Trump Administration and Floriculture: Universities and Family Farms Feeling the Effects

Each week, the editorial team at Greenhouse Grower and Meister Media Worldwide will bring you the latest updates from the Trump administration’s policies and their impact on floriculture, from labor to the farm bill to funding for anything from federal loans to research and Extension. We also want to hear from you. What questions do you have about immigration enforcement, tariffs, or other topics? Let us know, and we’ll do our best to get you answers.

Here’s our update for March 13.

Universities Feeling Uncertain: A Personal Reflection

This week, we had a conversation with an individual who chooses to remain anonymous but works at a land grant university and is involved in horticulture. Below, this person shares their thoughts on how universities are currently being affected by funding cuts, as well as the long-term implications.

“I would say that the biggest thing right now is there’s a high level of uncertainty in the university setting, especially at land grant universities. Hatch funds and Smith-Lever funds are the backbone of funding for ag colleges, and there’s a lot of questions around the future of that funding, which is nerve wracking. We’re waiting to hear what’s next.

“When it comes to grants getting canceled, I don’t have any that have gotten cancelled, and I don’t have any direct colleagues that have had them cancelled. I do have some peers who are in allied departments who have had at least one grant cut. For the most part, we’re not offering DEI-focused horticulture grants, which may have kept us off the radar.

“I will say that the layoffs at the USDA have affected one of the centers that we partner with. They’ve lost employees, and I know that’s creating stress for them. It’s creating a bit of a backlog or a longer timeline for us to get results back from them.

“When it comes to grant access, I think that’s going to be where we see a lot of impact, because I think there’s going to be a lot of reduced funding opportunities and support in the future. The landscape is going to change, and that’s the thing that I’m really worried about. These cuts in USDA researchers and USDA funding are not going to hit our industry next year. But 10 years down the line, without that research and without that technical support, that’s when we’re going to be lagging. While these cuts are being made, some people might be saying, ‘my life doesn’t feel different today.’ But when we fast forward a decade, our rate of progress will be much slower or will have stopped. And that’s when we’re going to find ourselves behind.

“I think right now is a good time for growers to be contacting their Congressional delegation, because I’m real nervous for the future of land grant universities. The vast majority of horticulture programs are at the land grant universities. There are some that are private, but the vast majority of horticulture programs are going to be at public land grant colleges. There’s no backup universities or backup programs if we lose them. It’s not like horticulture is a major that you find at every university, like English or Business or Communications. We’re already a small minority relative to programs across universities. When you look at the state level, our budgets are getting cut. We offer scholarships, but how many can we realistically offer? And some of the recruitment tools we get to support new entrants into horticulture are becoming more scarce, or at least we’re anticipating them becoming scarcer.

“When I was getting my degree and trying to be a professor. I thought I was doing a public service, something to be proud of. Faculty members are now seen as pariahs, because we are people who are supposedly indoctrinating students at the university. Personal politics aside, we don’t do any of that in horticulture. We’re talking about managing substrates and fertilizer, or using plant growth regulators and biological control, or controlling temperature and lighting in your greenhouse.”

Sounding Off on the Effects of DOGE CUTS

We’ve heard from anonymous growers across the country offering their two cents on any effects they’re seeing or expect to see from DOGE cuts.

“It’s way too early to have any idea of what if any cuts will arise. Check back in a couple of months after the hype and dust settles.”

“The recent DOGE budget cuts have created major instability across agriculture, especially in government-backed contracts, food bank funding, and military procurement. Due to the unpredictability of payments, farmers and suppliers have completely stopped selling to government-backed programs — this includes food banks, military contracts, and institutional purchasing agreements. The risk of having millions of dollars tied up with no clear payment timeline is simply too great. Where payment cycles were once 30 days, there is now no way to know when or if payments will be processed. Because of this uncertainty, we have made the decision to no longer sell to any government agency at all. This isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s an operational crisis that makes it impossible for farms to plan, maintain cash flow, and continue supplying food.”

“We are a diverse family farm, proud to have both of our children study agriculture, work on our farm, help us with all our crops and field work, and plan to have a lifelong career in agriculture. Our youngest is a junior double major. She applied, interviewed, and was chosen for a coveted summer internship with the USDA in the Natural Resources Conservation Service. She had a start date and was super excited.  This was a Pathways internship, which means if she does a good job there was a good chance to gain full-time employment upon college graduation.

She received an email two days after the inauguration and all the executive orders that her internship was on hold, and then another email a week later saying there is no longer an internship available. She was crushed. The USDA and anything to do with the environment has been hit hard by this administration, and the consequences are going to be devastating to our farmers, our environment, and our nation.

This is just our small story, but it has hit hard. Here is a kid who wants to pursue agriculture as a lifelong career and a huge opportunity that she had secured was pulled out from under her.”