The USDA Steps Up Its Investments in Regional Food Systems

Editor’s Note: The USDA is looking to support regional food systems and prioritize communities that have been often overlooked and are in need of economic development. These regional systems will create numerous jobs and support economic growth in struggling areas.

CONTENT SOURCED FROM CIVIL EATS

Written by: Lisa Held

After decades of intense consolidation and globalization, rebuilding food systems that are rooted in and built to serve smaller geographic regions is no simple project. Over the past year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has made several major investments in just those kinds of systems as part of its Food System Transformation Framework. It has funded the development and expansion of small meatpacking plants, increased farm-to-school grants that create direct pipelines between local growers and cafeterias, and implemented new urban agriculture programs.

Now, the agency is investing $400 million in agricultural command centers that it hopes will better coordinate all of those various pieces, strengthening local supply chains.

“There’s a real opportunity for producers to partner with those that want local and regional food systems, but it’s sometimes difficult to know how to get started, and how to take advantage of or even to be aware of the various programs that exist,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Civil Eats in an interview on Monday. “The point of this [effort] is to create a vehicle—with all these various programs that we’ve now created—to ensure that people have access to the information they need to be able to build that local and regional food system.”

Groups of collaborators made up of nonprofits, state agencies, and others are eligible to apply to create and run the Regional Food Business Centers. According to Vilsack, the centers will have three key responsibilities: coordinating regional food efforts across federal, state, local, and tribal agencies and governments; providing comprehensive technical assistance to anyone involved in the local supply chain; and working with surrounding communities to provide small financial grants that will further build local food capacity.

While it may sound like the USDA is creating more food hubs, Vilsack was quick to distinguish these new centers from that model. While food hubs exist primarily to aggregate, market, and distribute produce and other local foods from small producers and make them easily available to regional markets, the centers’ work will be more administrative. A group of farmers intent on creating a food hub, for example, could visit their local Regional Food Business Center to get data on financial structures that might work best, USDA programs they might be eligible for, and potential partners in the area to work with, Vilsack said.

To start, USDA will fund at least six centers, and initially prioritize four areas already determined to be in particular need of economic development and job growth: tribal communities, counties along the U.S.–Mexico border, the Mississippi Delta/Southeast Region, and Appalachia.

“We are creating an environment in which these areas that have been persistently poor . . . will now see local and regional food systems as a strategy for job growth, as a strategy for wealth creation,” Vilsack said. What will grow and actually succeed in those environments, where small farms and other local producers still face daunting challenges, such as the skyrocketing cost of land and the need to compete with cheaper food produced by multi-billion dollar global corporations, is still a wide open question.

Vilsack says USDA will measure the success of all of the regional food systems investments based on whether thriving farm-to-school programs, farmers’ markets, and better coordination are creating jobs and ultimately contributing to more financial stability for smaller farms operating outside of global supply chains. That last criteria is especially timely, given the recent release of the National Young Farmers Coalition 2022 survey of young farmers.

Similar to the last survey, conducted five years ago, the coalition found most young farmer respondents were operating smaller than average farms and faced major barriers to economic success, with land access at the top of the list. And 71 percent of those farmers said they were unfamiliar with the USDA programs that might help them.

“Success will be if we’re able to create additional market opportunities so that mid- and small-sized operators still have a chance of staying in the business,” Vilsack said. “And then we [have to] attract new people.”