For these farmers, a freeze on USAID could mean the loss of an important customer and a loss in revenue.
“Ohio farmers are ready to step up to feed the world,” Bird said. “The uncertainty that these programs being cut brings to the table makes it so we’re not able to fulfill that, and it just leaves a lot of uncertainty in our marketplace and in our farmers.”
USAID is an independent agency that has provided humanitarian and development assistance globally for more than 60 years. Last week, a federal judge ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to temporarily lift the freeze on all funding of USAID programs around the world.
According to a February report by the USAID inspector general’s office, shipments of food assistance have been delayed around the world.
Uncertainty around USAID’s future put more than $489 million of food assistance at ports, in transit, and in warehouses at risk of “spoilage, unanticipated storage needs, and diversion,” according to the report.
Bird said this concerns her on a national scale. More than 600 miles from Dayton, farmers in Kansas who produce sorghum for foreign food assistance don’t have a U.S. domestic marketplace for their crops.
“It’s sitting somewhere,” she said. “But they do know how to store it, and hopefully they’ll find the marketplace for it soon.”
Other impacts
Other major Ohio-based food businesses, like J.M. Smucker in Orrville, have completed humanitarian projects through USAID in recent years. The Better Coffee Harvest Project, launched in 2014, was a $3.9 million initiative that saw 11,000 coffee farmers trained in El Salvador and Nicaragua. These farmers were taught the best agricultural practices to successfully cultivate coffee plants during a time when a fungal disease, called coffee leaf rust, devasted their yields.
According to its 2023 annual report, USAID worked in more than 100 countries worldwide. The largest recipient of aid in 2023 was Ukraine.
The United States is the world’s largest provider of humanitarian assistance, although only 1% of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid. USAID distributed roughly $43.8 billion in assistance in fiscal year 2023, making up nearly 60% of U.S. foreign aid spending.
DeAndra Beck, a retired professor at the University of Michigan, said a freeze on federal foreign aid would set back projects related to improved potato and grain production, studies of drought-resistant wheat and more.
“It’s a very critical opportunity here for U.S. agriculture, to benefit from some of the (research and development), some of the technology that’s developed in these programs,” Beck said.
Ohio State University has worked on projects in recent years through USAID’s Feed the Future Initiative.
A university spokesperson said the college currently doesn’t have any active research grants from USAID, although some research related to humanitarian assistance through subgrants has been paused. University officials are working with their primary USAID grant recipients to determine next steps.
Bird said agricultural research and data collection are “double benefits” — helping nations in need and learning new tools and tricks to bring back to U.S. soil.
“A lot of this research is stuff we’re able to use as well,” she said. “It helps us strengthen our practices and our marketplaces.”
The freezing of federal foreign aid also has indirect consequences that could impact American businesses, Beck said.
“When the U.S. unilaterally takes action, yanks back its commitment, its funding, its programs to benefit countries, if there’s a chance for a country to say, well, I have a choice: am I going to import corn from the U.S.? Am I going to import corn from China, or Russia, another country? What’s the choice there? There’s a real psychological impact here,” she said.
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