CNN
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In the coming weeks, the shelves at dozens of food pantries in California’s Fresno County will be a little emptier. Visitors won’t be able to take home as many groceries, and their bags will contain fewer nutritious items like chicken, eggs, milk and cheese.
That’s largely because the US Department of Agriculture has halted $500 million in deliveries to food banks nationwide that the Biden administration announced last year, multiple food banks told CNN.
The Central California Food Bank, which distributes food to 60 pantries in the county, recently learned that 13 truckloads of groceries – worth $850,000 – set to be delivered between April and July were canceled. It comes at a time when many residents are struggling to afford food since supermarket prices remain high, said Natalie Caples, the food bank’s co-CEO.
“My food bank in Fresno can’t magically come up with $850,000 and 500,000 pounds of food to backfill that cancelation,” Caples said, noting that the nonprofit is already running at a deficit. “It means neighbors are getting less food when they show up at these distribution sites, and they’re getting a lesser variety of foods.”
The USDA confirmed to Feeding America, a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks and 60,000 meal programs, that the agency is reviewing the funding, said Vince Hall, chief government relations officer at the nonprofit.
“It is our hope that that the review will conclude with a decision to continue investing CCC (Commodity Credit Corporation) dollars in food purchases,” Hall said, noting that food banks from coast to coast are in danger of not having enough items to meet the need. The problem is particularly acute in rural areas, where food banks rely even more on government-supplied groceries.
The $500 million in funding came from the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation, which at times provides additional resources to purchase food from American farmers and ranchers and send it to emergency food providers. The pause comes soon after the agency announced it is ending two Covid-19 era programs that provided money for food banks and schools to purchase food from local and regional farmers and ranchers, halting some $1 billion in funding.
Asked for comment on the pause, the USDA said that the Biden administration created “unsustainable programming and expectations using the Commodity Credit Corporation.”
The agency noted that it continues to buy food for The Emergency Food Assistance Program, spending more than $166 million so far this fiscal year, which began October 1. Also, it has purchased more than $300 million in various poultry, fish, fruits, vegetables and tree nuts through another assistance program and recently approved an additional $261 million in purchases of more fruits, vegetables and tree nuts.
Politico first reported the halt in food deliveries.
In the Washington, DC, metro area, the Capital Area Food Bank is scrambling to replace $1.3 million in food deliveries that have been canceled, said Radha Muthiah, CEO of the nonprofit, which served 64 million meals through more than 400 partners agencies last year. Some 27 trucks containing the equivalent of 670,000 meals, including chicken, eggs, blueberries and other highly nutritious items, are now listed as “returned” in the USDA portal, she said.
The food bank is turning to its supporters – including food retailers and wholesalers, corporations, foundations, individual donors and others – to try to close at least part of the gap, although it will be hard to do in such a short period of time, Muthiah said.
“We are really trying very hard not to reduce the amount of food that flows through our network because we know it is needed by folks right now and potentially needed by more individuals who might be affected by some of the cutbacks in the federal government workforce,” Muthiah said.
But not all food banks can turn to private and corporate donors to make up for loss of USDA-supplied food.
Feeding Southwest Virginia, which serves 26 mostly rural counties, had 10 truckloads containing $513,000 worth of food paused. It doesn’t have the resources to buy food to replace those now-canceled deliveries, said Pamela Irvine, the nonprofit’s CEO.
“We have to make some tough decisions, much like the families or neighbors that are struggling now,” Irvine said. “It could be that some of our agencies and programs will have to provide less food, or it could be that we provide food to less neighbors.”
