Marathon County losing its FoodWise program

Three nutrition educators working in Marathon County will lose their jobs at the end of next month after federal funding was completely eliminated for UW Extension’s FoodWise program as part of the Big Beautiful Bill signed into last last month by President Trump.

These educators go into low-income schools and teach kids how to eat healthier and work with local farmers markets and food pantries to make sure people of all ages are eating well, said Patrick Gatterman, area director of UW Extension at last Thursday’s meeting of the Extension, Education and Economic Development Committee.

No one else will be continuing the work the educators are currently doing, he noted.

“The ripples, we can’t even see it yet,” he said.

FoodWise is paid for by the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed), which was completely defunded by the budget reconciliation bill signed on July 4.

Gatterman said a total of 95 Extension staff statewide were issued layoff notices the prior week, and the UW System is working to provide them with a “soft landing” after they lose their jobs.

Losing the FoodWise program will have a particularly hard impact on this part of Wisconsin, where access to healthy food is not always guaranteed, Gatterman said.

“As you travel across Central Wisconsin, we’re a food desert…meaning one or two grocery stories and a lot of Dollar Generals,” he said.

Supervisor Ann Lemmer expressed concerns about losing FoodWise support for everything from preschools and Head Start to Fit Families and senior meals.

“That’s a huge loss,” she said. ““I’m not sure how those holes will be filled yet.”

Lemmer said she fired off a couple of emails to her elected representatives, asking them to find new funding for FoodWise, and she urged others to do so as well.

“There’s a big movement on reducing waste, fraud and abuse,” she said. “Well, SNAP-Ed doesn’t fit any of those categories.”

In a recent letter to county officials across the state, Karl Martin, the UW Extension dean, said FoodWise had been reaching 133,000 Wisconsinites, but now the program will be winding down by Sept. 30 of this year.

“We know that SNAP-Ed makes Wisconsin healthier,” he wrote. “We are proud of the work we have done and the lives we have changed for the better.”