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Local farmers, institutions could benefit from revived USDA food program

A Minnesota specialty crop producer is urging Congress to reauthorize USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Program.

Dan Zimmerli, a vegetable grower from Waseca County, says the previous administration launched the program through the Commodity Credit Corporation in late 2022.

“Which provided money for schools and daycares and so on to purchase food from farms like mine, and then create those meals and feed those to children and other institutions. That program was axed under the new administration.”

The Minnesota Farmers Union member recently took part in a Hill visit to Washington, D.C. and says there is bipartisan support to reinstitute the program.

“So we’re encouraging our congressional delegation to support that legislation because it’s good for farms like mine, it’s good for our kids in the schools, and it’s also good for main street businesses that turn those sort of raw material vegetables into a meal for kids.”

The Local Food Purchase Assistance Program uses non-competitive cooperative agreements to provide funding for state, tribal, and territorial governments to purchase food produced within 400 miles of the delivery destination to help support local and regional producers.

Audio courtesy of Brownfield affiliate KNUJ in New Ulm, Minnesota.