For months, Angela Harwood has been planning to take over Happytown Farm in Orland from her retiring employers using a loan from the Farm Service Agency, a program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But now, that loan’s approval has been delayed for weeks because of a federal funding freeze, staff reductions at federal agencies and additional reporting requirements ordered by the Trump administration, she said. She still hasn’t received the money.
As Harwood tries to plan for her first season running the farm, she has had to work more than 100 unpaid hours and purchase supplies herself that the operating loan was supposed to cover. The experience has been disheartening and made for a disappointing start to her next chapter, she said.
Almost every farmer in Maine works with the USDA to some extent, and for more than a month many like Harwood have faced delays and uncertainty about their access to the hundreds of millions of dollars of federal loans, grants and contracts they’ve built their businesses around.
On top of that, the USDA has cut its staffing recently. On Thursday, the agency confirmed it has “released” employees in newer probationary employment periods, but it did not provide numbers on how many employees were cut and where in Maine.
The administration has also scrubbed some online webpages, data tools and resources that reference climate change or “climate smart” agriculture, which gives farmers options for responding to the changing growing seasons, new pests, diseases, weather patterns and storms that challenge them.
Beyond the immediate stress from those changes, farmers and service providers are also worried about the consequences this growing season and beyond.
Some of the frozen funds were supposed to pay farmers for projects they’ve already completed, meaning they fear they’ll be out tens of thousands of dollars in an industry that already runs on tight margins.
The White House froze federal grant and loan programs across many agencies in January for an ideological review of operations, in part based on its opposition to work that addresses climate change. Although that freeze was since rescinded and blocked in court, many funds still can’t be accessed.
The USDA’s other programs dispense hundreds of millions of dollars annually to Maine farms and rural businesses. Those programs include the Forest Service; the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which provides technical and financial assistance; and Rural Development, which has recently funded projects that include solar panels, high-efficiency equipment for grain processing and a public safety building.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service alone dedicated more than $33 million to Maine in fiscal year 2023, the most recent year for which full data is available. Rural Development invested $240 million that fiscal year, according to department data, and the USDA currently funds more than $100 million in active projects at the University of Maine.
The USDA said earlier this week it would release $20 million of the frozen funding, followed by more. But according to the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, farmers have reported that they still haven’t received their payments.
MOFGA is now pushing to have the funding restored. It also wants the agency to reverse recent staffing cuts that have happened in Maine and to restore resources related to climate change that have been scrubbed from its websites — which help farmers to plan their growing season, choose long-term projects and navigate USDA programs. The association itself also receives funds from 14 federal programs, some of which are distributed to farmers.
The Maine Farmland Trust, which works with farmers around the state on land conservation and climate change adaptation projects, said there’s a “significant demand” locally for resources to manage the effects of climate change on farms.
Farmer livelihoods depend on access to that information, the organization’s president and CEO Stacy Brenner said Wednesday.
Interactive tools showing how climate change might affect different parts of the country, how vulnerable areas are to certain risks and how conservation practices might reduce greenhouse gas emissions have been taken down along with pages describing funding opportunities and past projects.
A New York farmers’ group and environmental advocates sued the department earlier this week over the removal of these pages, which they argue are critical for farmers, especially at this time of year as they plan for the growing season.
The lawsuit alleges taking the sites down without advance notice or explanation violated several federal laws and removed from the public record information that would help farmers push to get frozen funding back.
“It’s a sad time to be an American and a sad time to be a farmer,” said Harwood, the farmer from Orland.
