HADLEY — Irate farmers, waving signs and pitchforks, gathered in front Town Hall on Sunday afternoon as tractors rolled in and the Expandable Brass Band played at the start of a “Attack on Small Farms” protest.

The farmers and their advocates, some 300 strong who hailed from one end of the Valley to the other, had a sole purpose: to fight back against threats to their livelihood emanating from the White House. In recent weeks, funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been slashed or frozen, which could lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses for the region’s farmers.

They were greeted by U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, accompanied by almost a dozen legislators from the Massachusetts delegation. As a series of speakers took to the microphone, their messages were accompanied by the clanging of cowbells and the honking of passing cars.

“This is what democracy looks like,” said a fired-up McGovern in opening his address to the farmers.

Those present were unified to send a loud message to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins that potential cuts to grant funding for small farms would not make the government more efficient. Instead, said participants, cuts would only drown countless small- and medium-size independent farmers.

In the past month, the Trump administration has ended the lease of the state USDA headquarters in Amherst. Meanwhile, the agency fired 6,000 employees a month ago before bringing them all back as a result of a judge’s order. However, there have been plans submitted for additional mass layoffs.

The USDA has also canceled local buying programs, and frozen or canceled dozens of USDA payments slated for farms.

Farmers said the cuts put them in a precarious position, especially given the difficulties in successfully maintaining a farm in the first place. The job, they said, also requires a lot of luck, as farms are subject to the elements. That luck in recent years has been thin, as freezes, flooding, and pests have had devastating impacts on their bottom line.

Now, instead of helping “us common people,” said Ryan Voiland of Red Fire Farm who spoke Sunday, the federal government is taking the side of the powerful. He, like many, cited frustration that the federal government is choosing to become just another obstacle he has to deal with in his effort to make a living. That’s partly what prompted Voiland to join a federal lawsuit demanding the government lift the “unlawful and indefinite freeze of congressional appropriated funds,” which he received enormous applause for on Sunday.

“School programs have been essential for helping support local agriculture around here, but now the Trump administration is taking often illegal actions to terminate staff that support all of these programs,” he said, noting that his farm faces funding freezes from the USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) and its Climate Smart program.

Another farmer, Annie Diemand of Diemand Farm, said the freezing of REAP funding via executive order is also impacting her Wendell farm. The program pays for renewable energy systems and energy efficiency improvements in rural areas. Diemand Farm is using its funding to replace a roof and mount a solar array on it.

Diemand said a farm can’t sign up for a loan and just stop paying it, but without federal funding she doesn’t have the capital to pay her bills.

“The project that we’re doing is $250,000, and we just don’t have that kind of money sitting around,” she said, as she stands to lose as much as $120,000.

The federal freeze also showcases, she said, that not only will farmers and the food supply be impacted, but so too will environmental technologies that without financial assistance will no longer be affordable or feasible for small farms.

Harrison Bardwell of Bardwell Farm in Hatfield is going through a similar situation. The farm is facing some $200,000 in cuts, which represents as much as 30% of his income in 2025.

The farm works as part of USDA’S Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA), which uses non-competitive cooperative agreements to provide funding for state, tribal and territorial governments to purchase food produced within the state or within 400 miles of the delivery destination to help support local, regional and underserved producers.

Bardwell said this money has given his farm the ability to help move its product in volume in a competitive market.

“We have bills to pay, we have loans, and we have employees to support ... we rely on this uptick in business to make it more sustainable and efficient,” said Bardwell. “I am worried about having to cut back or lay off employees.”

Meanwhile, a common theme among legislators at Sunday’s event was that President Trump lied while he campaigned for president. At one point the presidential candidate promised to make America prosperous and safe, and yet many of the speakers on Sunday said that Trump’s decisions are contributing to higher costs of living and taking away the opportunity of prosperity from countless Americans.

“Trump said food prices were supposed to drop,” said McGovern, joking that “Elon Musk probably thinks corn grows in vending machines.”

“You picked the wrong fight,” said McGovern, a senior member of the Congressional Agriculture Committee in Washington.

“When the food system collapsed during COVID, when the shelves were empty, when milk had to be dumped and animals put down, who was it that showed up when the corporate farms failed?” McGovern said. “It was the small- and medium-sized independent farmers.”

Other speakers included representatives from the offices of U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, both of whom touched on topics of corporate greed and the need to rally in opposition. State Sens. Jake Oliveira and Jo Comerford also spoke, as well as state Reps. Mindy Domb, Natalie Blais and Aaron Saunders.

“I don’t even want to speak,” said an impressed Oliveira as he spoke from the top steps of Town Hall. “All I want to do is just read all the signs that are out there, because they are telling me the story against the Trump administration.”

The signs had a variety of messages, from “Don’t bite the hands that feeds us” to “Red or Blue, we all need food” and many more.

The afternoon was organized by a group of farmers, led by Kerry Taylor of Brookfield Farm with help from staff at Community Involved in Sustainable Agriculture, or CISA.

Samuel Gelinas can be reached at sgelinas@gazettenet.com.