The USDA Agricultural Marketing Service announced last week that it will cut the Regional Food Business Center (RFBC) program, which provides grants to small and medium-sized local farm and food businesses.
The federal program aimed to strengthen food supply chains and provide easier access to fresh, local foods.
Since 2023, the Heartland Regional Food Business Center has served Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and northwest Arkansas. It will end normal operations Sept. 15.
Co-director Mary Emery said the Heartland Center was a strong, collaborative effort with 14 key partners across the Midwest.
“The purpose of the regional centers was to organize groups of people who are involved in local and regional food systems together so that their combined efforts would be much greater than their individual efforts,” said Emery, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The Heartland Center, like other RFBCs in the country, distributed federal funds from the USDA to local and regional food businesses. It planned for $12 million in Business Builder grants to be given out in two rounds. The first-round grantees have already been chosen, and will be able to access their grant funds. Ninety projects were chosen for the first-round grants, and $3.7 million will be divided among them. Sixteen projects from Nebraska were selected.
Applications for $8.3 million in funds for the second round have been canceled.
Emery said it’s not always easy for small producers and farmers to break into the market alone, and the Heartland Center could put the pieces together.
“If you want to grow your business in farm production or food processing, we can connect you with the resources that can help you grow that business,” Emery said. “We can help you identify markets, and we're working on better strategies to get product from the farm or the processing center to an aggregation center to be transported wherever those consumers are that are really interested in your product.”
The impacts at local farms
One business receiving a Business Builder grant is Robinette Farms, a food producer and aggregator based in Martell, Nebraska.
Husband and wife duo Alex McKiernan and Chloe Diegel started Robinette Farms in 2010. They produce things like vegetables and grass-fed beef and partner with other local small businesses to sell their products through a subscription.
McKiernan said the RFBC grant will help their company’s mission.

“We’re really passionate about the fact that the food we eat can improve human and environmental health,” McKiernan said. “And this grant really is tailored to businesses like ours that are trying to get local foods to local consumers.”
McKiernan said he was disappointed to hear about the program’s cancellation.
“There’s a tremendous business opportunity for farms and ranchers in this state to get food directly to consumers, and this grant was created to help people do that,” McKiernan said. “And so I think there’s a missed opportunity to support farmers and ranchers and also food consumers in Nebraska.”
"I think there’s a missed opportunity to support farmers and ranchers and also food consumers in Nebraska.”Alex McKiernan, co-owner of Robinette Farms
Diegel said there was a lot of interest in the grants, and the Heartland Center was doing important work to connect food producers.
“I know it felt like kind of exciting work that was happening to all of us that are involved in that world of local food,” Diegel said. “They were doing good work to bring farmers into that and help create new systems, so it's unfortunate that they're not going to be doing that work anymore.”
Diegel and McKiernan will be able to access their grant funds, which will be focused on marketing, distribution and delivery infrastructure.
“The way that most people get food is shopping at the grocery store, but we saw in COVID and other supply-shock issues that we don't always have a great capacity to feed ourselves locally,” McKiernan said.
A COVID-era program
Emery said the Regional Food Business Center program was originally established as a national security measure.
“One of the things we learned from COVID-19 is that we’re very dependent on very complicated, long supply chains for the food we purchase in the grocery store,” Emery said. “So as a matter of national security, the U.S. government was interested in trying to expand and generate more activity around local and regional food systems.”
The USDA press release announcing the termination said the RFBC program was a “pandemic-era, Biden program” created without a plan for long-term funding. The USDA stated that remaining funds would be repurposed for other agriculture projects.
Emery said the RFBCs were meant to be more than a Band-Aid solution.
“The second motivating factor is that people who eat a lot of local foods usually eat more healthy than people who rely on processed foods at grocery stores,” Emery said. “Then a third factor is, USDA has not always had the best relationships with the smaller farm- and food-related businesses, and they wanted to develop a program designed to specifically meet their needs.”
Emery is also the director of Rural Prosperity Nebraska, a UNL project aiming to strengthen outreach and extension projects to rural Nebraska.
“We want to connect the research capacity of the university to the needs of the people in Nebraska,” Emery said. “The Heartland Center is a great opportunity for us to look at that because we have student interns that are interested in food. We have researchers that are doing work around food systems and we have extension educators out there working around food systems.”
Emery said the multi-state collaboration helped farms and food producers identify opportunities to grow, like through UNL’s Food Processing Center.
“If I think I have the best chocolate chip cookie recipe, and it's different and unique, I can work with them, so I can get a label with the nutrition information, and I can make sure that my product meets all of the safety guidelines,” Emery said.
Farmers adjust to the cancellation
Emery said farmers have been frustrated by USDA cuts, including the RFBCs and Local Food for Schools program.
“They've been very frustrated about how all this has happened, and they're concerned about where USDA is going around investing in the small farms and especially food production areas, and very concerned about the number of funding sources that have been cut and how that will affect their bottom line,” Emery said.
The Heartland Center’s partners are considering ways to continue supporting businesses without a federal funding source.
“That kind of work is harder to sustain without some resources to support it, but we in Nebraska are really committed to trying to continue that work as best we can,” Emery said.
When the Center closes in September, there will be limited support allocated to grantees through August 2026.