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Nebraska Department of Agriculture photo

Nebraska, with an agriculture economy driven by beef cattle, is one of several states to use financial incentives to recruit food animal veterinarians.

A 15-year-old federal program intended to draw veterinarians to rural regions in the United States deemed short on care is not accepting new candidates while it undergoes a review by the Trump administration.

The application period for the Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program, or VMLRP, typically closes in April each year. This year, as of the last week in May, it has yet to open.

Kathe Bjork, national program leader for veterinary medicine and animal health at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), told the VIN News Service by email that the review encompasses the institute as a whole.

"All NIFA Requests for Applications are currently under review … " she wrote. "As we await further guidance, we are asked to pause issuance of grant funding during the transition of government."

President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20. A focus of his first months has been to dramatically reduce the government workforce and programs.

The VMLRP was authorized by the National Veterinary Medical Service Act of 2003 and made its first awards in 2010. Intended to offset student debt, the grants historically have been $25,000 toward loan repayment each year for three years. Recipients pledge to practice in a specified shortage area during their grant period.

The program website currently shows the annual grant as "up to $40,000." However, Bjork said that all existing awards "have a maximum allowance of $25,000 per year" and did not explain the discrepancy.

She did note that the pause does not affect participants already in the program. "[P]revious awards are being funded as we committed to," she said.

There currently are 280 participants, Bjork said. Between 2010 and 2022, the VMLRP created agreements with 795 awardees, according to a program summary.

The program has bipartisan champions, among them Sen. Mike Crapo, a Republican in Idaho. Since at least 2011, Crapo repeatedly has introduced legislation with support from Republicans and Democrats alike to exempt the grant from federal income tax. (The USDA has softened the tax hit by providing grantees with money on top of the loan repayment sum to cover the tax.)

He highlighted his latest attempt in a weekly dispatch dated May 5, writing, "Access to quality veterinary care is vital for Idaho agriculture. By addressing the burdensome taxes on the VMLRP, this legislation would allow more veterinarians to serve in rural and underserved communities most in need."

His office told VIN News that it had no further developments on the program to share.

State veterinarians are responsible for nominating shortage areas where VMLRP grantees may work. In Kansas, a spokesperson for the state Department of Agriculture said that while state Animal Health Commissioner Dr. Justin Smith was aware of the delays, he had not received communication indicating an official freeze in the program.

The spokesperson, Heather Lansdowne, added that the VMLRP is a valuable program to Kansas and that the state counts on the USDA continuing to support it.

The role of student debt

With its nationwide reach, VMLRP has become something of a flagship among a variety of programs aimed at increasing access to food animal veterinarians in rural communities. According to an oft-cited 2023 report by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, which is part of the university's Bloomberg School of Public Health, the U.S. has lost 90% of its food animal veterinarians since World War II.

Figures from the American Veterinary Medical Association's latest Economic State of the Profession report show that food animal practitioners made up 1.3% of an estimated 127,131 in practice in the U.S. as of the end of 2023.

Clinton Neill is a veterinary economist at the Cornell Center of Veterinary Business and Entrepreneurship and author of a 2022 Farm Journal Foundation report entitled "Addressing the Persistent Shortage of Food Animal Veterinarians and Its Impact on Rural Communities." Among many factors driving the shortage, the report identifies student debt as a key.

More than 83% of veterinarians who graduated in 2024 had student debt, which averaged $202,647, according to the AVMA report. About 17% of graduates that year had no debt, while an equal proportion owed upwards of $300,000.

Entering the workforce owing so much money inevitably influences their choice of jobs, Neill said.

"I've spent a lot of time the last three, four years talking to students, talking to veterinarians across the spectrum, and this issue of having this financial burden of debt has really driven a lot of their decisions," he said. "When they go to vet school, they're very excited about being in a rural space, going back home or a similar community, and then they find that this debt burden kind of creeps up on them, and they start thinking about, 'Well, what are my other options?' "

One easy option is companion animal practice, which tends to pay better than farm animal practice for doctors new to the workforce.

In 2024, the average starting salary for associate veterinarians practicing exclusively companion animal medicine was $137,227 a year, compared with $107,607 for associate veterinarians working exclusively with food animals. (Owners of food animal practices fared better, reporting a median income of $203,000 compared with $160,000 for companion animal practice owners.)

Food animal veterinarians also tend to work more hours — logging an average of 51.4 per week, compared with the average of 46.6 per week reported by companion animal veterinarians.

One of the solutions Neill's report puts forward is to help graduating veterinarians address their student loan debt. Exactly how is a separate question. Neill said no magic formula exists for creating the most effective financial incentives.

A number of entities are trying. Besides the VMLRP, there are more than a half dozen state programs that offer loan repayments or other financial rewards to qualifying veterinarians who commit to practicing food animal medicine in a need area for a prescribed period of time.

Nebraska introduces a two-pronged approach

One of the newest is the Nebraska Production Animal Rural Veterinarian Grant Program, available for the first time this year. It is intended to attract up to 13 recent veterinary school graduates to rural parts of the state to practice food animal medicine, promising a one-time payment of $150,000 to those who complete eight years in the specified practice. The first participants have yet to be selected.

The grant was conceived to complement a scholarship program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln called the Elite 11 program, in which 11 students with a passion and aptitude for production animal medicine ultimately may have their veterinary school tuition fully paid for, provided they work as food animal veterinarians in Nebraska for at least eight years after graduating.

"One major limitation to DVMs returning to rural [Nebraska] is the burden of student debt," Tiffany Heng-Moss, dean of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, told VIN News Service by email. "This program eliminates this barrier."

First offered in 2024, the scholarship is not an immediate answer to placing veterinarians in regions that need them, however. Nebraska Commissioner of Labor Katie Thurber said the grant for practitioners was established after veterinarians in the state pointed out that the Elite 11 initiative would take years to pay off.

"As we were discussing this with them, the constant theme of those conversations was, 'This is amazing, we love where this is headed, but what's going to happen in the immediate future? How do we make it eight years with that gap?' " Thurber said.

Hence, the rural veterinarian grant program. Unlike many similar programs, this grant isn't directly tied to student loan debt repayment. Thurber said that was intentional, to give awardees the flexibility of choosing how to use their award.

In any case, the requirement that participants complete eight years in practice before receiving the $150,000 award diminishes its value because interest on debt accrues during the wait or inflation reduces its buying power.

Elsewhere, a variety of strategies

One of the oldest rural-practice incentive programs in operation was established in 2006 at Kansas State University. There, up to seven veterinary students are selected every other year to receive a $25,000 loan per year for four years. After graduation, one year of loans is forgiven for each year that participants practice in a Kansas county with fewer than 40,000 people or in a practice where at least half of the patients are food animals.

The program counts 89 participants so far, of whom 98% have fulfilled or are currently meeting their loan commitments, according to a program fact sheet.
 Moreover, after completing their four-year obligation, 94% have continued practicing in a qualifying county, most of them in the practice where they started.

Dr. James Roush, associate dean of academic programs and student success at the veterinary school in Kansas, partially attributes the success rate to required supplemental training and activities, including coursework, special projects and monthly meetings. The supplements, besides making students more marketable to employers, build bonds among participants that last long after they graduate, he said.

"They often network with each other on practice questions, ideas and thoughts," Roush said. "There's a lot of connections that occur between that group."

Supporting such connections is something he recommends to new programs in other states. "The advice I would have is to make it a community," Roush said.

One potentially challenging aspect common to incentive programs is that veterinarians are on their own to secure a job in the specified region of need. If they can't or don't do so, those who receive incentives in the form of an upfront loan must repay the money.

For example, Texas has a Rural Veterinarian Incentive Program whereby participants may receive up to $45,000 for every year that they spend providing full-time veterinary care in a need area, for up to $180,000 over four years. As a spokesperson for the Texas program said, "Participants sign a promissory note acknowledging the conditional nature of the award and promise to repay the award if they are not able to satisfy the conditions of the agreement."

While an ideal incentive structure is elusive, states keep trying. For example, in 2022, Arizona established the Arizona Veterinary Loan Assistance Program, under which participants can receive up to $100,000 to repay student loans after they practice in the state for at least four years — two years of that time in a designated shortage area or for a nonprofit, county or municipal shelter.

Last year, Kentucky created its own loan repayment program, with a maximum award of $87,500 paid out over five years. Veterinarians agree to practice in a designated veterinary shortage area or underserved rural area for the duration of their commitment. 

And in May, Virginia's governor signed a law calling on the state veterinarian to create a grant program by July 2026 to "increase or stabilize" the number of large animal veterinarians practicing in shortage areas. The law requires that the state veterinarian also report by July 1, 2030, how well the program has worked.