Crystal León used to work as a nutritionist at a private school and an assisted-living community. Her husband, Carlos, worked for a local brewery. A few years ago, they started a side business, The Radish Hotel, growing salad greens and making pantry products like seasonings and jams.
Between their day jobs and the new enterprise, there were no evenings or weekends off. “We were just working all the time,” Crystal León said. She called the dual workloads “a very unhealthy kind of situation.”
“We were at a place where we either needed to cut our losses and go in a different direction, or we had to really choose to scale up and go for it,” she said.
In 2023, the Leóns signed up to participate in the Home Feeds Nevada Agriculture Food Purchase Program, under which the Nevada Department of Agriculture purchased nutritious foods directly from growers and producers, who would ship them to food banks.
Their first contract with the program was for $10,000. “They specifically purchased our granola—a honey-sweetened granola that’s low-sugar that would meet their cereal requirement,” León said. She sold the granola to the program for slightly less than its wholesale price.
“Families were no longer just receiving canned green beans and canned corn and stewed tomatoes. Our farmers and ranchers were sending the best stuff fresh to our local food pantries. It was life-changing for people on all sides.”
“It made a huge difference,” León said. It helped the business invest in the things it needed to scale up its production line: “better packaging, better labels, things that could be marketable, that could go on grocery shelves,” she said. “We got really nice, grocery-ready, marketable packaging. We have our nutrition panel on there and all of that.”
She had developed the granola as part of the Women’s Farm2Food Accelerator Program, another Nevada Department of Agriculture function, intended to train women farmers and entrepreneurs to grow their food and beverage businesses.
“It was a nice source of pride for (participants like me) to be able to go, ‘Look, this product was birthed here, and now we have it complete, and now we get to feed the community with it,’” León said. “I have people who tell me (the granola) is the only thing their kids eat in the morning. Families were no longer just receiving canned green beans and canned corn and stewed tomatoes. Our farmers and ranchers were sending the best stuff fresh to our local food pantries. It was life-changing for people on all sides.”
The legwork to make the granola more marketable also led to what León called “a real snowball—after improving our packaging and our labels … we were then able to get this product into many other local shops.”
In 2024, The Radish Hotel fulfilled its contract with Home Feeds Nevada for more than 900 pounds of granola.
“We had finally gone out on a limb,” León said.
On March 5, she received a notice from the Nevada Department of Agriculture: “All deliveries need to be ceased until further notice.” Home Feeds Nevada had been defunded.
This program is just one of many federally backed food programs that have been gutted this year. Under directives from President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the U.S. Department of Agriculture has cut more than $1 billion in food-assistance nationwide, including school meals programs, and the Leóns are among countless small producers scrambling to adapt.
“We’ve paid the money for all of our new packaging, all of our new labels, and now we have no place to send the product,” León said. “We can’t make the goods, because we don’t have our partnerships on the other side. Our ranchers and farmers who planted extra crops solely for this program, who raised cattle solely for this program—now they have nowhere to send it.”
Farmers’ market assistance cut
On April 12, the Riverside Farmers Market posted on social media: “We recently got news we never wanted to share: Nevada’s WIC Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) has been defunded for the 2025 season.”
That program is administered by the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, and it’s part of the USDA’s federal WIC program, which provides certain staples deemed nutritionally necessary for women, infants and children.
Emma Kunz, market manager for Riverside Farmers Market, explained how the program worked: Historically, WIC participants used coupons to purchase fresh produce from market vendors. In 2024, the system changed to a digital one. Farmers were trained on a new system to scan QR codes from WIC users’ phones.
Of the market’s dozens of vendors, five are farms. Three were accepting WIC benefits before the program was cut. Kunz estimated that in the winter, five or fewer families would use WIC benefits each week. In the summer, it could be up to 15 or 20.
Kunz said it’s been a challenge for local farmers to navigate the logistics of licensing and permitting in addition to the full-time work of farming.
“It’s not really been on the priority list for a lot of farmers until recent years,” she said. “I think if we had had another year or two of workshops with that digital system, it really could have been something truly amazing.”
To Kunz, providing food to this number of families is significant, since she’s seen some families arrive at the market with four to six children.
Kunz read aloud the message that farmers received, alerting them to the program cut: “Due to funding and logistical barriers, the Nevada Farmers Market Nutrition program will not be accepting participants or former applications for the 2025 season. This decision was made after careful consideration of program funding and sustainability.”
“And that was it,” she said. “That was the only information these farmers got.”
When the RN&R requested details from the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, a department spokesperson said the following in an email statement: “Administrative funds allocated to the state agency to implement the program are not sufficient and have been cut from $64,342.97 in 2024, to $16,997 so far this year. Full funding has not yet been allocated for FY 2025.”
To the question of whether the cuts were likely to be temporary or permanent, the spokesperson replied, “If funding is increased, Nevada will consider applying for the grant in the future.”
While Kunz—along with everyone else the RN&R spoke to for this story—said that communication from the government about the cuts has been unclear, conflicting or incomplete, she is sympathetic toward the department’s workers.
“These poor people who are just probably getting bombarded—they’re in the same position themselves,” she said. “So I think everybody’s just in that boat of a lack of information.”
An organic farmer’s perspective
One of the three Riverside Farmers Market vendors that were part of the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) is Prema Farm, a small, certified-organic grower in Loyalton, Calif., just across the state line from Reno’s North Valleys.
Co-owner Courtney O’Neill explained via email why Prema participated in the program: “From a producer’s perspective, I wouldn’t say that programs like FMNP aren’t the only reason we do what we do, but they absolutely deepen our sense of purpose,” said O’Neill, who also is the marketing director and a board member at the Riverside Farmers Market. “Knowing there are systems in place that help get fresh, nutrient-dense food into the hands of families who need it most means a lot to us.
“Farming in our region is expensive. Growing truly organic food takes an incredible amount of time and labor, and our overhead is intense due to short seasons, unpredictable weather, rising utility rates, heating costs in colder months and, most importantly, paying our farmers a fair wage in a place where housing costs are only going up. All of this adds up, and the result is that our prices are often on par with places like Whole Foods. That’s simply the reality of what it takes to grow real food. And unfortunately, that makes it out of reach for a lot of people. That’s why programs like WIC and FMNP are so critical. They make fresh, local, organic food more accessible to everyone, no matter what they are going through.”
She added: “These programs eliminate extra layers of logistics, time and cost that would otherwise fall on us to bridge that gap.”
Food bank cuts
The Home Feeds Nevada program—the one under which Crystal and Carlos León were supplying granola to food banks—had been funding about 1.1 million pounds of food annually for the Food Bank of Northern Nevada (FBNN), according to Jocelyn Lantrip, the group’s marketing and communications director.
Funding from another federal source, the Commodity Credit Corporation, which supplied about 2 million pounds of food per year to the food bank, was also cut this year.
“We were looking to receive some loads between April and August,” Lantrip said. “We had them on order already, and those were specifically protein, dairy and eggs. And there was a little over 350,000 pounds of food, several loads, that were on order. That has been officially canceled.”
The food bank, headquartered in a 70,000-square-foot warehouse at 550 Italy Drive, off USA Parkway in Sparks, brings in 25 million pounds of food annually from sources that include surplus from the government, retailers and farms.
“We get a lot of food from Walmart—there’s a distribution center right next door to us,” Lantrip said. On a recent weekday, a shipment of fresh celery from a Central Valley farm filled pallets that stretched down an entire Costco-length warehouse aisle.
The food bank distributes this food to 160,000 people per month via 152 partner agencies in Northern Nevada and Northern California, including schools, faith-based pantries and larger nonprofits like the Reno-Sparks Gospel Mission.
“We’re seeing very high numbers of people needing food assistance—higher than we’ve ever seen.”
Jocelyn Lantrip, marketing and communications director, Food Bank of Northern Nevada
An organization as large as the FBNN won’t be done in by a 3 million pound reduction in food, but Lantrip said the cuts will be felt, citing two factors in particular.
“Not all food donations or programs are equal—and protein, eggs, dairy are tougher to find and more expensive,” she said.
As for that second factor: “We’re seeing very high numbers of people needing food assistance—higher than we’ve ever seen. The thing that we hear the most is that the cost of living is too high for income. We’re hearing from a lot of families who are working, and they just can’t make ends meet with the income that they have, because food is more expensive, and housing keeps going up.”
Lantrip is especially concerned about how the current supply-and-demand equation will affect seniors.
“Their income rarely goes up, and their prices are going up,” she said.
The USDA-backed Commodities Supplemental Food Program, which provides a monthly box of food for low-income seniors, has been reduced as well.
“The piece that we’re watching the most closely right now would be SNAP reductions,” Lantrip said.
SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. As of this writing, SNAP benefits remain intact. However, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Republican-led U.S. House Agriculture Committee hopes to cut at least $230 billion in food aid over the next nine years “with these cuts expected to come largely or entirely from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and to be used to help pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest business owners and households.”
Said Lantrip: “We’re very concerned, because there are more than a half-million people who rely on SNAP in Nevada.”
Moving forward
Prior to the March 5 cancellation notice received by The Radish Hotel, there had been a cancellation notice in January, followed by an assurance in February that the Home Feeds Nevada program would continue. Crystal León referred to the chaos as “the whiplash of emails and the false hope.”
“We literally had an order packed and ready to go,” León said.
At the moment, she is seeking out new retailers and considering raising her prices—which would be a tough decision.
“We pride ourselves on being a business that the everyday person can afford,” she said. She is also advocating for Senate Bill 233, which would allocate $800,000 in funds from the state of Nevada to sustain the Home Feeds Nevada program.
Said Emma Kunz, from the Riverside Farmers Market: “We’ve been working really hard to come up with ways to fill the gaps. We are encouraging our people, who are able to, to participate in our gift box program, which is basically like a sponsorship program, where you can go to our website and sponsor a gift box for a family in need.”
The market will also accept donations of surplus backyard fruit this summer to distribute.
“We’ve never had to pilot or navigate anything like this before, but we are eager to take some sort of action,” Kunz said.
Said Courtney O’Neill, from Prema Farm: “For us, these programs aren’t just about business. It’s truly about community. The same loyal customers who buy with us weekly will often contribute to our food security efforts via the Riverside Farmers Market and Reno Mobile Market GiftBox program. Through that, we offer $25 donation boxes … that go directly to folks who need food—no questions asked. We actually launched that program during COVID to help people through tough times, and we’ve kept it going for exactly these kinds of moments.”
Jocelyn Lantrip, who has worked at the Food Bank of Northern Nevada for 16 years, said she’s seen recessions hit, large companies decrease the amount of surplus food they donate, and the COVID era’s wild supply fluctuations and increased need. She said the food bank’s size, as well as its diverse funding and food-resourcing streams, will help it weather the cuts—although those cuts remain significant and painful.
“It is still concerning when we see 3 million pounds of food go away,” she said. Of the harder-to-source protein, eggs and dairy that the food bank has lost, she said. “We really have to work hard to replace it.”
To donate to the Reno Mobile Market’s gift box program, click here. To donate to the Food Bank of Northern Nevada, visit fbnn.org/ways-to-give. To purchase a box of Prema Farm food for people in need, click here.
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