Remote Surveillance Trailer in Puyallup, WA

A federal program created during the pandemic to supply public schools with local produce was abruptly ended in March, leaving Washington state farmers without a critical source of income. Now, farmers are making hard choices about what to grow and how many workers to hire.

Summer might be winding down, but the berries are still plentiful at Sidhu Farms in Puyallup. On a recent visit to the farm, co-owner Kamal Sidhu plucked a few plump blackberries from one of the bushes, their best seller.

“It’s called Triple Crown blackberry,” Sidhu said. “It’s one of the sweetest.”

Sidhu’s family has been growing berries in Puyallup since 2000. Farming was not part of the plan when his father moved to the U.S. in the 1980s, even though he came from a farming background in Punjab, India.

After retiring from the restaurant business, he planned to split his time between the U.S. and India. The family bought a piece of property in Puyallup that was an old blueberry farm, with plans to turn it into a residential development.

“One year, my grandma, my mom, my brothers, while he was gone, they had picked some berries and they took them to the Puyallup farmers market,” Sidhu said. “And when he came back, he was like, something just clicked. So ever since then, we’ve just been like full swing into farming.”

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Over time, they started growing raspberries, marionberries, tayberries and loganberries. In 2015, they bought another farm. Today the two farms produce 40 varieties of berries.

During the pandemic, Sidhu Farms was one of a couple dozen Washington producers supplying fresh foods to school districts.

The federally funded Local Food for Schools (LFS) program helped the state purchase locally grown produce, bison meat, and salmon. Sidhu said it’s a venture he had always wanted to do but it was beyond reach.

“It used to be that everything the schools would get was like, the lowest bid from industrial farms that can afford to grow thousands of acres of something. They can afford to sell it, magnitudes cheaper than we can.”

Under the federal food program, created in 2021 in response to supply chain disruptions during the pandemic, Sidhu received fair pay for his berries.

Washington was among 40 states that joined the program. Its aim was to strengthen regional food systems while supporting socially disadvantaged farmers and small businesses.

According to a report by the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, the federal program bolstered school meals at more than 2,100 public schools across the state.

In an email, OSPI said nearly 600,000 pounds of food were made available to schools and more than 850,000 students gained access to locally produced foods in their school meals.

The program also helped family farms stay afloat during the pandemic. Sidhu said the federal program brought in about $150,000 in revenue and saved his farm from going under during Covid.

Thanks to the federal support, he said his family could actually make plans to grow their business, like building a commercial kitchen.

“We can do more processed products with the berries," he said, "like more jam, and being able to freeze and hold all the product in the farm.”

Those plans are now on hold.

Washington state was scheduled to receive nearly $9 million to continue Local Food for Schools. In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cancelled the program, as part of a $1 billion funding cut.

“It was just like a gut punch,” Sidhu said.

Sidhu said with one a reduced market for his berries, he’ll need fewer workers at the farm. It pains him to think it might even mean pulling out certain varieties or pruning them to the point where they don’t produce as much fruit.

At the Sidhu farm, workers have started pruning back the vines and cleaning up for next season.

Sidhu said his farm continued to supply berries to schools this fall, because some districts chose to opt in despite the federal cuts.

“Schools wanted it enough they’re dipping into their own pockets to pay for it,” he said. “They know there’s something special about it.”

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