16 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY MARCH 20-26, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com Agriculture Agriculture is the largest economic driver in Monterey County, with a total estimated impact of over $11.7 billion on the local economy. Much of this sector is funded by federally run programs under the United States Department of Agriculture. A few of the key programs at risk from federal cuts include the National Resource Conservation Service’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, according to U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose. She notes that specific cuts include $37 million from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, $30 million from the National Resources Conservation Service, and $27 million from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Additionally, the USDA Service Center in Salinas may close in August, and several USDA research technicians have been laid off (see story, p. 6), which will affect local farmers. “It’s worth noting, they’re really not sharing with us what they’re doing, so we’re finding out when constituents call in and tell us,” Lofgren says. In Monterey County, over $7 million in resource protection, agricultural productivity and public safety opportunities are at risk with the Resource Conservation District alone. That funding specifically supports things like on-farm technical assistance for conservation, especially benefiting smaller farm operations and those addressing erosion and challenges with water management. Over $5 million of this goes toward fire prevention work, removing eucalyptus trees in Elkhorn Slough and the Santa Lucia Mountains. The remaining funding at risk is allocated to flood-risk reduction projects at the Salinas River. Last fiscal year (July 2023-June 2024), 36 percent ($1,581,275) of RCD’s total income was from federal grants. “All of that funding went toward work in Monterey County,” says Emily Zefferman, a PhD Ecologist with RCD. Research from the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) shows that every $1 invested in agricultural research yields $20 in economic returns. Yet, much of the research done in agriculture in the county is supported by federal funds. The Agriculture & Land-Based Training Association (ALBA) was allocated $415,301 for soil and water conservation programs and CSU Monterey Bay’s Agricultural Research Institute was allocated nearly $1.3 million. Last year, nonprofit farmers market coordinator Everyone’s Harvest used a USDA grant to purchase $300,000 worth of produce from 14 local farmers to distribute 11,350 boxes of produce to low-income customers in Seaside and Salinas. That grant was suspended on March 10, then reinstated on March 14, leading to two missed drop-offs. President Donald Trump is delivering on his campaign promise to shrink the size of the federal government as he attempts to close the $1.8 trillion federal deficit. His first months in office have featured chaos and uncertainty— grants frozen then unfrozen, workers fired then reinstated—but the trend is clear. Trump and Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), are looking to cut costs by downsizing the federal workforce and federal expenditures. Their cuts have already hit Monterey County, and future impacts are uncertain. As the landscape of federal funding changes in real time, we set out to establish a baseline—a look back at some of the federal funds that came to Monterey County last year and what purpose they served. The charts and narrative here include just broad brushstrokes. Some relatively small line items barely appear (like a $4.1 million budget for Pinnacles National Park last year), while other large line items are excluded; for example, $1.4 billion in military compensation is not shown in the chart on p. 17. We were unable to capture payroll figures at a county level for agencies like the U.S. Post Office or U.S. Forest Service, so focused instead on grants and contracts that support a wide variety of local government functions, as well as for-profit business and nonprofit organizations. Many grants are partially expended, or were awarded and not yet spent— their future is uncertain. (For example, just $42,000 of a $72,000 grant, set to be paid out from 2023-25, has so far been awarded to the Monterey County Regional Fire Protection District. A grant of $63,654 was awarded—but not yet paid—to the California Department of Parks and Recreation for planning recreational access to Fort Ord Dunes State Park. The list of such examples is too long to include in full in these pages.) While programs and grants are being cut, the majority of federal spending—nationally and locally—is for direct payments in the form of health insurance reimbursements to medical providers, as well as programs like Social Security, veterans’ benefits and CalFresh (California’s name for federal food stamps). Programs like CalWorks, which combine federal, state and county funds to distribute public assistance, paid out about $36.7 million last year, but the sources are not broken down in public reports. Even omitting major line items, the funds listed in these pages total at least $7.5 billion in federal money that came to Monterey County last year. Amid this alphabet soup of acronyms and agencies are of course real people with real lives and incomes— and work by a range of local agencies— that are being impacted. You can read more about a few examples of those impacts in the pages that follow. —Sara Rubin, editor Funding Flow AS LEADERS IN WASHINGTON TAKE A SLEDGEHAMMER TO FEDERAL FUNDING, HERE’S A LOOK AT LOCAL EXPENDITURES. By Erik Chalhoub, Dave Faries, Celia Jiménez, Pam Marino, Agata Popęda, Katie Rodriguez, Sara Rubin and David Schmalz
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