Michigan school and agricultural leaders want the food atop plates in school lunchrooms to reflect the diversity of the state’s farms: crunchy apples, starchy potatoes.
And, obviously, deep red cherries.
It’s why students in the hospitality program at the Muskegon Area Career Tech Center tested potato recipes on a Thursday in April, in an effort to successfully process and freeze potatoes grown in Michigan to distribute to schools across Muskegon County.
“It’s a critical part of trying to get a new infrastructure set up so we can always have local foods in schools,” said Dan Gorman, the food service director for Montague Area Public Schools and North Muskegon Public Schools on the western side of the state.
Around the state, there are signs of a long-building farm to school movement: locally sourced carrots at school lunchroom salad bars and fresh vegetables erupting from gardens tended to by tiny hands on K-12 school campuses. Gorman and others are passionate about this work, work they want to continue so local produce will consistently make it onto students’ plates. It’s work they say will not be interrupted by the Trump administration’s cuts to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grants, including canceling a grant that would have sent millions for the Local Food for Schools program, among other cancellations.
But, the cuts hurt.
“It would have been monumental for us,” said May Tsupros, director of farm to institution programs at Michigan State University’s Center for Regional Food Systems. “It’s going to really cut drastically the amount of local fresh food we’re going to get on kids’ plates.
And the wind changes at the federal level have created fear over the idea of even bigger cuts to programs as long-standing as the National School Lunch Program, which some Republicans have opposed.
USDA grants to school foods
Michigan is one of the most agriculturally diverse states in the country, according to Tsupros. But a lot of produce is exported out, and school nutrition leaders are trying to get some of the food to stay in Michigan, specifically in school cafeterias. That means food service directors need to work on developing recipes, getting the right equipment to prepare food, and planning nutrient-dense, healthful meals.
“School food has gone so much to: processed, heat-up, quick-serve stuff with a very short lunch period for students,” Tsupros said. “Having a real meal that’s cooked from scratch has really for a long time now been the minority when it comes to school food. … That doesn’t create opportunities for local food. So really, it’s about educating and getting school food service directors to change the direction.”
The USDA plays a major role in the meals public schools serve. It oversees federal funding to public schools of both the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program, as well as smaller grants like Local Food for Schools. The Local Food grant is a pandemic-era program.
Career Tech Center student Landon Johnson, center, tries a piece of locally processed and frozen Burbank potatoes cooked with students’ spice mix recipes at the Career Tech Center in Muskegon on Thursday, April 3, 2025.
Gorman said when a local farmer heard the grant was canceled, they called him to ask how it could affect what the district purchases from farms, particularly because the farmer was considering cross-pollinating their apple trees to produce a smaller apple, one perfect for young appetites and short lunch periods.
“That’s the win that we’re really looking for, where the farms are looking to us to find that niche of their business where they can be successful, and do that, and then schools have a great product that can go to our kids,” he said. “When these things get yanked away, it’s just kind of a step back on those things.”
It’s not apparent what will happen to the apples. But programs can and will lean on state funding in this case, because Michigan has its own farm to school program, 10 Cents a Meal, which provides grant funding to educational institutions with money to buy produce grown in the state. In the 2024-25 school year, lawmakers funded the program with $4.5 million.
Looming fears about school lunch cuts
The food grown at Partridge Creek Farm in Ishpeming in the Upper Peninsula either goes straight to local school cafeterias or members of the community, many of whom rely on some form of assistance for food, according to Sara Johnson, executive director of the farm. The farm also puts on gardening education programs at local public schools, aimed at helping students grow and prepare their own food.
“This is important because you’re exposing them to fresh local vegetables,” Johnson said. “They’re getting to put their hands in the dirt. They’re getting to understand what it takes to grow that food. They’re creating a relationship and a connection to it so they’re more likely to try it.”
The farm received a USDA Patrick Leahy Farm to School grant in the current cycle, which ends this year. The next cycle of the program has been canceled under the new administration. Johnson said Partridge Creek tries to maintain diverse sources for funding, so it can lean on local and state grant funding instead amid these cuts.
But while a cut to USDA farm to school funding is a blow, the looming idea of even more cuts — to school food programs and to food affordability programs that benefit low-income Americans, including residents in Ishpeming where the median income is three-quarters of the state median — will impact how children interact with food as they grow up, Johnson said.
“If that’s going away, it’s going to affect their choices and their impacts, and that can have cascading effects on health outcomes,” she said.
And to Johnson, that feels shortsighted.
“When you’re purchasing local from local farmers in your community, that’s dollars going into your local economy, but if you’re going elsewhere to get your food, that’s literally dollars leaving the community,” she said.
Contact Lily Altavena: laltavena@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: USDA cuts could impact how much fresh food public school students get