The abrupt cancellation of government funding for programs to help food banks distribute healthy, local food is being felt across the country, as some already strapped organizations turn to their local communities for help.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it was cutting more than $1 billion in funding for the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement programs for 2025. The money was designed to pay farmers to provide food to schools and food banks, giving a boost to local producers while giving fresh options to children and communities.
Then, food banks were hit with another blow when they were informed that scheduled deliveries of food through the USDA’s Emergency Food Assistance Program were being halted or cut back.
The cuts come as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency target a long list of government programs and federal jobs for sweeping cuts in recent months. The USDA told USA TODAY that the LFPA cuts were a “return to long-term, fiscally responsible initiatives.”
Food producers and food banks that participated in the axed programs say they will have less food to give to their communities. And rural communities will be hit the hardest because they depend the most on USDA-funded programs for the food distributed by food banks, said Vince Hall, chief government relations officer of the nonprofit Feeding America.
“The reality is that the food banking system is stressed to the breaking point right now because we’re seeing record-high demand and diminished resources,” Hall told USA TODAY. “Folks who came to us during the pandemic have found it impossible to ease out of dependency on food banks because inflation has made so many of their monthly budget essentials more expensive than ever.”
More: Trump administration suspends truckloads of food bank aid bound for California
Food banks turn to communities for donations without funds
The cuts have widespread impacts: In Iowa, about $11.3 million to buy food for school children and food banks was cut. In Arizona, about $21 million. Delaware programs are facing about $2 million in lost funding. And the list goes on.
The Food Bank of Delaware found out the federal government was cancelling deliveries of about 900,000 meals over the next few months with the halting of the Emergency Food Assistance Program, the Delaware News Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported. That program made up over one-quarter of the food that the bank expected to receive for the rest of the year.
“The stress level is going up,” Anne Hayes, executive director of Gather food pantry in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, told the Portsmouth Herald. “What I would say is, the government is stepping back, clearly, so we need the community to step up.”
Food banks generally get the food they give to hungry community members in three ways, according to Hall. They include donations from the community itself or from food producers, food purchased through the USDA programs and food purchased by the banks themselves with very limited resources. With the loss of a significant amount of federal funding for food purchases, they’ll have to lean heavily on donations, which are harder to come by in spread-out, rural areas, he said.
Volunteers pack boxes for seniors at the Mid-Ohio Food Collective on Thursday, Mar 27, 2025 in Grove City, Ohio. A new federal cut will eliminate $1.4 million worth of meat, dairy and eggs from the food bank.
“There’s going to be a lot of hungry people,” Matt Habash, CEO of the The Mid-Ohio Food Collective, told the Columbus Dispatch. “It’s just going to be less food available for people that need it now.”
The USDA increased its use of Section 32 of the Agricultural Adjustment Act to purchase foods and “backfill some of what has been lost,” Hall said. But it doesn’t cover the whole over $1 billion in lost food bank commodities. While food banks struggle to meet the demand of hungry communities, Hall said he’s hopeful that Congress will pass a Farm Bill that includes funding for the food bank programs.
Farmers, food producers decry shakeup of funding sources
The Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement was designed in part to help local farmers thrive and respond to impacts to the food supply chain brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Farmers around the country will lose a source of revenue with the cuts, they told the USA TODAY Network.
“For Iowa farmers, the impact is immediate and potentially devastating,” the Iowa Farmers Union, a family farming coalition, said in a statement to the Des Moines Register. “Producers who have already planned over $3 million in food sales in 2025 through these programs now face sudden financial uncertainty.”
Chris Schwartz, executive director of the Iowa Food System Coalition, said it could tip small farmers into bankruptcy.
Food banks in Arizona will have to stop giving out locally grown food, organizations and farmers told the Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network.
“They’ve been an incredible resource for farmers to create different retail outlets for the things that they grow. So to shut that off abruptly, the ripple effects are quite drastic,” Jessie Gruner, director of community innovations at Pinnacle Prevention in Arizona, told the Arizona Republic.
Kristy Allen, a Wisconsin beekeeper and owner of the Bees Kneez in Burnett County, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel she participated in the Wisconsin Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, which used the federal funding to pay local farmers to produce food for local food pantries. Through it, she was able to provide about 3,000 pounds of honey to the St. Croix Valley Food Bank in northwest Wisconsin in the last couple years. She was able to hire another beekeeper to help her part-time, and she told the Journal Sentinel she might not be able to keep that employee on with the loss of income.
Programs gave communities access to healthier food
The cooperative agreement programs were an important resource for schools to be able to serve healthy food, and school children will lose out, said Julie Udelhofen, a north Iowa school food service director.
“Schools won’t be able to serve fresh, nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables that encourage lifelong healthy eating,” she told the Des Moines Register.
Kelly Saxon (center) and Sebastian Grasser (left) harvest carrots on March 13, 2025, in a field at Agritopia Farm in Gilbert, Ariz.
Locally grown produce stays fresh longer and keeps its nutritional value, while produce that’s brought in from out of state will have been sitting for longer in transit before it’s ultimately donated to food banks, said Kelly Saxon, farm head at Agritopia Farm in Gilbert, Arizona.
“I was really excited when we became part of this program,” Saxon told the Arizona Republic. “As a taxpayer, I’m OK with my money going to do that.”
Contributing: The Arizona Republic, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Des Moines Register, the Portsmouth Herald, Delaware News Journal, the Columbus Dispatch, Reuters
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Federal funding cuts hit food banks, farmers across US
