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Farmers Rising Non-Profit Shows Determination During Funding Crisis

  • Writer: Bob Benenson
    Bob Benenson
  • 8 minutes ago
  • 6 min read

Regional Farmer Training Leader Moves Forward Despite Challenges


Farmers Rising, formerly known as Angelic Organics Learning Center, has helped build the local food sector in the Chicago region over decades with training programs that enable beginning and early-stage farmers to survive and thrive.


The organization is currently weathering the storm brewed up in Washington, D.C. by the Trump administration's abrupt, unfair, and destructive actions to freeze, cut and gut valuable programs aimed at small farmers who are working to create a better and more sustainable food system.


Farmers Rising is a partner in the federal Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) cooperative agreement, known in this state as IL-EATS. It is one of 15 intermediary organizations around the state that receive food from farmers in historically underserved communities that is then delivered to food banks to help the needy who face food insecurity and hunger.


It is as virtuous a local food program as anyone could dream up.


But the program required farmers to pay for expenses with the promise of federal reimbursement, and without warning, USDA announced in late February that it was freezing reimbursements for any LFPA-related expenses laid out after January 20 (the first day of this administration). This placed farmers at great financial risk, and many were stuck with product inventories that they could not ship to food banks because the program had been frozen.


The USDA lifted the reimbursement freeze in March, but major damage already has been done. In addition, USDA effectively ended the program by cancelling future LFPA contracts — meaning that many farmers who made their planting decisions over the winter based on an expectation that the program would continue past the end of this fiscal year in June will almost certainly face the prospect of money-losing surpluses this year.


Nonetheless, farmers have to be resilient just to deal with the normal challenges of farmers, and so are the advocates and organizations that support them — as you'll see in the comments made by Jackie de Batista, executive director of Farmers Rising and a 4th generation livestock farmer, during a Farmer Day of Action webinar presented Wednesday (April 16) by Illinois Stewardship Alliance.

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Jackie de Batista


Jackie de Batista during a 2022 visit to Chicago. Photo by Bob Benenson
Jackie de Batista during a 2022 visit to Chicago. Photo by Bob Benenson

I'm here to speak with you all today as a farmer advocating for farmers. Personally, I'm a fourth generation farmer operating a 200-acre family farm called Irish Grove Farms in the beautiful town of Pecotonica in north central Illinois... We rotate approximately 75 head of Murray Grey cattle through 50 acres of grazing fields each year, selling 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef direct to consumers...


I'm also the executive director of Farmers Rising, a small but impactful nonprofit organization in northern Illinois whose primary function is to support, train and promote new and beginning and regenerative farmers, growing for and selling into the local food economy.


I'm here this morning to focus on the cruel and devastating impact the Trump administration is having on small, independent, new and beginning farmers — who are incredibly important to replace an aging and retiring agricultural workforce; who produce the freshest, highest quality, healthy and delicious food you'll ever eat; and who aren't protected by traditional farm supports like the recently announced Emergency commodity Assistance Program. Nor are they beneficiaries to systems of production with a supportive cast of scale, appropriate supply chain infrastructure.


So Farmers Rising is a lead agency administering the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, also known as Illinois-EATS, in northern Illinois. Over the past year, we have purchased more than $700,000 worth of fresh locally grown food from 18 small farmers, with 14 farmers participating regularly in the program.


We chose to implement this program because Farmers Rising has been working with new and beginning farmers for 25 years, and we recognize that the lack of scale-appropriate investment for local food producers is the Number One barrier to our collective ability as farmers to grow the local food economy and, more importantly, sustainably feed our own communities.


The farmers with whom we work are small-scale growers who struggle to access and sell into wholesale market chains, and this program was teaching them exactly how to do that... The incredible impact of the LFPA program is clear. Our farmers built new high tunnels. They purchased and installed critical cold storage, they hired additional staff, they expanded acreage and production, and they acquired necessary implements enabling them to scale up production. They, and we as the lead agency, also learned important lessons related to product differentiation in local wholesale markets...


We learned that our local pantries are simply unable to move all the tomatoes or collard greens or winter squash that 15 farmers can produce at the same time. And this pushed us to become even more creative and more collaborative in our efforts to grow the local food supply in northern Illinois.


We addressed this bottleneck, before we knew the program was being canceled, by meeting with our producers this winter and collaboratively planning out our 2025 production season. We planned production across multiple farms to ensure our market outlets had the desired and needed quantity of a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, while also minimizing potential food waste and ensuring that each of our farmers could supply a balanced variety of higher priced versus lower priced crops, making these farms more financially sustainable across the board.


In other words, by implementing LFPA over time, we were not only building a sustainable local food economy in northern Illinois, we were deepening relationships and collaborations between our farmers in service of our communities.


Earlier this year, the Trump administration illegally pulled funding from this program and many others of similar and equal importance, and then had the audacity to tell us farmers to have fun while adjusting to agricultural tariffs. We were told to simply shift to selling food here in the United States. The ridiculousness in that statement is that shifting an entire farm industry production system from row crops to local food requires a transition period which includes investment in farms and middle supply chain infrastructure and skilled labor.


The irony in that statement is that this work was already happening and was finally being supported and incentivized by our federal government through this and other programs, and now has been eliminated. So respectfully, Farmers Rising and organizations like ours, and especially the farmers that we serve, do not have the luxury of waiting two months or six months, or, God forbid, a year or longer for things to shake out.


We need our lawmakers and the USDA to act, and we are asking for emergency funding supports, to consider implementing a state LFPA program similar to how other states have implemented this program to restore the contract for LFPA 2025, and to make LFPA a permanent part of the new farm bill. Small, independent producers like myself, and especially new and beginning farmers like the individuals that we serve at Farmers Rising, are the literal future of our food supply.


We are an important part of our agricultural community, and our importance to this community grows with every retiring farmer, with every pandemic or market disruption, and with every acre lost to development or speculation. Investing in us is investing in your future and in the future of your families and communities.


These are just a portion of the important remarks made by the other webinar participants. Click the button below to view the full video.


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Calls to Action


Each article in the series will feature the following calls to action issued by Illinois Stewardship Alliance.


Right now through the end of April is congressional recess and so many members of Congress are back in their districts and holding events with constituents. You can make a powerful impact by asking a question at your member of Congress' town hall:


  • Ask your member of Congress:

    What are you doing to protect and restore funding for USDA programs that support local food, sustainable farming, and rural communities—especially after the recent cuts that threaten farmers' livelihoods and our access to healthy, locally grown food?


  • Be sure you are subscribed to their email lists to get alerts about upcoming virtual or in-person town halls. You can look up their website here.


You can also volunteer in the next few weeks to help us plan an action with our coalition partners across the country in National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition on the May Farmer & Eater Action Planning Team.

 

Finally, this is an important moment to build community and join organizations that meet your values. We build people power among farmers, eaters, and food system leaders. Thank you to so many of you who are already a member and a sustaining member. You are welcome to join our farmer-led, eater-powered Alliance during our sustaining member drive this month.

 

Local Food Forum salutes Farmers Rising for the critical role it plays in building a better regional food system through its farmer training, consumer education, farm camps, special events, and its new livestock farming incubator.


And we're partnering with Farmers Rising on a combo subscription/fundraiser. Through the month of April, 20% of the proceeds from every new paid subscription will go directly to Farmers Rising.


Click the link below to subscribe.





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