No customer buys more food from Emma Jagoz’s Moon Valley farm than the school districts of Maryland.

Jagoz spent the last year working with smaller farms across the state to fulfill those orders. She was banking sales of about $750,000 through contracts with 12 districts ranging from Baltimore to Garrett County as part of a federal program that offers funding to schools who buy food locally.

“Farmers have to do things many, many months, if not years, in advance,” Jagoz said. “So we’ve already done all the work.”

But now it’s unclear how much of the nearly 400,000 pounds of food she’s grown for schools — a quarter of the revenue she needs for the year — will go to waste.

At the end of this program’s cycle in April, school districts will stop receiving the federal funding used to place large, bulk orders with local farms, including Moon Valley in Frederick County. The termination of the U.S. Department of Agriculture‘s Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement program comes amid a flurry of federal orders intent on cutting government waste and unnecessary spending. The Local Food Purchase Assistance program, for food banks to buy from local farmers, also was canceled for the upcoming cycle that begins in December.

Without these programs, the small farms that make up the majority of Maryland’s agricultural industry stand to lose some of their largest customers.

Last Monday, 31 Democratic senators signed a letter calling on the USDA to restore funding, citing concerns over rising food insecurity and losses to local agriculture. The pandemic-era programs were aimed at creating a market where smaller farmers could secure consistent, wholesale buyers — what most spend their career chasing — without having to compete with global distributors who can offer more product at the lowest bidding.

State officials with the Maryland Department of Agriculture and Maryland State Department of Education who helped operate the programs said the USDA’s decision caught them off guard.

USDA spokeswoman Sarah Black said the programs were short-term fixes with “no plan for longevity.” The current administration says the released funding will go toward proven successful programs offering fiscally responsible solutions to the shifting agricultural markets and the lack of access to nutritious foods.

“This isn’t an abrupt shift,” Black said in a statement.

U.S. State Sen. Stephen S. Hershey Jr., who leads the Republican minority, did not respond to requests for comment. Rep. Andy Harris, who also did not respond to The Banner’s requests, said in a statement released Friday that “now that COVID is over,” schools should turn to existing USDA programs instead of the Biden-era program initially pitched as a “one-time” payment.

The overhaul scraps more than $1 billion earmarked for food banks and school districts nationwide. In Maryland, about $8 million of that was destined for local schools and more than $4 million to be shared between the Maryland Food Bank and the Capital Area Food Bank.

“It’s the opposite of waste,” said Meg Kimmel, chief operating officer at the Maryland Food Bank. She says her organization leaned on the Local Food Purchase Assistance program to sustain its network of 1,200 soup kitchens, pantries and shelters across the state.

In its last two years, the program has allowed the food bank to purchase local food at an average of $0.65 per pound — a fraction of the cost at grocers — allowing them to circumvent rising food prices while growing local farms, according to an impact evaluation report by the group. In its absence, Maryland Food Bank leaders worry about having to purchase less food, especially when it comes to fresh produce and meats, Kimmel said.

Maryland Food Bank spokeswoman Chloe Woodward-Magrane said Friday a sudden multimillion-dollar pause in deliveries to food banks has sent 16 of the organization’s orders and 588,000 pounds of food into limbo.

Of the 24 school districts in Maryland, few lean heavily on the Local Food for Schools program to provide school lunches. Anne Arundel, Alleghany and Baltimore County Public Schools are not expecting the loss of funding to impact school lunches, and while Harford and Garrett counties described the program’s cancellation as unfortunate, the impact will be limited.

Julie Fletcher, executive director for school and community nutrition programs at the state’s Department of Education, said the program allowed schools to supplement lunch offerings that would be more limited by relying on federal reimbursements. With the upcoming funds, the department planned on expanding the program to day care and other child care facilities.

The LFS program accounted for $200,000 in funding over the last two years for Baltimore City Public Schools. District spokeswoman Sherry Christian said they were disappointed by the funding’s end because the money allowed them to build connections with local farmers and improve the school meal program. The district is also concerned about proposed cuts to a Community Eligibility Provision that would eliminate free meals for 31 schools that serve more than 19,000 students.

“The net effect of these proposals would reduce student access to free meals and also reduce the amount of state funding tied to students living in poverty,” Christian said.

Jagoz, who opened her farm more than a decade ago, said she spent several years developing a system to meet orders for school districts. She contracted with 50 small family-owned farms. 78 Acres farm, for example, supplied hundreds of thousands of apples from their Washington County orchard.

“Its not easy to build up the supply and time harvest so kids are getting food when they’re most fresh,” she said.

She anticipated next year’s order would be her largest yet, but she believes Moon Valley can stomach the hit. She’s not sure, though, about the smaller businesses who’ve helped her.

Jacob Lovett, who runs Lovett Farm in Dorchester County, said they would not be in business without Maryland Food Bank’s bulk purchasing of their potatoes. More than half of his farm’s sales and crops go to the food bank.

“It’s scary,” he said. Through the program he was able to earn the money to purchase his land. Without it, Lovett’s not sure whether he can sell the 2-million-pound order of potatoes he was growing for the food bank this year.

The issue has been a topic of nightly dinner conversation for his wife and two sons. Its not easy to find a wholesale buyer when the farm’s still using 70’s-era equipment. He hoped to use the funding for upgrades, but now, he doesn’t know what will happen to the business.

To Lovett, the program ending felt like an attack on local growers. It’s shaken some of his trust in the current administration, who Lovett supported under the belief President Donald Trump would bolster American industry. “Once they realized this was going to affect the people growing the food, I expected him[the President] as a Christian to say slow down here,” he said.

“Why us, why now?”