The future is murky for a bakery at Community Connections at Pinckney, a project that planned to offer students job training and district schools fresh, locally produced goods. 

The bakery, at the former Pinckney Elementary School, was the recipient of a nearly $100,000 Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure grant for the school district to partner with local grain producers and farmers. But the grant funding was suddenly pulled this week after an order from the Trump administration and the “Department of Government Efficiency.” 

Plans for the bakery included job training with a local baker for students with disabilities in the district’s Community Transition program. C-Tran, one of the programs housed in the Pinckney building, provides independent living and workplace skill building for young adults ages 18 to 21.

District spokesperson Julie Boyle said the district does “not know yet if we will receive reimbursement of the approximately $99,000 we planned to spend on equipment for our district-supporting bakery.” 

Boyle said baking products in-house would open up savings to pay for bakery staffing and would put better quality baked goods in schools.

The bakery, Irvine’s Just Beyond Paradise Winery, and Juniper Hill Farms were among five Lawrence-based grant recipients in the RFSI program. Statewide grant awards totaling nearly $5.7 million were announced in August, and funding was set to come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Kansas Department of Agriculture.

KDA spokesperson Heather Lansdowne said the KDA learned the USDA will not be reimbursing expenses incurred after Jan. 19, 2025 as part of a federal directive. And as a result, the KDA notified RFSI grant recipients on Wednesday that it had to make the decision to immediately halt reimbursements.

“Our hope is that this will be a temporary pause,” Lansdowne said via email. “KDA will continue to monitor developments at the federal level and share information with grant recipients as it becomes available. But until the USDA decision is reversed, we are unable to continue helping Kansans with this important program.” 

Boyle said it’s challenging for the district to make plans “in the absence of reliable and transparent funding information.”

“While we plan to proceed with the project, we will have to take a wait-and-see approach with federal grant reimbursements and explore other possible options for funding this innovative project designed to support student learning, nutrition, and well-being; and our local grain producers,” Boyle said. 

Irvine’s had earned a $91,000 federal grant to kickstart a juice and wine analysis laboratory, but part-owner Edward Irvine Jr. said members had held off on spending.

It was the right decision for them, in hindsight. 

“I would consider ourselves lucky for the time being, because we haven’t actually spent any money on this project yet,” Irvine said. “A lot of it was due to hesitation. And with the current administration, there were a few members in our winery that were extremely hesitant — and for a good reason — to start spending money, because we weren’t really sure about reimbursements.”

An add-on to the family business that’s been established since 2019, Irvine’s prospective testing center would help improve the quality of locally made juices and wines. Irvine’s background is in molecular biology, and he’d hoped to introduce the first of this type of service available for vineyards, orchards and wineries in Kansas, and especially support smaller wineries in the area.

He said he’s now unsure about the future of the project.

“We’re just kind of left in the dark, and I think that’s the most unsettling aspect,” Irvine said. 

For Scott Thellman, president of Juniper Hill Farms, the breach of trust is more concerning than the money.

Thellman said he and his farmers grow around 70 acres of produce themselves, plus distribute for about a dozen other growers. They now may be forced to scale down. 

Federal funding the farm benefited from, the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, was also cut this week. That program gave food banks and schools money to purchase from farms and ranchers. Thellman said Juniper Hill did roughly $160,000 of sales to Harvesters, which supplies Just Food, and other Kansas food banks last year.

“There’s always going to be hurdles that come into play,” Thellman said. “I mean, that’s just part of owning a business. But when the hurdles are coming from something as presumably solid as the U.S. government, I think that’s what’s really challenging.”

Juniper Hill had close to $100,000 in RFSI grant funding slated to expand its cold storage areas from 800 to 1,100 square feet, Thellman said. He said that’d take the farm a step up to be able to fill semitrucks of produce instead of just pallets.

But “This week I’ve been looking at, ooh, we’re going to have to consider cutting back acreage of vegetables,” Thellman said. “We’re going to have to consider bringing fewer people and employees back to the farm this summer, and as an operation, really tightening our belts in a way that is not helpful for our community.”

Thellman hadn’t made any submissions to be reimbursed for RFSI project expenses before the funding freeze either, though he did lose a small sum of money he spent on design plans and early preparations. 

Even though financial unpredictability threatens to uproot local farms and food production centers, Thellman was adamant that local farmers and growers are “notoriously optimistic, even in the worst of times.”

Other Lawrence-based recipients of the RFSI grant included Z&M Twisted Vines and local farmer Pantaleon Florez, of Maseualkualli Farms, who could not be reached for comment by the time of publication Friday.

Florez’s project was to “procure equipment for developing nine new value-added products derived from human consumption corn, peppers, and beans,” according to the grant announcement.  

“Maseualkualli Farms will provide access to this equipment and facilitate collaborative market development of Indigenous maize-based products for human consumption among five historically marginalized and beginner producers. This initiative aims to establish local middle-of-the-supply chain Indigenous foodway activities and increase public awareness about the history and nutrition of heritage maize.”

Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.

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