On a late winter morning, Maggie Cheney, co-founder and director of Rock Steady Farm, opened an email that would unravel more than a thousand hours of collaborative planning. It was the first of several notices from the U.S. Department of Agriculture terminating or freezing nearly $3 million in federal grants — funding critical to Rock Steady’s work supporting queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and people of color (QTBIPOC) farmers.
“February 6 was our first termination notice — ‘award termination’ is what it was called,” Cheney said. “That was the first, and then it kind of just snowballed.”
In total, the 12-acre, Millerton-based vegetable farm faces $400,000 in immediate funding cuts and another $2.5 million that remains frozen or on indefinite hold — threatening both its core farming infrastructure and widely recognized training and food access programs.
The largest immediate cut was a $300,000 USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Community Food Projects grant, which was planned to fund education and training programs for beginner farmers. “These are not programs that can easily be restarted once lost,” Cheney said. “It’s a decade of very specific curriculum building, planning, and partnership.”
Additional funding cuts include $20,000 for food access programs and $80,000 in Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) grants that were earmarked for critical water mitigation and hedgerow plantings.
Without the water mitigation funding, Cheney said, the farm remains vulnerable to flooding. “It’s a real risk to continue each year without it, especially with the extreme weather we’re seeing.”
Additionally, a $2.5 million USDA Agricultural Marketing Service grant — intended to fund shared food-processing and cold storage facilities for Rock Steady and more than a dozen regional farms — is on hold.
“Last year, we had a lot of challenges with our coolers because of the high temperatures. We don’t have the funds to replace those coolers, so now we’re gonna have to bring our produce to a neighboring farm like we did last year,” Cheney said. “It just creates so many headaches and loss of actual produce. Right now we share a cooler with about five farms so it doesn’t just affect Rock Steady, it affects like all the farms that are trying to collaborate with us and use our infrastructure.”
Cheney said these funds are now in indefinite limbo. “They have had a lot of staff cuts, and it’s kind of unknown what the timing is, if we will get those funds. We’re in a kind of like holding — let’s plan for the worst, hope for the best — scenario.”
Cheney estimates that collectively, partners and collaborators spent more than 1,000 hours applying for these grants. “No exaggeration — like probably hundreds of hours, maybe upwards of 1,000 hours collectively with how many people were in those meetings,” Cheney said. “We were meeting like sometimes twice a week for weeks, and then all the follow-up that we’ve been doing since last June when we applied.”
When asked about the impact the funding cuts may have on local agricultural systems, a USDA spokesperson told the Herald, “Secretary Rollins fully supports President Trump’s directive to optimize government operations, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s ability to better serve American farmers, ranchers, and the agriculture community. We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of Americans’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar is being spent as effectively as possible to serve the people.”
For Rock Steady, which has increasingly focused on education, community events, and advocacy in recent years, the cuts threaten more than farming operations, they threaten a community. “Rock Steady pivoted towards education, community events, and advocacy work about five years ago, and the reason why we did that was because we saw a real gap in the food and farming world around specific trainings for queer and trans farmers and specific land based events that celebrate queer joy, and specifically the lineage and brilliance of BIPOC farmers in our region.”
Beyond its impact on QTBIPOC beginner farmers, Cheney said the farm’s work helps meet broader food insecurity needs across the region. “Our food system is just struggling and we’re seeing the effects not only on beginner farmers, but also on the low income people that we’re feeding. We do a huge amount of food access work for people locally and in New York City. And that has impact you know, especially if there is greater kind of cuts to other types of food assistance in the future — which is so unknown — but I think in general what we do know is that people are feeling financially stressed.”
Cheney said supporting local farms like Rock Steady is critical for regional food security, especially as climate and economic instability grow. “Local farms are essential for local economies to function,” Cheney said. “If folks have the resources to buy locally, do it at all costs. And if you have resources to share, even if farms aren’t asking — they need it.”