As international grain sales dry up, Kansas farmers also face the loss of Food for Peace and other programs

Congressman Bob Dole of Kansas, standing, was a dedicated advocate for
the Food for Peace Act. (University of Kansas, Dole Archives photo)

Rich rivers of wheat have grown on the Kansas high plains for nearly 200 years. In 1953, a Kansas farmer believed he could help ease Cold War tensions by providing some of his surplus grain to a hungry world. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, another Kansan, endorsed the idea and created a program to support it.

"Food for Peace has sent sacks of grain stamped 'From the American People' to more than four billion people in 150 countries around the world," reports Elizabeth Williamson of The New York Times. "Now it is effectively dead."

In February, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, ended the program when he cut the U.S. Agency for International Development, which had administered it. Williamson writes. "Kansas’s Republican lawmakers tried to save it but failed to persuade President Donald Trump, who last month proposed cutting the entire 2026 budget for Food for Peace as well as another food aid program dear to Kansans, the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition program," which began in 2003.

With Food for Peace fading, many Kansas farmers are hurting. "It was the latest blow to farmers, particularly in Kansas, where about 80% of those on the high plains voted for Trump and agriculture makes up almost half of the state’s economy," Williamson explains. Instead of a more competitive market for their crops, which Trump campaigned on, Kansas farmers are sitting on grain and facing tariffs that have choked off import sales.

The Pawnee County Co-op in Larned, Kan., is "owned by its farmers, and is one of the biggest brokers of high plains wheat. Before Trump took office in January, the co-op sold half its grain abroad, to European, Asian and African buyers," Willaimson adds. "Now the co-op’s foreign sales are 'zero,' said Kim Barnes, its chief financial officer. . . .The co-op was stuck with 1.5 million bushels of grain sorghum after Trump started his tariff war with China."

Tom Giessel, a retired farmer, is disappointed with this administration. He told Williamson, "These people really don’t know the story of Food for Peace and the roots of it. . . . Farmers shipping grain to where people were hungry — that we did these kinds of things is really what made America great.”