In recent years, orders from Central California Food Bank and a food hub called Farm2People in Los Angeles have become a major part of his income, giving him stable prices and predictable demand.
Because of these steady buyers, Sherman earns about 40% more than he would at a farmers market, which is just enough to cover labor, fuel and equipment costs and still make a profit. Sherman gestured toward a freshly packed stack of bell pepper boxes, ready to be delivered to communities in need. “This was picked just yesterday.”
But the system that has kept his business viable may soon shift.
In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled $47 million in funding for the LFPA. That money would have helped California LFPA’s programs continue through 2027 before the cut. Although the federal government later restored some LFPA funds, assistance is now expected to end early this year, said Paul Towers, executive director of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, which advocates for family farms.
LFPA was launched in 2021 under the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan to help stabilize local food systems during the COVID-19 pandemic recovery. Under the program, states use federal money to buy food primarily from local producers and socially disadvantaged farmers. According to USDA’s definition, socially disadvantaged farmers and producers are those belonging to groups that have been subject to racial or ethnic prejudice.
The Trump administration cited a change of agency priorities in reducing the promised funds.
With the cut, the California Association of Food Banks says some contracts will now end earlier than planned.
For individual farmers, LFPA has been a lifeline, guaranteeing income. For Sherman, the uncertainty is already shaping planting decisions for next season.
“Once those dry up, it’s going to be devastating,” he said. “You’re right back to trying to get into markets dominated by big farms, and they don’t have room for the small guy.”
Good for rural economies
LFPA gives farmers a safety net by ensuring fair prices, Towers said. This has been helpful, since farmers face challenges such as extreme weather and increased water and labor costs. Beyond that, he said, the programs help communities.
“They put dollars back into rural and underserved economies. That kind of reinvestment is needed more than ever if we want to see these communities grow and prosper,” Towers said in an email.
LFPA has provided more than $88.5 million to California since 2022. One of the California programs it funds is Farms Together, which has used the federal money to support 533 small-scale farms, partner with 55 food banks and community organizations and assemble nearly 576,000 boxes of fresh food for families, according to an April 4 letter from the California Department of Social Services to the USDA, appealing the cut.
The department and Gov. Gavin Newsom have asked the USDA to reinstate the funds. Meanwhile, state Sen. Melissa Hurtado has introduced a bill to keep the program running with state funds and protect California’s local food supply from the fallout of federal budget cuts.
Sherman is now uncertain what to grow next season. He has been debating whether to plant strawberries, which are what Farms Together would usually order from him.
“It’s $5,000 just for the plants before you even talk about labor and irrigation. And now, you just don’t know if you’ll have a place for it to go.”
He says his contract with Farms Together will end next spring or early summer.
Sherman, who has farmed most of his life, is one of about 400 Black farmers in California. This year, he started mentoring a Black woman farmer, who relied on Farms Together to get her foot in the industry.
“It’s all I’ve ever known,” he said. “My brothers and sisters picked up other trades, but I stayed with the land.”
What to tell BIPOC farmers?
Fresno BIPOC Produce has been one of the participating food hubs in the Farms Together program. Through the initiative, founder Keng Vang connects farmers of color in the Central Valley to food banks and school districts.
“A lot of the farmers I work with had already planted for the Farms Together program,” Vang said. “We’d told them, ‘You could grow this and this for us,’ and that kind of guaranteed income. But with the funding cut, I honestly don’t know what to tell them anymore.”
Through the Farms Together program, Vang receives about $10,800 weekly, of which $7,800 goes to buying produce from farmers. The funding not only boosted farmers’ incomes but also encouraged the cultivation of cultural crops such as the green onions, cilantro and mustard greens preferred by many immigrant communities.
“The problem is that farmers I work with are usually the last to hear about these grants,” Vang said. “Many don’t speak English well, and it’s hard for them to understand the paperwork.”
Among those farmers is Bao Lor, a Hmong refugee who has cultivated a 10-acre farm in Fresno since 2006. She sells Asian specialty crops such as Chinese bok choy through Vang’s network to local food banks and farmers markets in San Francisco.
“When I heard the program might end from Vang, my heart dropped,” Lor said, as Keng translated. She had already seeded her spring vegetables. “We thought it meant losing a big part of our income,” she said. “We depend on that money to buy seeds and pay bills.”
Lor and her husband fled Laos after the civil war there, arriving first in a refugee camp in Thailand and then in the United States in the early 1990s. They came to California with little English and no formal training, learning how to farm by watching their cousins.
“In Laos, my parents farmed, but I was still a child,” Lor said. “Here, I had to start over and learn everything again.”
While her husband found outside work, Lor continued farming, seeing it as a livelihood and a link to home. But keeping the farm running is a daily struggle. Lor owns few machines and relies mostly on manual labor. She describes patching torn drip tape after birds peck holes looking for water and spending long hours repairing irrigation lines in the heat.
“We do everything by hand,” she said, standing in her field. “People laugh when they see me working like that, but I don’t want to give up.”
For her, the Farms Together program has offered reliable payments and the dignity of steady work. Before that, she said, farmers like her never knew whether their produce would sell.
“When Keng came and bought from us,” she said, “I finally felt hope.”
This story is part of “The Stakes,” a UC Berkeley Journalism project on executive orders and actions affecting Californians and their communities.
This story was originally published January 6, 2026 at 2:40 PM.
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