School Nutrition Director Vickie Dunaway has spent years transitioning the Milan Special School District in West Tennessee toward scratch-made cooking.

She used grant funding to purchase equipment needed to process whole foods in school kitchens, and she bought fresh corn, squash, tomatoes and local beef from farmers for student meals.

But in March 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled the Local Food for Schools program that helped her district afford fresh local foods — more expensive than pre-processed commodities — amid the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the federal budget. 

“We were able to chop the tomatoes and shred the lettuce and all the squash and sweet potatoes and all the things,” Dunaway said. “We bought the equipment. Now I can’t afford the food.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services announced a new slate of programs in late August aiming to bring more American agriculture products to school cafeteria trays. 

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The “Harvest to Hallways” initiative includes up to $70 million for schools to update cafeteria equipment and storage, and an additional $25 million infusion into Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grants, which support projects that connect schools with local producers. The USDA will also offer guidance to schools looking to use their existing school lunch federal reimbursement dollars on local foods. Another $32.5 million HHS program will help school districts test new approaches.

Dunaway said it’s a step in the right direction: Many schools need help building the infrastructure to handle fresh foods, and the local option for reimbursement dollars is helpful. But these things don’t change her budget’s bottom line. 

“We need both the equipment to process the fresh ingredients (and) a sustainable recurring revenue that helps make buying food possible long-term,” she said.

The USDA has yet to publish application requirements for the new grants. The Tennessee Department of Education is awaiting guidance from the USDA, Director of Media Amanda Chin said in an email to The Lookout.

If any of the opportunities provide funding to help purchase fresh, local food, Dunaway said she’ll be “the first one jumping in.”

Otherwise, she’d rather have the money go to schools that don’t already have the necessary equipment, she said. But that may also be difficult.

“For so many of us, writing that grant and staying on top of that grant is not something that a lot of the small districts can do,” Dunaway said. “They just don’t have the staff, and they don’t have the time to do all that.”

Grant-funded program to bring cooking labs, fresh local foods to Northwest Tennessee schools

The nonprofit Northwest Tennessee Local Food Network secured a $500,000 Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant this year and is working with five school districts over the next two years to train cafeteria workers to work with fresh produce and introduce new foods to students. Dunaway’s school district is among those benefiting from that program.

The nonprofit’s co-directors Samantha Smith Goyret and Caroline Ideus said they are grateful to see the administration’s focus moving toward supporting more local ingredients in school meals but noted the federal grant process may be a challenge for smaller, less-resourced schools and organizations to tackle without experience.

“We worked with several smaller school districts to help write Farm to School grants this past cycle, but they weren’t awarded because they’re not strong enough, they’re not big enough,” Smith Goyret said. “So what the government is doing, it’s really fueling the organizations that already have that capacity.”

Barriers to offering more local food in schools boil down to three points: education, equipment and lack of funding, Smith Goyret said. The recently announced grants could help reduce some of those barriers, she said.

But the loss of the Local Food for Schools funding in 2025 “was a huge blow and still is,” Ideus said.

The program, which started during the COVID-19 pandemic, earmarked about $660 million for schools and childcare institutions to purchase locally produced foods in 2025 under outgoing President Joe Biden’s administration. Another $500 million was earmarked for local food purchases for food banks.

“That was a direct pipeline to the schools for them to use for local food, period,” Ideus said. “So these grants that they’re dibbling out are nice, but it’s not $1 billion.”

Having both the Farm to School grants and the Local Food for Schools funding would be the “ultimate” combination, she said.

Schools get reimbursed a set amount by the federal government for eligible meals and snacks they serve, but the budget is tight, and local foods can be considerably more expensive than commodity products, Smith Goyret said.

“Even wholesale, farmers still have to make ends meet. They’re not charitable organizations. They’re businesses as well,” she said.

Dunaway said the cost of even commodity foods is rising, but local farming operations can’t compete with bulk prices. Now, she’s only able to purchase sausage and beef from a local source “on special occasions.”

A spokesperson for the USDA pointed to USDA Foods, a program that allows schools to use preset federal entitlements to order domestically produced fruits, vegetables, meat and other foods procured by the USDA and delivered through a partnership with the Department of Defense’s logistics agency. The spokesperson also highlighted $45 million issued in 2026 through Farm to School grants, in addition to other programs that distribute locally sourced foods to tribal members.

In 2023, nearly two-thirds of school food authorities reported serving local foods to students, according to the USDA’s 2023 Farm to School Census. Those districts logged nearly $1.8 billion in local food purchases, about 16% of total spending. About half of that went toward local milk. That year, 42% of participating school food authorities reported challenges with availability of local foods, and 35% reported cost difficulties.

The next Farm to School Census is slated for 2027, according to a USDA spokesperson.

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