The Trump administration's push to downsize government agencies is coming back to bite some of the president's strongest supporters. Elon Musk called the US Agency for International Development a criminal "ball of worms", and his efforts to shut it down have ended a venerable food aid program that Kansas farmers love. It's called Food for Peace.
When the administration brought Food for Peace to an abrupt stop in January, nearly half a billion dollars worth of food aid bound for needy countries was suddenly stranded in ports and warehouses, and even more was stuck, unsold, in storage around the country.
At the Pawnee County Co-Op in Larned Kansas, this meant that Kim Barnes, the CFO was sitting on nearly $5,000,000 worth of grain sorghum, or milo, that no one wants to buy from him. And there are a hundred other co-ops in more or less the same boat.
Searching for a "milo market"
"Kansas is sitting on a tremendous amount of milo. The last milo that was sold of any value was Food for Peace, and that was in the month of December. Otherwise, there is no market," said Barnes.
Suddenly having no buyers for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of grain lingering in storage nationwide sent Barnes into high gear, digging through his old phone contacts to find a buyer.
"They were giving me a bad time here in the office the other day because I got my Rolodex out, calling everybody that I knew that I'd ever dealt with about milo, turning over every rock to find a home for some of this milo," said Barnes.
Milo grows well in Kansas, it's a nutritious grain, but Americans have no taste for the stuff. The market is mostly overseas, and Barnes says the government buys at least 10% of milo to export for food aid.
Altogether, Food for Peace buys about $2 billion worth of American farm commodities each year and distributes that food to impoverished places like Afghanistan and South Sudan. It's delivered to 150 countries and feeds billions of people.
The beginnings of Food for Peace
A Kansas farmer came up with the idea of the food aid program as a way to put surplus grain to good use and keep farmers in business. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, also a Kansan, and a Republican signed the program into law in 1954. It was a point of pride throughout his two terms in office.
"The agreement that we have just signed is a practical application of the term Food for Peace," Eisenhower said when he was finalizing an assistance package for India in 1960. "In a world marked too often by fears and distrust, it warms my heart to take part in an event which is a product of mutual respect and ever-growing friendship."
American farmers need those overseas friendships the program helped build because in good years they grow way more food than the domestic market can handle. But growing a lot of grain doesn't mean farmers are flourishing.
Larry Preisser, a Kansas farmer, worked through the farm crisis in the late '70s and early '80s when hundreds of farms failed. But Preisser, who is 75, insists he's never seen the farm economy as bad as it is right now. He says the cost of farming, buying seed, fertilizer, and farm machinery has shot through the roof, but the price for the wheat he grows has fallen to about where it was in the 1970s.
"You can't make any money," said Preisser. "The government wants cheap food, and we can't raise it like that. We got to have exports."
Without exports, US farm commodity prices would collapse. Exports stabilize the value of American crops.
American farmers typically export more than $150 billion in agriculture products each year. Food for Peace was a relatively small slice of that market, but Preisser says it was crucial.
"It's something we didn't need to lose. I mean, it was helping some," said Preisser. "They say there's fraud in it. I don't know about that."
Legislative moves to save Food for Peace
Elon Musk recently moved to fire the entire staff of USAID, which includes everyone who works for Food for Peace. Unions representing those workers sued and a federal judge put Musk's plan on hold until Friday when the judge is expected to decide whether or not to extend the order.
Kansas Republicans are quick to echo Musk's claims that USAID was riddled with waste. But they value Food for Peace and have moved aggressively to save it. U.S. Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, has introduced legislation resurrecting the program and folding it into the Department of Agriculture.
"By placing Food for Peace under USDA's authority, we make certain that the program is in good hands and can continue to bring revenue to American agriculture," Moran said on the Senate floor Thursday.
Moran would not comment for this story, but Nick Levendofsky, director of the Kansas Farmers Union, says he's not surprised that farm-state Republicans want to walk back Musk's attack on Food for Peace.
"I think it caught a lot of people off guard," said Levendofsky. "But now we need to pick up the pieces of what's left and move Food for Peace, and these other important programs, to a new home.
Levendofsky said it's not clear that the Agriculture Department has the capacity or expertise to absorb and immediately restart Food for Peace. And that was true before the Trump administration fired hundreds of USDA employees.
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