The Washington Post reports small farmers Jacob and Jennifer Thomas took a 10 percent hit in their sales when President Donald Trump abruptly cut $1 billion from two federal programs supplying local produce and meat to schools and food banks across the nation. Now they have an $8,000 hole in their budget from the loss of that USDA funding.
The Kansas farmers also had to recently suspend plans to build a new warehouse and expand their farm store when the administration paused a $750,000 federal agriculturegrant. They’d plowed up the foundation for a new greenhouse before learning the Trump administration was also now backing out of an anticipated $8,000 grant. On top of all this, they now worry 2,000 chrysanthemum cuttings from Canada will be ensnared in the president’s tariff dispute.
“We’re barely making it,” Jacob told reporters. “… Historically, if you got a government [food supplier] contract, we’re golden, because the government always pays. … Today I don’t feel that way. For the first time in my life, I don’t trust the government is going to follow through on their word.”
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The Washington Post reports the Thomases and many of their neighbors voted for Trump last November, “but the consequences of his administration’s wide-ranging cuts and uncertainty over tariffs have already had a profound impact on this hilly corner of northeast Kansas — one of the hardest-hit states for agriculture during Trump’s last trade war.”
Many growers said they felt proud when the president spoke of his love for farmers in his March address to Congress, but now that’s “given way to a growing sense of helplessness, frustration and anger.”
“For every farmer I’ve talked to, this has been earth-shattering and life-changing,” said former Republican state Senate candidate and winemaker Bryan Zesiger. “I don’t know what [Trump’s people] were supposed to achieve, but from our perspective, you just hurt a lot of people.”
In April, Trump promised “our farmers are going to have a field day right now,” as tariff negotiations were underway. But the Thomases have received “little response” from Washington on canceled contracts and projects. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) did nothing to rekindle the grant applications the federal government dropped, despite visiting the Thomas farm on a campaign stop, pulling “an onion out of the ground, wip[ing] it on his pants and [taking] a big bite of it.”
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They claim the only politician who listened to them was U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, a Kansas City Democrat who “isn’t even their representative.”
Read the full Washington Post report here.