When Javier Zamora started his organic berry farm more than a decade ago, he was working with just an acre and a half of land in Monterey County, near California’s central coast. Today, he and his crew grow strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, as well as vegetables and flowers, on more than 100 acres. Recently, Zamora participated in a farmers market hosted by a San Jose school that serves a largely Hispanic community.
At the event, Zamora found that he was not just bringing fresh produce to students, but introducing them to foods they’ve never tried before.
“They never get to see a brussels sprout or a purple potato and they definitely do not ever get to taste a French strawberry like Mara des Bois or a golden raspberry,” Zamora said. “So it makes me feel really, really nice to connect with those people.”
Making inroads with other communities outside of his farm is important to Zamora, who comes from a farming family in Mexico. That got a lot easier after purchasing a refrigerated van, with the help of a $150,000 grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture, or CDFA. Now, he can deliver to clients as far as Sacramento, bringing his berries to school districts some three hours away.
“We’ve had it for two years now, and it’s incredible. It’s a beautiful thing, and drives nicely,” he said of the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van. “And we can deliver up to 400 cases of strawberries, which is really good.”
A recent report shows that the Farm to School grant program, which started in 2021, has been effective at supporting small, mid-sized, and socially or economically disadvantaged farmers. The program is open to applications from farmers, schools, child care centers, and other organizations focused on assisting schools with local food procurement or other food education initiatives. It’s designed to both support local producers and bring more fresh, sustainably grown produce to students across California.
It’s also a sign of how some states are continuing efforts to support farmers in the face of mounting federal cuts.
In 2022, an independent team of researchers from UC Berkeley, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and other groups, set out to evaluate how well the grant program was adhering to the state’s roadmap for building a more equitable and sustainable regional food system. The roadmap initially established a goal of allocating 25 percent of funds in 2022, followed by 40 percent of funds in 2024, to those small and mid-sized farmers historically left out of opportunities in the food system.
According to the report, the program has far outdone that: Last year 100 percent of grant funding went to these prioritized farmers, up from 84 percent in 2022.
One of the other goals of the Farm to School grant program is to support and incentivize farmers in adopting climate-smart practices like cover cropping, which stabilize and improve soil chemistry and improve soil’s ability to store carbon. On this note, the grant program has somewhat mixed results: The evaluation team found that most of the money awarded by CDFA has not gone to farmers experimenting with climate-smart ag for the first time. Instead, grants are going to growers who are already implementing these practices, said Beth Katz, one of the contributors to the report.
Katz is curious about how the grant program could better assist farmers who are new to climate-smart ag, but believes supporting farmers already using these practices is still beneficial for the environment. In California and nationwide, small farms are struggling to make ends meet in an age of cuts to federal programs. If state dollars help these farmers stay in business, it means they can continue implementing greener practices, argued Katz, who also heads the Food Insights Group, a food systems research firm.
For Zamora, buying his refrigerated van, which came out to around $100,000, wouldn’t have been possible without support from CDFA. “Many farmers, we just don’t have that kind of dough to buy something like that, so these grants are just an incredible tool for us,” he said. He hopes to apply for additional funding during the next grant cycle — maybe for more vans, a walk-in cooler, or other kinds of infrastructure.
California’s progress demonstrates how states can aid farmers that depended on federal programs that promoted purchasing local food, which have been closed or underfunded by the Trump administration. With the federal government shutdown, which began on Wednesday, U.S. farmers are feeling more squeezed than ever. The Trump administration’s track record with farm country has been mixed this year, as the president’s trade war with China and most other parts of the world has meant farmers must find new markets for their crops.
Losing access to vital public services due to congressional infighting is likely to make this financial pressure worse. For example, the Farm Service Agency, a subagency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that provides farm loans and disaster aid and runs conservation programs, closed offices around the country as the ag department furloughed half its workforce. As Republicans and Democrats blame each other for the funding stalemate, which is expected to last at least until next week, Trump and his allies are threatening resorting to layoffs or permanent cuts if a deal isn’t reached soon.
State programs like California’s can help offset some of the economic uncertainty farmers face while the fight over funding plans drags on. “I think it’s just all the more important,” said Katz. “And I think that all the investments that California as a state is continuing to make in school meal programs and food systems infrastructure broadly are a bit of a buffer” for growers and consumers alike.
The farm to school grant program has also been successful in helping schools in remote areas access local produce by working with organizations like food hubs.
At Julian Union School District in San Diego County, building a program where students could engage with local farmers would have involved hour and a half drives, said Mati Moon, a garden education coordinator at Julian Pathways, a nonprofit that provides wrap-around services for Julian Union. Many years ago, the district received a farm to school grant from the USDA — but the rural location of the schools made it difficult to connect with farmers, said Moon.
Working with CDFA has been more fruitful. Moon applied for a Farm to School grant on behalf of Julian Pathways, which does food procurement for the school district’s nutrition program. Upon receiving the funding, Moon’s contact at CDFA encouraged her to contact a local food hub that distributes fresh produce throughout San Diego County. Moon was able to convince the hub to deliver to her community by starting a community-supported agriculture, or CSA, program and signing on about 75 families to receive produce from the hub. Through that, “we were able to secure some regular deliveries up in the Julian area to support our nutrition program” using grant dollars, said Moon.
Establishing a relationship with a food hub that might have previously considered Julian too far away to work with has been a boon for the community. “Tying into that network, which allows schools and businesses to access produce from all over the county in an easier, more cost-effective way, has been a game changer,” said Moon.
Zamora dreams of opening his own food hub one day and supporting more farmers hoping to sell their food locally. He notes that his farm has lost several clients, as USDA funding that they once relied on dries up. He remains hopeful, though, about his business — and hopes more of his peers can take advantage of grant programs like the ones CDFA is offering as they devise new ways to stay afloat. “In at least my case, what I’ve applied for and what I got has been nothing but a blessing,” said Zamora.