For local farmer Ben Stumpf, the steady stream of income from a new federal grant allowed him to quit his second job working nights for UPS in Belleville and focus full-time on his small Monroe County vegetable farm.
He even hired his first employee and started breaking more ground to expand Rumblin’ Ernie Farm’s production from a half acre to an acre in Columbia.
“I had all these big plans in my head,” Stumpf said.
But now, about a year after the grant money became available to farmers, the federal funding has been terminated — one of the many cuts under President Donald Trump’s administration. Stumpf and other family farmers now face abrupt uncertainty about how to fund plans they made for their growing businesses.
They say the loss will affect their communities, too. The grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture paid local farmers to send their fresh produce, meat and other products to people in need through regional food banks.
It was called the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, which operates in the Prairie State as the Illinois Equitable Access Towards Sustainable Systems — better known by its acronym “Illinois EATS.”
A USDA spokesperson said in a statement that this program and another that sent local farmers’ products to schools “no longer effectuate the goals of the agency.”
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins defended the funding cut in a Fox News interview on Tuesday, saying the new, conservative administration is trying to rein in federal spending from the previous administration under former Democratic President Joe Biden.
“As we have always said, if we are making mistakes, we will own those mistakes and we will reconfigure, but right now, from what we are viewing, that program was nonessential, that it was a new program and that it was an effort by the left to continue spending taxpayer dollars that were not necessary,” Rollins said.
Small farms lose ‘very good chuck’ of their income
In Illinois, the federal grant money was limited to disadvantaged farmers, including many who are just starting their businesses, like Stumpf.
He has been growing and selling produce from Rumblin’ Ernie Farm for five years, mainly at the Land of Goshen Community Market, Edwardsville’s farmers market.
In its first year, the grant paid 176 farmers in Illinois a total of $16.2 million for their products, the University of Illinois Extension, an Illinois EATS partner, announced in February.
Stumpf said participating since mid-2024 more than doubled his sales. Through the program, Stumpf supplied food banks with vegetables like leafy greens, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, carrots, radishes and beets.
Another new farming family, Evan and Natalie Schuette of Schuette Signature Beef in Breese, said Illinois EATS helped them grow their business much faster than they expected.
Evan Schuette bought his first farm seven years ago when he was 21 years old. The couple started their packaged meat business in 2023. But they say their biggest hurdle was finding a market for burgers, which is 60-70% of the product they produce from butchering their cows. They couldn’t compete with bigger brands’ prices.
Then they learned Illinois EATS was looking for packages of burgers to send to food banks.
“This is the ticket,” Evan Schuette recalled thinking.
He estimated that 90% of the business in the past year was running through the program.
“A very good chunk of our income was coming from that,” Evan Schuette said.
It also allowed them to sell steaks to restaurants and at farmers markets and start making plans to expand the business to online purchases and shipping.
“At the end of the day, it’s really defeating,” Natalie Schuette said of the funding cut. “We’re really passionate about everything that we do; we want to continue to be able to share that with our customers and keep expanding. … This was a huge stepping stone to get us there.”
Scott Grote, who raises pigs with his parents at Grote Farm in Clinton County, said they’ve struggled with price competition for their pork, too.
“The (larger) pork producers sell for a third of the price that you need to have a little profit in selling your meat,” Grote said.
Like the Schuettes, Illinois EATS offered the Grotes steady income for packaged sausage and ended up accounting for close to 80-90% of the Centralia farm’s market in the past year, according to Grote.
Matt Helms, who grows corn at Helms Farms in Belleville, supplied popcorn kernels from his business, Ella and Ollie Popcorn, to food banks through the Illinois EATS program. He had also hoped the extra income from the federal grant would allow him to fund a new venture and grow his business, he said.
Helms said he still hopes the program could come back to life, whether it’s paid for by the federal government or some other resource.
“The bottom line is that the need’s not going away. People seeking food in these areas are not going away,” Helms said.
Food banks face reduced capacity as need grows
The St. Louis Area Foodbank and Operation Food Search were the regional organizations tasked with collecting and distributing local farmers’ products from Illinois EATS to families in need in the St. Louis region, including in metro-east communities.
Ericka Kinkead, a spokesperson for the St. Louis Area Foodbank, said the program resulted in more than 600,000 pounds of fresh food, an estimated 500,000 meals in the communities it serves in eastern Missouri and southwestern Illinois.
In a statement, Operation Food Search President Kristen Wild said the food it collected through Illinois EATS fed 23,000 people every month in St. Clair and Madison counties alone.
Like some other local farmers, Steve and Lugene Miller who own Liberty Apple Orchard in Edwardsville said they were already donating to food banks: about 11,000 pounds of apples a year. But Illinois EATS allowed them to provide even more — nearly 25,000 additional pounds of apples — because the program offloaded the time and logistics of distribution and compensated them for the product.
Illinois EATS accounted for about 20% of Liberty Apple Orchard’s revenue in 2024 and allowed the Millers to hire more people and pay them higher wages, Steve Miller said.
Kinkead noted that local farmers received fair market value for their products, which is higher than retail, and people who depend on donated food received high-quality and nutritious items to supplement the typical nonperishable food on pantry shelves, like boxed meals and canned goods.
“We’ve been getting really great feedback on the food,” Kinkead said. “... We don’t want them to feel that the food that’s available to them is the stuff no one else wants.”
Both Kinkead and Wild said they are hopeful the program could be restored in the future. In the meantime, Kinkead said the funding cut means reduced food supplies while the need for assistance is growing because of economic uncertainty, including federal employee layoffs.
While farmers adjust to the lost income, organizations like the St. Louis Area Foodbank will also be looking for other ways to provide fresh products at food pantries, according to Kinkead.
“This doesn’t mean that we are going to stop providing food to any of the areas,” she said. “This is just one stream we’re going to have to make adjustments for.”
‘Please do something,’ farmers plead lawmakers
Last week, about a dozen farmers traveled to Springfield or connected virtually to testify at an Illinois House Agriculture and Conservation Committee hearing on the impacts of USDA cuts and call for action from state lawmakers.
Stumpf was among them.
“This has stunted our farm’s growth,” he told legislators at the House Agriculture and Conservation Committee hearing on Tuesday.
Harold Wilken, owner of Janie’s Mill and Janie’s Farm in Ashkum, about halfway between Chicago and Champaign, told lawmakers that the extra income from Illinois EATS had helped grow his business, too. Wilken added two full-time employees and one part-time position, he said.
He supplied cornmeal, all-purpose flour and flaked oats to food hubs “from DeKalb to St. Louis” through the program, according to Wilken.
Another farmer, Mitch Cave of 4 Lees Farm in Virginia, Illinois, about 33 miles northwest of Springfield, told lawmakers that if the program continued, he also planned on hiring more employees. Illinois EATS funding nearly doubled his production of pork and chicken with zero waste, he said.
Cave was among the first at the hearing to suggest state funding, in addition to federal funding, for farmers through programs like Illinois EATS.
Legislators listened but didn’t respond to the ideas raised during the hearing, which lasted more than two hours.
Jackie de Batista, who operates Irish Grove Farms in Pecatonica and runs an organization that trains new farmers in northern Illinois, also asked state lawmakers to consider emergency funding supports or creating state programs similar to Illinois EATS.
“Please do something,” she said.
Like other affected farmers, Stumpf is thinking of possible ways to fill the gap in revenue without Illinois EATS.
He says he could pick up a second job again, but that means spending less time with his family. He could take out loans, but he knows that adds debt and risk to the business when bad weather could ruin the crops for a year.
“Every time I hear the word ‘hail,’ I clench my teeth. I think a lot of farms fizzle out in the first seven years from burnout or one major crisis. … It was good to have the backing of the USDA,” Stumpf said in a Thursday afternoon interview.
The next day, a severe thunderstorm with high winds and hail took out his greenhouse.
Editor's note: This story was originally published by the Belleville News-Democrat. Teri Maddox is a reporter for the Belleville News-Democrat, a news partner of St. Louis Public Radio.
