By Lauren Dorsey, Staff Writer
Uncertainty — and for some, insolvency — hangs over a number of local farms, nonprofits, and research organizations in the wake of various federal funding freezes by the Trump administration.
Since taking office, President Trump has issued a variety of extensive directives that have impacted the availability of federal funds, including temporarily halting all federal spending and pausing grant distributions from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
Now, many Vermonters are struggling to navigate the fallout. “It’s cruel, it’s destructive, and it’s creating an immense amount of hardship,” U.S. Senator Peter Welch told the Standard in an interview on Monday. “Vermonters, when they make a promise, they keep a promise. They keep their word. Now, the government is betraying them.”
Sweetland Farm, a family-run community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm in Norwich, is grappling with the impacts on multiple fronts. “We are trying to grow food for our community, but instead are forced to spend our energy triaging each day’s new cuts, tariffs, and freezes,” Norah Lake, Sweetland’s owner, told the Standard.
Lake says she leaped at the opportunity to use federal funding from the IRA when it became available in 2022, securing approval and beginning work on several big projects, including a new roof-top solar array, a wood-fired boiler, and a variety of farm-wide energy-efficiency improvements — all of which were set to be reimbursed under the program.
However, last week, with the projects near completion, Lake was informed that reimbursements for IRA funds are on hold, and the farm’s payment requests cannot be processed. “We now have concerns about whether we are getting paid back for all the work we’ve done and the costs we’ve incurred, despite the legal contracts we signed,” Lake explained. “At this point, even a delay of several months would make us insolvent, given the sums we are fronting.”
In addition to the stalled reimbursements, Sweetland Farm has been working with the Natural Resources Conservation Service to mitigate riverside erosion but has now seen that work come to a standstill. “Communication has recently gone silent as their staff reels from cuts and firings,” said Lake.
The farm has also been planning to purchase housing for seasonal workers this year, but at a recent meeting with the Farm Service Agency about a potential loan for the project, “[the agency] revealed that they don’t know what will happen to the previously available funds intended to increase access to affordable housing,” said Lake.
Finally, Lake said the farm’s annual hiring has been curtailed by the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
In the past, USAID has processed paperwork for H-2A, a program that allows U.S. employers to hire agricultural workers from abroad. In recent years, Sweetland has hired several seasonal employees from Honduras through H-2A, but Lake said this year the uncertainty around USAID has effectively frozen the farm’s ability to hire staff. “Our greenhouse is warm, and we’ve sown the first seeds of the season, but if things continue on their current path, we’re very unsure where we will be by the time the ground thaws,” said Lake.
Many other local organizations are contending with more limited disruptions. For example, Vital Communities, a local nonprofit that operates community listservs and does work in the Upper Valley around housing, transportation, and food access, is putting the brakes on some of its programs in the face of so much upheaval. “At this point, the biggest impact for us has just been uncertainty,” John Drew, the programs director at Vital Communities, told the Standard.
Uncertainty, however, can have far-reaching consequences. Drew explained that after hearing about the recent lack of federal follow-through on some grants, the organization is hesitant to start work on any projects with promised reimbursements. “It will obviously have a lot of ripple effects for us if we go ahead, do the work, spend the money, and we don’t get reimbursed,” said Drew.
In addition, some of Vital Communities’ funders have gone silent. “While we haven’t had direct notification that funding won’t come through, we also haven’t had any communications from some of our funders, so that’s a tricky situation as well,” said Drew. “It may just simply be uncertainty on their part.”
Vital Communities also has seen some of its partners stop communicating or lose their jobs. In January, the director for rural development at the United States Department of Agriculture [USDA] gave a presentation at Leadership Upper Valley’s Economic Development Day. A long-time partner with the organization, “he offered help to everybody there, saying, ‘We have so much aid and help that we can provide local businesses,’” said Drew. Several days later, the same USDA employee discovered he no longer had a job. “It was an abrupt departure, and things like that tend to have ripples that aren’t always easy to prevent or repair,” said Drew.
Even organizations that receive little or no federal funding for their normal operations are concerned about potential downstream impacts, such as the availability of disaster relief.
At the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, which doesn’t normally receive any federal funding, executive director Alden Smith is concerned that increasing demands on the resources of private foundations, which are being asked to supplement lost federal dollars, could draw money away from the organization. “In addition, we have a history of getting federal grants and support in moments of transition or crisis,” said Smith. “Because we obviously have lots and lots of birds here, we’re concerned about Avian Flu and what kind of support there would be, if any, in the case of an outbreak.”
A variety of other organizations have told the Standard they remain unclear on how — or if — the freezes will impact them, including the Vermont Food Bank, Hubbard Brook Research Foundation, Pentangle Arts, the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, and the Vermont Center for Ecostudies.
According to Welch, these organizations are the tip of the iceberg. “We’re receiving thousands of calls and letters from people [filled with] enormous uncertainty,” he said. “It’s really heartbreaking to get the stories of so many Vermonters who are on their heels financially as a result of what they thought was a contract suddenly being ripped up by [Elon] Musk and the Trump administration.”
Welch said that it remains unclear how long the freezes will be in place or how widespread the consequences for Vermonters will ultimately be.