USDA Cancels $30 Million Grant Intended To Boost Hawaiʻi Food Production
Hawaiʻi program leaders say there are few alternative funding options available to local farmers who want to increase and improve operations.
Hawaiʻi can no longer use millions of dollars in federal grant money awarded in 2023 to increase food security in an island state that spends billions annually to import more than 85% of its food.
The Trump administration’s effort to curb government spending led federal regulators to slash a $400 million effort to uplift food systems. A $30 million slice of that funding had been earmarked for Hawaiʻi, Alaska, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.
Together these states and territories had comprised the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Islands and Remote Areas Regional Food Business Center — a project led by the Hawaiʻi Good Food Alliance — which is now essentially canceled.
While the regions are widely dispersed, each state and territory shares somewhat similar food systems challenges.
“When we heard the news it was heartbreaking, but the next step was, ‘How do we keep doing this work together?’” said the food alliance’s executive director, Harmonee Williams. “One of the greatest outcomes of this is just making those relationships with people in other islands and territories and learning from each other and really just committing to figuring out how to prop up food production in these rural places and islands that aren’t connected by roads to the continent.”
In a press release announcing the grant program cancellation, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins said the Biden administration had created “massive programs without any long-term way to finance them,” stating that the Regional Food Business Centers program had so far consumed itself with forming partnerships and planning while disbursing few funds to farmers.
Over two years, the non-mainland segment of the project that includes Hawaiʻi only spent $5 million of its $30 million award and issued no Business Builder grants — infusions of $15,000 to $100,000 aimed at helping food producers and distributors increase their scale and profitability.
“We’re so varied, from Puerto Rico to the Virgin Islands, so we took a little longer in planning because we tried to get it right,” Williams said. “We have so many similarities in not being part of the continent but at the same time we’re all unique. And I feel like we’ve been punished for taking the time to try to get it right, which is really frustrating.”
People in Hawaiʻi working on the project also had anticipated the grant cancelations. The Trump administration froze funds for the $400 million program on Jan. 20, which rendered it inert. The regional program had planned to launch requests for grant proposals in March but stalled the launch when the Trump administration froze the grant funds.
Cuts Come On Heels Of Others
It’s the latest blow to Hawaiʻi agriculture funding as the federal government moves to withhold other local farming subsidies, including ones related to climate change.
The USDA axed a $3 billion program in April that would have funneled $46 million to Hawaiʻi to jumpstart a long list of agricultural initiatives, from planting food forests to managing invasive species and improving soil health, while also boosting local food production. In March the agency halted $1 billion in federal food funding that would have infused $3 million into Hawaiʻi schools, emergency feeding organizations and the local food system this year.
“We’ve been waiting for seven months, not knowing one way or the other, so it’s somewhat helpful now to at least know that it’s gone.”
Dana Shapiro, executive director of the Hawaiʻi ʻUlu Cooperative
For Hawaiʻi, the losses that came this week in USDA funding include $3.5 million in direct funding for roughly five dozen local farmers and food distributors and $1.5 million for technical assistance programs, as well as money for program administration.
The cuts caused the Hawaiʻi ʻUlu Cooperative to lose nearly $1 million in promised grant money, including $300,000 to bolster post-harvest food safety and finance agroforest systems. The cooperative has more than 200 members statewide.
“We’ve been waiting for seven months, not knowing one way or the other, so it’s somewhat helpful now to at least know that it’s gone,” Dana Shapiro, executive director of the Hawaiʻi ʻUlu Cooperative on the Big Island, said.
“I think we’ll continue to look for other ways to continue doing this work,” Shapiro continued, “but I don’t know that we’re going to find a funding replacement in the near future. Generally, banks don’t provide funding for small and medium-scale agriculture and so government grants and loans provided one of the few access points to funding for farmers.”
The nixed program also drains $300,000 from a GoFarm Hawaiʻi initiative to provide about a dozen farmers with technical assistance, and another half-million dollars that would have gone directly into the pockets of the university program’s farmers.
“Someone might be growing vegetable crops that they’re hand-picking and washing, so what investments could be made into their wash station that would decrease the time it takes to do that and with that time savings, how much more can you plant?” GoFarm Hawaiʻi Director Janel Yamamoto said, explaining the kind of technical assistance that the canceled program was designed to provide.
“Hawai‘i Grown” is funded in part by grants from the Stupski Foundation, Ulupono Fund at the Hawai‘i Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.
