Food banks across the country, already strained by rising demand, say they will have less food to distribute because of at least $1 billion in federal funding cuts and pauses by the Trump administration, according to Reuters interviews with organizations in seven states.
Hunger in the U.S. has ticked up in recent years with rising inflation and the end of pandemic-era programs that expanded food aid. President Donald Trump's administration has vowed to lower inflation by cutting back on government spending, including two U.S. Department of Agriculture programs that helped schools and food banks buy food from local farms.
Reuters spoke with food banks in seven states who said cancellation and pauses of the programs meant they expected to offer less produce, meat and other staples in the coming weeks and months, leaving scarcer food for those reliant on free supplies that helped stave off hunger.
One reason is fewer expected shipments from USDA's The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), one of the agency's core nutrition programs that buys food from farmers and sends it to food pantries, some of the organizations said.
Vince Hall, chief government relations officer for Feeding America, the nation's largest food bank network, said the USDA is reviewing the program and had paused half of TEFAP funding - $500 million - sourced from the Commodity Credit Corporation, which generally gives the department a broad discretionary funding pool for various programs.
A USDA spokesperson told Reuters the agency is still making purchases to support food banks but did not respond to detailed questions about TEFAP spending and why food banks are seeing reduced deliveries.
In a letter to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins dated Tuesday, a group of 26 U.S. Senators asked a series of pointed questions about canceled food purchases, and TEFAP and other USDA funding cuts. The Democrats and two Senate independents said the loss would have a "significant and damaging impact upon millions of people."
Feeding America has spoken with the Trump administration about the pause and urged it to make a quick decision on whether to unfreeze the funds, Hall said. That pause compounds losses from the agency's cancellation of the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program, which funded about $500 million annually for food banks, the organizations told Reuters.
Chad Morrison, head of Mountaineer Food Bank in West Virginia, said he saw on a weekly forecast from the state of West Virginia that about 40% of the organization's expected April deliveries of products like cheese, eggs and milk from TEFAP would be canceled. That will reduce the amount of food its network of 450 food pantries and other feeding programs provide, Morrison said.
Food banks are handling unprecedented demand as U.S. hunger rates climb after years of decline. In 2023, 13.5% of Americans struggled at some point to secure enough food, the highest rate in nearly a decade, according to the most recent USDA data. In rural America, the hunger rate is even higher, at 15.4%, the data shows.
Anna Pesek, a farmer in Delaware County, Iowa, said about 20% of sales from her Over the Moon farm last year were from the LFPA, which sent her turkeys and pork to food banks across the state. Funding for that program has also been cut.
She expects her pasture-raised products will no longer make their way to pantries without the agency funding.
"It feels really devastating," she said.
Food banks and pantries in West Virginia, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, California and Nebraska have together lost millions of dollars of federal funding and food deliveries in recent weeks, according to Reuters interviews.
Julie Yurko, president and CEO of Northern Illinois Food Bank, which serves 13 counties in the state, said that over the last 18 months, her organization received $3 million from the LFPA to buy onions, potatoes, apples and other produce from local farmers.
Without that program, "we are going to have less produce to give to our neighbors," she said.
Illinois had $14.7 million in funding terminated and another $6.4 million in other USDA funds frozen in recent weeks, halting a food box program that paired local farmers with food pantries, said Jerry Costello, director of the state's Agriculture Department.
Savannah Oates, advocacy and public relations manager at Community Action Partnership of Kern in Kern County, California, said about half the food for the organization's food bank comes from TEFAP. With deliveries paused, she said the group has about two to six months of supplies in stock and is hoping to supplement their offerings with leftover food from local restaurants.
In Charleston, West Virginia, Sara Busse, volunteer coordinator for Trinity's Table, a food aid group, stood in a parking lot and surveyed a meager delivery of USDA-supplied food: two boxes each of dried potato flakes and shelf-stable milk and two cases of vegetarian baked beans.
Before the Trump administration began, the deliveries filled an 18-wheeler, she said. Now, the program may need to halt its meal service to senior groups altogether, she said.
"It’s dreary, it’s very frightening. We’re all losing sleep," she said.
At Charleston's East End Resource Center, Martha Ross, 78, looked over Trinity's Table's sparse donations during a recent senior meal, noting it was far less than usual.
"I guess we’ll get real skinny," Ross said, her voice tinged with dry humor.
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
24 Comments
TaiwanIsNotChina
Just taking care of poor Americans. What? You thought that was the good version of "taking care of" he was promising?
TaiwanIsNotChina
Anybody advocating cuts to SNAP and food banks needs to spend even just one month living only on the benefits and restrictions before they have any credibility.
I'veSeenFootage
Like all republicans, Trump doesn't care about low-income Americans at all. Never did and never will.
bass4funk
Oh give me a break! Libs could care less about the poor or homeless.
Libs less
I'veSeenFootage
A silly statement that is proven wrong by the numerous policies the democrats enacted to help low-income Americans over the years: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, federally subsidized housing, federal home loans for low-income workers, federal loans for poor farmers, federal food subsidies, free school lunches for poor kids, Head Start, the GI Bill, Pell Grants...
Meanwhile, the conservatives give tax cuts to the 1% and drive the deficit through the roof.
wallace
The left cares much more about food banks and donates more than the right.
BB
New data yesterday:
US consumer confidence fell in March to the lowest level in four years on concerns about higher prices and the economic outlook amid the Trump administration’s escalating tariffs. ...and all the other chaos his administration is committing.
bass4funk
Really now??
https://youtu.be/9CQOHLSmmXw?si=1Wg7mlY699rB6uXY
The richest state in the union, run only by Democrats, want to make more excuses? What about uh, taxing the rich Hollywood elite? Doing their best?
Seriously?
And to your point look how much they have become a bloated bureaucracy that a lot have become a huge slush fund for the left and DNC
Poor people don’t create jobs, EVER!
patkim
That would be wrong. Throughout history, conservatives cared less about the poor, homeless, and mid to lower classes. Presidents like Reagan were always trying to cut Medicaid and get rid of labor unions. Democrats on the other hand were always trying to keep social security, Medicaid, and make labor unions stronger.
I'veSeenFootage
Still help people. Republicans don't.
Nope, they haven't.
And the 1% just hoards money, ALWAYS. Trickle-down economics is not a thing and doesn't work. Only insane people still think it does.
bass4funk
Ok, calm down, if you think so, then why is the rich West Coast a mess? All of them! Why is NY a mess or Chicago? Why? Look at South Chicago, what have Dems done to fix the out of control crime? How about Detroit? 60 years and what have the Dems done? Baltimore? Portland? Seattle? All the money the Dems have and accumulated throughout the years and how much of it has gone to the people? I mean, the Dems and their über-rich Hollywood and Silicon Valley supporters have done what to help their state?
So why are the Dems completely out of power?
DOGE findings tell a much different story
If that were true, we wouldn’t have theme parks McDonald’s, Starbucks, Apple products, Movie theaters, Restaurants etc.
Again, poor people don’t create jobs, ever.
I'veSeenFootage
Because of a bad economy and russian propaganda on social networks.
They really don't. And I mean REALLY don't.
Nonsensical answer. Having "Apple products" and "movies theaters" in no way proves the richest people don't hoard money.
But I love the fact you cited McDonald’s and Starbucks as examples of the 1% "creating jobs". Thousands of minimum wage jobs, yeah. Because these companies don't pay fair wages. Because they hoard money. You just proved my point.
bass4funk
And the attempt to socially change America by enlightening them to use a different phrase.
They do and the Dems were caught red-handed and they know it, so much so, that their chances of getting back into power look even bleaker and no amount of dodging will change that fact.
Let’s see now Apple is a Private company and they provided As of March 2025, Apple supports nearly 3 million jobs across the United States through direct employment, supplier partnerships, and the iOS app economy. In February 2025, Apple announced a $500 billion investment plan over the next four years, aiming to create an additional 20,000 jobs focused on areas such as artificial intelligence, silicon engineering, research and development, and software development.
-Axios
Yes, they are beginner jobs, not meant for long term, you learn, acquire a basic working knowledge and then you move on.
Seattle tried to increase the minimum wage to $15 and it blew up in their faces. Libs know how to take money, but they don’t know how to make it.
https://seattle.eater.com/2025/1/28/24353940/seattle-restaurant-and-bar-closures-minimum-wage-increase
lincolnman
I wish I could feel empathy for these poor folks - but the lower wage working-class MAGA fans are now getting what they voted for - POVERTY....
Tell us how it feels in four years when you're homeless...and Trump and his oligarch bros are even more rich...
Schadenfreude....
I'veSeenFootage
Nope, that didn't happen.
Nope, they REALLY don't. If DOGE had found any actual fraud, which is a crime, there would have been investigations and arrests. There have been none. You can certainly try to give me examples of how social programs have become "a huge slush fund for the left and DNC", but I know you won't.
Small restaurants in Seattle are irrelevant to this argument. The claim is: "trickle-down economics don't work because the 1% and their corporations hoard money". You can't refute this, because you can't refute reality.
NZ
capitalism at its best.
Desert Tortoise
Medicare and Medicade have a tiny fraction of the overhead cost of private health insurance. If you want to talk about bloated bureaucracy talk about private health insurance where you have around 10 people who never touch a patient ( billing, coders, different levels of sales and marketing, etc ) to every doctor, nurse or technician who does touch a patient, the highest in the world by far. Less than 2% of the Medicare budget is used for admin. The rest goes to patient care. For private health care admin soaks up 11-20% of health care costs depending on the size of the market and the size of the provider.
Desert Tortoise
Because it is not. You are misinformed. California has the 2nd or 3rd greatest average life expectancy in the US, varying a position by year but always in the top 3. California floats between 7th and 9th lowest rate of death by firearm in the US. All those gun regulations the right loves to complain about actually work. California doesn't have as much gun violence and death that most other states experience.
California has a huge population, almost 40 million and growing again after a two year decline during the pandemic, so the raw numbers of everything look big, but compared to its vast population the problems are smaller than those most other states face. Arizona next door has twice the rate of death by firearm that California experiences. California is the 5th largest economy in the world and the number one destination for investment capital in the US. It is not problem free but it is not the wreck the right wants people to think it is.
As for tax burden, meaning government revenues from all sources at all levels of government as a proportion of income, California is number 16 out of the 50 states. But keep in mind that tax burden as a proportion of income is the same +/- 3% for every state in the US. Every state takes pretty much the same bite out of their resident's incomes but each state has a different menu of taxes. Florida taxes things California doesn't, like labor, services and rent. Texas has a property tax rate of 2% to 2.5% of market value depending on the locality where the property tax rate in California is 1% of assessed value which will be the price you pay at purchase, and assessed value can increase no more than 2% per year even if the market value rises 10% thanks to Prop 13. California as a result has one of the lowest average property tax burdens in the US and it gets better every year you own your property. I remember my last trip to Alabama to do some work with the Army at Redstone and seeing all kinds of petty little taxes and service charges on receipts for food or a cell phone card that I don't pay in California. All the states get their cut one way or the other.
Desert Tortoise
Such a horrible thing to actually view minority populations as human beings worthy of respect and equal treatment. Breaking the chains of bigotry is hard but necessary work if the US is to ever fulfill the dream it represents.
Desert Tortoise
That is not the case. The predictions of mass closings of businesses never materialized. There were some reductions in hours worked immediately after the higher minimum wage was instituted but that only lasted a couple of months before hours were restored. Effectively it raised incomes upwards of 20% for the lowest paid workers , which was the goal, but did not result in loss of business. Some prices went up and that was about it. There is this story out there that all these horrible things happened in Seattle but they didn't.
Please try doing some actual research before you flap your yap and look foolish.
Desert Tortoise
Something clearly understood by Adam Smith, David Ricardo and even by Abraham Lincoln is that labor always precedes capital. Without labor capital is not possible. Every economist knows this too. As Adam Smith put it:
"Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased."
Desert Tortoise
Another thought from Adam Smith to keep in the back of your mind:
" No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged."
Express sister
For those who are unfamiliar with the concept of the labor theory of value, it can be put simply:
If I throw $1 million in cash at an oak tree, it will never become a chair. Only a worker can make that transformation possible.
Desert Tortoise
You have it completely backwards. Without those workers working hard to make things there would be no money to invest and no tax revenues to fund infrastructure. Without that labor no products would be made. Without labor you have nothing.