President Donald J. Trump applauds the crowd prior to delivering remarks in support of the Farmers to Families Food Box distribution program Monday, Aug. 24, 2020, at Flavor First Growers and Packers in Mills River, N.C.

The Morning Call reports Raspberry Ridge Creamery owner Robert Dunning is desperately trying to fill holes after the Trump administration canceled a $40,000 Biden-era grant for small farmers. Dunning claims he saw “the first signs of trouble” when the new administration stalled federal contracts one month after President Donald Trump entered the White House.

“Things just sort of fell apart,” Dunning said, “And, from my perspective, things just stopped happening.”

“I feel like our farm and small farms like ours are being treated sort of like pawns in a political fight between the last administration and this administration,” said Anton Shannon, co-owner of the 14-acre Good Work Farm in Upper Nazareth Township, one of 19 small Pennsylvania farms now struggling through the Trump administration’s abrupt termination of about $60 million in federal grants.

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Morning Call claims the administration closed down the entire $3 billion federal program orchestrating the grants in April, leaving local farmers with razor-thin margins to fight the legal battle to restore funding.

Shannon had planned to use his grant to build a $27,000 fence to keep deer out of his vegetable plots. Knowing the farm can’t survive another season of decimation he’s had to pull cash from his retirement fund. This will likely mean hiring less people this season as well as rising loan expenses for future work. He predicts it will take the company about a decade to recover that loss.

“It’s discouraging because farming is hard enough on its own — navigating weather and markets,” Shannon said. “It’s unfortunate that there’s now another layer of uncertainty that farmers have to deal with when dealing with agricultural funding. … [W]e will not be profitable this year.”

Lizzy Beller, owner of the half-acre Bubbly Hills Farm in Upper Milford Township told Morning Call most government grants go to giant agribusinesses. They don’t target small farms, so this particular grade of grant will be hard to replace this season.

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“It’s such a huge loss for the whole ag community,” Beller said.

Read the full Morning Call report at this link