2025: A Year for the Compost Bin?

You know compost, right? You put in stuff that, well, can be kind of rough - moldy potato pieces, unidentified stuff from the back of the fridge, remnants of lawn mowing. A few months later, you get beautiful, rich soil ready to receive your new seeds and plants. Yeah, that's how 2025 was for us at the Texas Center for Local Food. And, in 2026, we expect to flourish and keep supporting Texas farmers.

There were lots of Federal budget cuts to our core services. The hardest part really is that they came so fast and, before they were cut, the funding was paused without advance notice. So wow, was our cash flow an issue! We made it through, thanks to our supporters across Texas and to our truly amazing team.

We're still $30,000 short for 2026. We'd sure appreciate you pitching in a little today if you're able.

Here's a summary of how Federal cuts impacted us - and you, the people of Texas.

Farm-to-Kids After School program in Elgin - gone. We are so proud of the thousands of K-12 students who learned about local food over the nine (9) years of this program. My favorite activity was the tours of the Elgin Farmers Market. Hopefully, we can find funds to bring this activity back. Our annual budget for Farm-to-Kids was $60,000.

USDA Regional Food Business Center - gone. This cut is especially sad one because we were to distribute $1.8M to East Texas farms to build local food supply chain capacity. That would have meant better cold storage to keep vegetables and meats fresh for you, trucks for transporting local food to markets, and business assistance to help farmers be profitable. Our annual budget to pay for staff and outreach, in addition to the $1.M in grants to farmers, was $192,000.

Support for SNAP at Farmers Markets - gone. Our team of 3 helped farmers markets across the state set up to accept SNAP. That means thousands of lower-income Texans can access fresh, local food and support Texas farm businesses. Because of this cut, in the "Big Beautiful Bill", we had to lay off precious staff and lost 3 staff positions when this funding ended in September.

Overall our budget for 2026 is 57% less than our budget in 2025.

Even with all this and the anxiety that came with it, we are still here and, with our reduced staff, we are strengthening our focus on business coaching for farmers, growing our amazing TXFED.org online peer-to-peer learning platform, and building out the Texas Local Food Directory. So we're dialed in and lean, and our incredible team is here to serve. Katie L, Katie T, Fred, and Krista, and me are all 100% committed to making sure all Texans have fresh, local food to eat - all the time.

So, yeah, like the compost, we are warming up and building new ways to create a resilient Texas local food system that builds economic viability for families and communities across our fabulous state.

Moving forward... together, Sue Beckwith, Executive Director, Texas Center for Local Food