PORT ANGELES — As the sword of federal and state budget cuts swings far and wide, the WSU extension offices in Clallam and Jefferson counties are beginning to feel the sting.
So far, the largest extension office program that will be affected is the purchase of food from local farmers for food banks and feeding organizations.
That facet of the extension offices was largely supported by the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement, a program that distributed funds between communities for the purchase of fresh products.
Locally, those funds were held by Olympic Community Action Programs. The WSU extension offices support the program by building relationships between farms and food banks and helping with logistics, said Sallie Constant, the extension’s farm to food bank coordinator.
Last October, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it would extend the funding for the program through 2027. However, after President Donald Trump took office and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began making sweeping cuts, the USDA canceled the program.
“It’s definitely a big loss to not have this resource for folks in our community who want to receive this food at the food banks,” Constant said.
The exact amount of funds that local organizations would have received hadn’t been announced, although Constant said the general impression is that it would have similar resources as last time.
The last funding cycle, which ran from July 2023 to this June, had purchased 135,875 pounds of food from four farms, and distributed that food to nine sites on the North Olympic Peninsula.
The purchase won’t disappear with the revocation of this program — the WSU extension offices use other funding sources, such as state Department of Agriculture funds, to purchase fresh products from between 25 to 30 different farms. At this point, Constant said the state funding is looking pretty secure.
However, without the federal funding, food banks will lose access to thousands of pounds of local products they would have otherwise received, and patrons will be affected as a result.
Additionally, the local farms that received significant purchases through the program will now have one less revenue stream.
“They were large enough accounts that they were economically significant for the farms,” Constant said.
Last year, just less than 20 percent of Quilcene-based Dharma Ridge Farm’s gross sales were to food banks, directly supported by the program. This was a symbiotic relationship that allowed food banks to purchase food that their patrons wanted, reducing food waste.
Additionally, farmer Haley Olsen-Wailand said in a press conference that the program provided another market for produce in an industry that rarely sees new markets.
The program also reduced the farm’s food waste because it gave it a place to sell number two produce.
Number one produce is the perfect produce that stores require – Olsen Wailand gave the example of a straight cucumber. Number two produce, on the other hand, is high-quality food that might not look perfect — such as a curved cucumber. While it is nutritionally the same as number one produce, stores often will pass it over.
“As a farmer, having a market for those number two vegetables and fruits is very valuable,” Olsen-Wailand said.
Before the USDA funding was revoked, it was following a trend of increased funding opportunities between local farms and food banks so, “to see it canceled is really discouraging for everybody,” Constant said.
With costs of producing food constantly rising, Olsen-Wailand said, “We were really excited by the idea that we had an expanding local market.”
The WSU extension offices are looking for additional funding to help supplement the loss. However, “this one was pretty significant, so I’m not super hopeful we’ll see something on the same scale,” Constant said.
One alternative funding source they can draw from is the Olympic Peninsula Farm to Food Bank Fund, which aggregates local donations for those types of purchases.
There are other smaller WSU extension office programs that are facing funding uncertainty — both with state and federal funds.
The WSU Clallam County Extension likely will see two research grants canceled, Director Clea Rome said.
One of them is a state-funded public health grant that helps support marijuana and opioid prevention for youth. The reason it was canceled is a bit uncertain, Rome said, but her speculation is that the state Department of Health has “just received so many cuts, I think they’re sort of hedging their bets.”
The second research grant’s funding status is up in the air, Rome said. Although it hasn’t officially been canceled, she’s received word that she should hold off on spending due to uncertainty.
That grant comes through the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education, an organization that acts as a pass through for federal research project funding. The WSU extension office has used that funding for farm research and technical assistance for 12 different farms.
In addition to the funds that are on the chopping block, Rome noted that nine out of 12 people in the Clallam County extension office are supported partially or entirely through funding mechanisms whose future is unsure.
“We rely heavily on federal and state sources to bring resources and programming into the county,” she said. “At all levels, there’s a lot of uncertainty. So, it’s just hard to say what it will look like going forward.”
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Reporter Emma Maple can be reached by email at emma.maple@peninsuladailynews.com.
