Elena Neal-Sacks

Earlier this year, the U.S.

Department of Agriculture ended a popular program that gave food banks money to buy fresh local produce.

Sam Thorpe co-owns the farm Spade and Plow in Morgan Hill, California, where weekly food deliveries to a local food bank are about to stop.

He says the timing is bad for everyone involved, his farm, the smaller producers he works with, and people who rely on the food bank.

The lost revenue might force Thorpe to reduce worker hours, which could mean less food growing in the ground.

The pause on SNAP benefits has also meant fewer sales at farmers markets that accept them.

For NPR News, I'm Elena Neal-Sacks.

In the blazing mid-afternoon sun, 95-year-old Dolores Huerta stepped up to a microphone at the Watsonville City Plaza.

Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers of America and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

Speaking to a crowd of protesters that included many farm workers and immigrants, Huerta denounced the Trump administration's ICE raids.

To end her speech, Huerta led a chant of the famous slogan she coined in 1972, Si se puede, or Yes, We Can.

For NPR News, I'm Elena Neal-Sacks in Watsonville.