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From aviation administration to worker safety, federal cuts implemented by the Trump administration have touched every aspect of life. That includes the USDA’s Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program, which provided funds for schools to purchase fresh, local food for students.
Justin Hough, director of Child Nutrition for Preston County Schools spoke with reporter Chris Schulz about how the cuts will affect school meals next year.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Schulz: What exactly is the role of local food in Preston County’s nutritional program?
Hough: So each year, prior to next year, obviously, the state Department (of Education) awards grants from the USDA for local food purchases. For the most part, every county is eligible for those. I don’t know many counties that actually get denied those. But Preston County, each year has been awarded anywhere between a $25,000 and a $50,000 grant to be able to purchase food locally. With the cuts to the USDA, those are no longer on the table.
Next year, the state of West Virginia as a whole would have been getting approximately $4 million from the USDA for local food purchase grants, whether it be farm-to-table or fresh fruits and vegetables programs. In years past, Preston County has been awarded both farm-to-table grant as well as fresh fruits and vegetables grant. The fresh fruits and vegetables are for low income schools that qualify, and what that offers is extra snacks for those students throughout the day that are locally grown fruits and veggies. Either way, the goal of the nutrition program in Preston County is always going to be if we have local produce available to purchase that we would rather pour back into the economy.
A lot of these local vendors and farms support our students. Preston County Schools has a large FFA program, so a lot of these farms are sponsoring those programs, as well as with us having our own slaughterhouse at the high school, we were able to actually purchase from that slaughterhouse, and these items that we get are able to be purchased with those grants, are able to be reimbursed with those grants. So it helps, especially during times like now, to offset those costs for us, because there’s a huge difference when you’re looking at a child nutrition program and you’re trying to feed that many kids, there’s a big difference in getting something from our distributors, which are mass quantity that they’re able to offer at a more reduced rate, because you’re buying all these massive, like pre-packaged stuff, as opposed to local. By having these grants available, they would allow us to purchase that local beef, purchase that local pulled pork, as opposed to getting those frozen and pre-packaged from our distributors.
Schulz: What do these cuts mean for your nutrition budget next year? How much of a deficit is this going to put you in?
Hough: Looking at next year, we could look at a deficit, a lack of reimbursement for these up to $50,000. Now, granted, that’s $50,000 out of a million-dollar budget. However, with all other cuts that we have in the county, we have to look at, “Okay, are we still going to spend that $50,000 to buy a higher quality product, a locally produced product? Or is it going to be more cost efficient for us to go elsewhere?” And really, those aren’t conversations that we want to have. We have great relationships already with our local vendors that we purchase from. We take pride during our farm-to-table month, as well as doing farm to table offerings throughout the rest of the year. It’s very difficult to take something off the table that’s been there, that the kids are used to, and potentially give them a less quality product, because we’re going to save that money in the long run.
Schulz: What is the importance of providing that quality to your students in their nutrition?
Hough: Well, especially when we look at one of the most recent nutrition bills that came out from the legislature and signed by the governor, the goal is the lack of preservatives, and the goal is fresh. From an educational standpoint, we want our nutrition program, not just in feeding our students, but to educate our students on, “Hey, what is healthy to put in your body? What are we giving you?” And when you look at farm-to-table and local offerings, we could tell our students, “Hey, this came from Terra Alta. This came from Morgantown. This came from the Eastern Panhandle. We know the exact location it came from. We know when it was processed.” As opposed to anything that we would get from our distributor, that stuff sat in a warehouse.
Like, yes, it is all USDA certified, it is a quality product. However, it’s not a local product. You don’t know from start to finish what went into it, and the fact that it is able to last, it does have some of those preservatives in them that in the long run, the state has determined isn’t healthy for our kids to have. So the more local produce that we could put in that doesn’t have any of those additives, the more local beef, locally grown beef, there’s no hormones with them. That’s important, and it’s important to teach those kids those habits now, that way, when they get older and they start making these decisions on their own, they’re able to make the right decisions for their nutrition, for their bodies.
Schulz: Looking at the impact that nutrition has on children’s academic outcomes, what kind of knock on effect is this going to have for the students of Preston County and West Virginia more broadly?
Hough: We tell our students that food is fuel. Everything that you’re putting into your body, whether you are a finely tuned athlete, whether you’re a scholar, whatever job you have to do, whether that’s student or anything in the future. We teach our kids this in health classes, we teach them this with the menuing that we do with their meals, that the reason that you’re getting stuff out of multiple food groups, that you’re getting different offerings of veggies is those are the things that your body needs to produce at the highest quality. The way that we view this, the higher quality food and the higher quality meals that we give these students, they should be able to perform at their best. That is the fuel that will help them attain their best each and every day that they come in. As opposed to, we don’t really know – and I know that’s one thing that with the legislature and the governor in signing that bill – we’re still unsure of a lot of the long term effects, we don’t know what kind of health effects. But all you gotta do is look at any kid that’s used to eating junk food and seeing potentially how sluggish they are, an adult eating junk food, as opposed to somebody that’s eating a very high quality farm to table meal. We want to give those kids that advantage whenever they walk in the door and have a healthy breakfast, and we want them to have that advantage throughout the day, and even going home that same fuel for lunch, continuing into their evening.
Schulz: What are you hearing with regards to the USDA cuts from your fellow nutrition program directors?
Hough: The concern among the 55 nutrition directors in the state right now, my colleagues, that we’re hearing, a lot of which are unknown. Besides the programs that have already been cut and the funding that’s already been cut, we still have a lot from the USDA, and the question is whether or not those will get cut. Every county is offered commodities through the USDA, which allows us, again, to purchase those higher quality USDA items via produce or meats to be on a menu at a fraction of the cost that it would be if we were going just through our vendor. So far, those allocations have not been touched. A lot of us are able to to work with one another, converse and brainstorm to where we’re coming up with ideas on where we can make cuts that aren’t going to be substantial and aren’t going to destroy the quality of what we’re putting out. As long as things hold where they are now, we can kind of make some cuts and some choices here and there to where, the $25,000 to $50,000 that we’re losing in these local grants, we can make up for that.We could still try to purchase those items, still give our kids those options and still pour back into our local economy. The concern could linger in the future, though, if they continue to make more cuts, and those are the ones that are really in limbo right now, because those commodities are what really is a driving force in a lot of our counties that give us the offerings that we have.
Schulz: You mentioned that you’re still getting a substantial amount of money from the federal government, from the USDA. Has there been any communication as to the reasoning behind targeting this specific program, the local food program?
Hough: There’s been conjecture. We all know that the goal of DOGE is efficiency and efficient spending. They’re looking at where there’s waste and where there’s money that maybe hasn’t been spent. And just like in any agency, we did have counties that were awarded funds that didn’t quite spend their entire allotments. The conversation with my colleagues and myself really have been, though, we don’t understand why there is a mass punishment for maybe that five or 10% that’s being left on the table. We’re not talking about millions of dollars that are left on the table here. We’re talking about $1,000 maybe here and there. They could have looked at potentially changing the allocations, as opposed to wiping them out entirely.
Another concern that’s actually going on right now is cuts to different training options. I was actually nominated by our state, and I was selected to attend a USDA produce safety university. What this one week long course was going to do, it basically was going to take me through the process, from start to finish, from from the growth to how they determine the various grades, whether it’s a Grade A, Grade B, how those are packaged, the the length of time that they last, where they’re coming from, where the best places are to order your produce if it’s off season, where you live elsewhere. Essentially, what this entire week was supposed to do is to go, “Hey, you can still offer high quality produce year round. We’re going to kind of tell you the best way to maximize that.” And that entire program was funded through the USDA, so Preston County Schools was not going to have to pay anything for me to attend this week-long seminar. However, three weeks ago, the group that was going to my training in June, as well as the group that was going nationally to the training in May, was informed that due to cuts, the current training regimen that’s being offered by the USDA was also being cut. Those are scenarios where there’s a long lasting impact. Because what a lot of those offer is that you’re essentially training the trainer. So this is something that a little bit of money being poured in to send somebody for a week to something can come back, and I would have been able to assist with professional development with some of our other nutrition directors that may have not been able to attend a course like that, and again, that was a program that was cut without any explanation or reasoning behind it. We just got an email one day that they were no longer going to fund those opportunities.
Schulz: You’ve brought up a couple different times the bill, I think people are calling it the dye ban, largely that the state passed that will be impacting you this coming fall almost immediately. Given the cuts and the reduction in your budget to purchase food, how is that factoring into the issue that you’re facing and how you’re going to allocate your funds?
Hough: The unfortunate thing with that bill is because the producers and the distributors don’t have to adhere to it as quickly as the school system does. That puts us in a limbo, almost, of outsourcing some of our products. Now, I will tell you the local milk distributors have already assured us that they are taking care of the dyes, which, the only one that was ever offered there was strawberry milk, and the coloring was offered just for aesthetics. So they’re already making the changes in their distribution plans for that. Our primary distributors that we get the mass of our items from, they’re starting to talk to all the vendors that they work with in terms of how they’re going to get items that don’t contain those. Fortunately for us, we only have a handful of items that we use in the county that do have any of those dyes, and currently there are other alternatives. And then there’s a couple alternatives that, if we were to have to kind of crossover and order beyond the border, because if you just go north, this is something that Canada has actually done for a while now. So even a couple of our items that maybe our US distributors won’t be able to get them right away, we could essentially, get those ordered in bulk from across the border. Again, though that’s another lingering one, not knowing what that means in terms of cost, because will those be items that are tariffed because of the type of program we’re using it from? Is that going to be something that could be exempt? But essentially, what our distributor is planning on doing, when we get all of our ordering guides this summer for the next school year, they will have all those items eliminated that have those dyes in them, so we won’t even see them show up. They will have alternative items for us, and then any items that they’re actually trying to pull in for us from across the border, they’ll actually list on there whether or not that’s an item that’s going to be upmarked due to a tariff. I could say that it could affect the budget. It may not affect the budget. We really won’t know until all those pieces come into place.
Schulz: Is there anything else that I haven’t given you a chance to discuss with me today, or anything that we have touched on that you’d like to highlight at this time?
Hough: There’s a couple federal pieces of legislation that are still out there. I mean, really, the question that myself and my colleagues and everybody just keeps asking is, why are decisions being made without discussing with those people in charge that are going to be affected, and those groups and those organizations? And it kind of just seems to us right now, with a lot of these cuts, those targets involve kids. So at the end of the day, our job is to feed kids. Our job is to give our kids nutritious meals. We are going to do that no matter what is thrown at us. But our question moving forward always will be, why are you not looking at these further impacts, and how they’re negatively impacting our school children?