The three-person team behind a growing network of gardens and community spaces in Jackson’s Midtown neighborhood received word in February that they had been chosen to receive $10,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.
In April, that group – the Farm to Community team of the Jackson nonprofit Midtown Partners – was notified that they would not receive the funding. The team lost the federal money after the USDA terminated a $157,827 grant slated to help a dozen groups throughout Mississippi establish or sustain community gardens in underserved communities. The USDA canceled the grant, the notice said, because the nonprofit that had won the grant and chosen garden projects in Mississippi to receive the money, engaged in “diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.”
That nonprofit, Community Resources Connection in South Carolina, declined to comment about the USDA decision but updated its website this week to say that “the Community Garden contract between USDA and CRC has been terminated because of the current administration’s change in priorities” and that no funds are available for the Community Garden program at this time.
Executive orders President Donald Trump issued in January kicked off a sweeping review of grants by the USDA, as the department sought to root out support for DEI programs Trump described as “radical and wasteful” and climate initiatives he said hindered the administration’s priority of “unleashing American energy.”
Though USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins has defended the department’s grant terminations as reducing waste, leaders of community garden projects throughout Mississippi said that past federal funding has enabled them to cultivate food self-sufficiency and community cohesion. Now lost grant opportunities are forcing them to adjust plans and look for alternative funding.
Linda Fondren, founder and executive director of Shape Up Mississippi in Vicksburg, said her organization lost $10,000 in federal funding due to the USDA’s cancellation of the same grant. Due to that loss, the nonprofit will postpone its fifth annual Youth Agriculture and Health Extravaganza Day, which has featured nutrition and agriculture classes, cooking demonstrations and a petting zoo in past years.
Norma Michael at her garden, located in the Georgetown neighborhood in Jackson, Thursday, May 29, 2025. Michael grows a variety of vegetables, from tomatoes and corn to peas and carrots, that she shares with members of the community. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi TodayNorma Michael, founder of the Sharing is Caring Neighborhood Block Garden in Jackson’s Georgetown neighborhood, had planned to install a drip irrigation system using $1,000 from the same USDA-canceled grant. Though she was able to obtain the funding elsewhere, Michael said, the USDA’s decision on the grant was disappointing.
“I think that it’s disheartening that programs that help people that are underserved are being cut,” Michael said. “That just makes us even more underserved.”
Matt Casteel, farm consultant for Midtown Partners’ Farm to Community team, said past federal funding has helped the group to establish relationships and infrastructure to pursue its broader vision of a walkable network of community spaces across Midtown.
“That’s something that we’re building as our bigger vision, is to be the resource and the mycelium, if you will, that connects and keeps that structure together,” Casteel said.
The team used a two-year, $98,041 Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant to establish a teaching garden on the campus of Midtown Public Charter’s primary school and purchase hydroponic towers for the primary and middle schools.
Dewaskii Davis, Jina Daniels and Matt Casteel survey native plants in Midtown Public Charter’s primary school campus. Credit: Steph Quinn / Mississippi TodaySince the fall, the group has also hired lifelong Midtown resident Dewaskii Davis as farm coordinator.
Davis said he is passionate about empowering others in Midtown to participate in Farm to Community events, as well as start their own rain barrels and plant their own gardens.
“No cheat codes, no chemicals, just hard labor,” Davis said. “But it’s worthy and worth it at the end.”
Congress approved the Farm to School program as part of the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which mandated a minimum of $5 million to farm-to-school competitive grants annually to address hunger and improve children’s nutrition – a vital issue in Mississippi, where the childhood poverty rate is 23%. The USDA announced the cancellation of $10 million in fiscal year 2025 funding for that program in late March with no explanation.
Though Midtown Partners’ 2024 grant was unaffected, the group had hoped to re-apply in a future funding cycle.
“I’ve applied for over $2.3 million in grants, and we’ve received about 250,000,” said Jina Daniels, Midtown Partners’ creative economy coordinator. “We keep at it. Every little bit helps.”
Prophetess Robinson, principal of the private K-12 Ron’s Brothers Academy in Picayune, said it’s difficult for her and her staff to find time to apply for grants on top of their teaching and administrative duties.
Robinson applied for a Patrick Leahy Farm to School grant to replace the school’s garden, which was destroyed this winter in a fire that began on a neighboring lot. But she was notified that that program had been canceled before she received feedback on the school’s application.
“One of the kids just asked me, ‘Miss Robinson, are we going to do the gardening? What are we going to do?”
Robinson said the school has put its plans for a new, bigger garden on pause.
“There was no way we’d be able to do it just on our resources alone.”
Fondren highlighted the importance of Shape Up Mississippi’s robust network of volunteers and partner organizations in Vicksburg.
Although the loss of USDA funding was a blow, she said,Shape Up Mississippi will continue to hold public “U-Pick Days” at the group’s community garden – the result of a partnership with Alcorn State University and the city of Vicksburg – throughout the summer. Those harvests are split between local shelters and for families to take home.
“If you could see the children, the families that come out and pick,” Fondren said, “it’s a social gathering. They are so excited about what is happening there.”
Fondren said she and Shape Up Mississippi’s partner organizations in Vicksburg have spent the past few months looking at the loss of grant funding as an opportunity for growth.
“You become resilient,” she said. “How do you keep this going? And so that is what our thought process is. Let’s turn this into something positive.”
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