Congress may use the farm bill to save Food for Peace, a foreign food assistance program with a Kansas legacy that President Donald Trump’s administration largely shuttered.
Food for Peace program was a part of the U.S. Agency for International Development before Trump and billionaire Elon Musk started shutting down the agency in February 2025. At the time, Musk led the Department of Government Efficiency and called USAID “beyond repair” and “hopeless” before announcing “we spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
A year later, Congress may take action to bring the program back by using the farm bill to transfer Food for Peace to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A temporary agreement is allowing that work to start back up.
Nick Levendofsky, executive director of the Kansas Farmers Union, said the move would benefit sorghum farmers.
“It’s my hope that with Food for Peace coming back under the USDA now, that eventually we can build that market back up and get more grain sorghum out to people who need it all over the world,” he said.
What is Food for Peace and its Kansas history?
Since the 1950s, Food for Peace has used America’s agricultural surpluses to fight world hunger, expand international trade and advance foreign diplomacy.
The idea started in 1953 with Cheyenne County farmer Peter O’Brien, who shared it at a local Farm Bureau meeting. Fellow Kansan U.S. Sen. Andy Schoeppel sponsored the legislation, which was signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, another Kansan, in 1954.
Another Kansan, U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, authored an amendment in 1966 where American farmers, dubbed the “Bread and Butter Corps,” would travel to developing countries to teach them skills for growing crops.
“This constructive use of U.S. farm abundance is one of the most inspiring activities ever undertaken by any country in world history,” Dole said in an undated quote, according to the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas. “The program has helped the U.S. maintain its position as the world’s leading exporter of food and fiber and shares U.S. abundance with friendly peoples abroad, effectively supplementing world agricultural trade.”
Kansas grain sorghum farmers affected by Food for Peace
Under Trump and Musk, the Food for Peace program was largely shut down by the closing of USAID and reorganization of some components under the U.S. Department of State.
“Food for Peace has kind of still been ‘alive’ — I like to say it’s been on life support over at the State Department since it was cut a year ago,” Levendofsky said.
There was one big shipment a year ago, but “since then, though, those shipments have been few and far between,” Levendofsky told The Capital-Journal before traveling to Washington, D.C., as a State of the Union guest of U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kansas.
“This has been an area of frustration because of the fact that this program is so important for so many Kansas farmers,” Davids said.
The loss of Food for Peace has especially affected farmers who grew grain sorghum, which is also known as milo.
“There’s piles and piles and piles of grain sorghum all over western Kansas because they’ve filled up all their storage and the next thing that they can do is just pile it up on the ground and maybe throw a tarp over it,” Levendofsky said.
Kansas is the leading producer of grain sorghum in the country, accounting for a little more than half of the harvest nationwide in 2024, according to the latest data from the Kansas Department of Agriculture. The 182 million bushels of production statewide that year — which was the third-most of any crop behind corn and wheat — had a value of $739 million.
“Grain sorghum was a major commodity that got shipped out of Kansas. … That was going to places like Africa, where it’s a staple of their diet, other places all over the world,” Levendofsky said.
Without the same volume of Food for Peace shipments, “The market then dropped significantly for grain sorghum.”
“Since then, the price for grain sorghum has hovered right around the $3 per bushel mark for about the last year,” Levendofsky said. “That’s not enough to cover the costs of inputs. It’s not enough to cover really anything.
“There have been some expanded markets for grain sorghum, primarily in the pet food industry, but I think at the end of the day most farmers would like to see a better price and a better market for that grain sorghum, and what better market than to send it to hungry people all over the world.”
He said India could be a good market for American sorghum, “but we’ve tried for 25 years to get our foot in that door and it’s not been easy.” China has been a major consumer, but “with the trade war there, they’re no longer purchasing as much grain sorghum.”
Congress has moved to save Food for Peace
Shortly after the Trump administration largely shuttered USAID and Food for Peace, members of Congress moved to save the international food assistance program.
U.S. Rep. Tracey Mann, R-Kansas, and U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, introduced legislation in February 2025 to move Food for Peace to the USDA. Neither Mann’s bill in the House nor Moran’s bill in the Senate got any traction as standalone legislation.
Mann told The Capital-Journal last year that the farm bill could be a route for saving Food for Peace.
“The concept of taking American grown — Kansas grown — ag products and sending it to mouths that otherwise aren’t able to eat in the world, it’s very important that we do that,” Mann said in a March 26 interview. “I support it. It’s good for our farmers, good for our shippers, good for the mouths that received it. It’s also very important for soft diplomacy.”
