When Tariffs Freeze Progress: How Trump's Trade Policy Will Put Our Sweet Potato Dream on Ice

We have the building. We have the team. We had the market.

Right here in the Delta, we were planning to build a flash-freezing facility for sweet potatoes and other produce—an effort to add value to some of our region’s specialty crops. It wasn’t just a processing plant—it was a chance to create jobs, reduce food waste, strengthen the local food economy, and keep more dollars in our community.

And then? Tariffs hit.

The specialized equipment we need—state-of-the-art flash freezers, slicers, and packaging lines—is either manufactured overseas or requires imported parts. We now anticipate the equipment cost will increase with tariffs imposed on imported industrial machinery. So, practically overnight, we became unsure if our budget would be enough.

But it wasn’t just the tariffs. What followed was a cascade of instability.

Our markets began to vanish.

The Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, which provides federal dollars for schools to subsidize more expensively produced local foods, was carelessly and callously cut by DOGE. Regional schools would have been a key guaranteed market. At the same time, potential co-packing partnerships with larger food companies—the kind of deals that make small facilities viable—were suddenly out of reach. Uncertainty in the market makes everyone nervous. No one wants to commit to a new supplier while federal policy is in flux.

So here we were: a shovel-ready, job-creating, community-rooted project—frozen in place.

And that’s the part policymakers often miss.

Tariffs may be designed to punish foreign competitors, but too often they end up punishing rural entrepreneurs—people who are taking risks, building local infrastructure, and trying to do things differently in places that desperately need new economic engines.

Our facility would have:

• Created good jobs, right here in the Delta.

• Opened new markets for small sweet potato growers who often can’t meet large-scale retail specs.

• Reduced food waste by turning "ugly" potatoes into delicious, ready-to-use frozen goods.

• Built capacity for regional food security by offering shelf-stable products grown and processed in-state.

• Provided locally grown, value-added products for markets like rural schools, restaurants, and regional grocery stores.

  
  

And yet, it’s on hold—not because we lacked the vision, but because federal policy pulled the rug out from under us.

We need trade policy that supports—not stifles—rural food innovation.

This isn’t just about sweet potatoes. It’s about building a new economy in a place that has given this country so much and been given so little in return.

We’re still holding the vision. But we need help unfreezing the system.