Feds Cut $1B In Food Aid, Impacting FL Farmers, Food Banks

FLORIDA — About $1 billion in federal funding cuts and pauses by the Trump administration will put more pressure on already-strained food banks in Florida, according to multiple sources.

The USDA is dismantling a pair of pandemic-era programs that provided more than $1 billion to local food banks under the The Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program. At the same time, the Local Foods for Schools program was canceled.

“It is affecting almost 2 million individuals across this entire region,” Feeding South Florida President and CEO Paco Velez told Local 10. “To find out that it is going to go away, it is going to be detrimental, not only to the families we serve but also to the farmers we help support through these funds -- farmers who are not able to get their product out to market as easy as some of the bigger farms, those are the farms that we were working with.”

The action comes as food banks are already struggling to meet unprecedented demand amid hunger rates that rose along with inflation and the expiration of some programs that kept food on Americans’ tables during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vince Hall, the chief government relations officer for Feeding America, told The Economic Times that about half of the discretionary spending from a Commodity Credit Corporation pool used to fund TEFAP has been frozen.

A USDA spokesperson told Reuters the agency is still making purchases under the TEFAP program.

However, Reuters said the agency didn’t respond to its detailed questions about TEFAP spending or why food banks are seeing deliveries drop off. Food bank officials in seven states had told the Reuters they’re not able to offer as much produce, meat and pantry staples to low-income residents who depend on food banks to feed themselves and their families.

Together, food banks and pantries in West Virginia, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, California and Nebraska, have lost millions of dollars of federal funding and food deliveries in recent weeks, according to Reuters interviews.

How Big Is The Hunger Problem In Florida?

At least 13.5 percent of Americans experienced food insecurity in 2023, up from 12.8 percent the previous year, according to the USDA’s most recent hunger data. Among these people, 5.1 percent experienced “very low food insecurity” — real hunger that comes from skipping meals, small portions and other measures to make meals last.

Florida experienced near the U.S. average 12.2 percent of food insecurity during the three-year period in the USDA analysis, which looked at data for 2021-2023. Of the 12 percent of Florida residents who experienced food insecurity, 4.4 percent experienced very low food insecurity.

People in every county in America experience food insecurity at some point during an average year, according to Feeding America. Hunger varies greatly among states, but also in geographic clusters. The lowest food insecurity rate in 2023 was in Renville County, North Carolina, at 5 percent. About 500 miles to the south, Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota, has the highest rate of 29 percent, the organization said in its 2024 map the Meal Gap Report, which is based on 2022 data.

The Map the Meal Gap map shows 13.2 percent of Florida residents experienced food insecurity in 2022. Among them, 46 percent are above the poverty line required to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. To close the hunger gap, an additional $2,281,165,000 would be needed.

The food insecurity rate was 12.7 percent in Hillsborough County, near the 13.7 rate in neighboring Polk County. In Florida’s most populous county, Miami-Dade, the food insecurity rate was also 13.7 percent. Broward fell behind Miami-Dade at 11.3 percent.

How Are School Lunches In Florida Affected?

The Local Food for Schools program gave students access to the healthiest foods available, and buying directly from fishermen, dairy producers, in turn expanding their markets.

In Florida, the USDA inked a deal for $11.4 million in November 2022 to supply healthy local food to schools statewide.

The budget cuts impact the Treasure Coast Food Bank, a Fort Pierce organization that was benefitting from a $65-million federal food assistance program, WFLX reported.

“The beauty of that program was that it was able to purchase additional fresh food to help with our feeding programs, and that’s going to have a devastating impact on our ability to do that,” Judy Cruz, CEO of Treasure Coast Food Bank, told WFLX.

The loss in funding could additionally impact programs established to offer meals for students after school, the news outlet reported.

The cuts will hurt school districts with “chronically underfunded” school meal budgets, Shannon Gleave, president of the School Nutrition Association, said in a statement.

“In addition to losing the benefits for our kids, this loss of funds is a huge blow to community farmers and ranchers and is detrimental to school meal programs struggling to manage rising food and labor costs,” Gleave said in a statement.

How Are Farmers Affected?

Chad Morrison, the head of West Virginia’s Mountaineer Food Bank, told Reuters that April deliveries will see a 40 percent drop in products like cheese, eggs and milk provided under the TEFAP program, which in turn will decrease supplies in its network of 450 food pantries and other food assistance programs.

In Maine, the coastal RSU 23 school district bought food directly from fishermen, dairy producers and farmers for school meals, Caroline Trinder, the district’s food and nutrition services director, told The Associated Press.

“I think everyone can say that they want kids at school to receive the healthiest meals possible,” Trinder said. “It’s the least processed, and we’re helping our local economy, we’re helping farmers that may be the parents of our students.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting.