As President Donald Trump’s administration attempts to lower inflation by reducing government spending, Americans are finding out the very programs putting healthy, affordable foods on their plates are on the chopping block.
A pair of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs — one that funds the purchase of local farm-fresh foods for school cafeterias and another that funds much of the product available in food banks — were cut for 2025, amounting to more than $1 billion in purchasing.
In addition to the $660 million slashed from school food programs, the USDA cut $500 million specifically intended to help food banks and domestic agriculture. The latter came from the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) branch of the USDA’s Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP).
Food banks around the country had been counting on that $500 million to feed millions of families and individuals experiencing hunger this year. They use these funds to make purchases within the domestic food supply chain, and many months’ worth of orders already placed by food banks have now been canceled.
TODAY.com spoke with nine regional food banks, as well as a representative from Feeding America, to understand how these changes are affecting those relying on this food across the country.
By the numbers
The Food Bank of South Jersey typically relies on the USDA for around 20% of its food supply. For the Capital Area Food Bank in Washington, D.C., that’s between 25 — 30%, which funds roughly 14 million meals.
Food Bank for the Heartland shared that it’s projected to feed more than 1.6 million individuals and almost 600,000 households this year through its pantries across Nebraska and Iowa — numbers that will be tougher to reach with the reduced federal funding, as commodity purchases typically account for 20% of food sourced, with the rest coming from donations and retail purchases.
The cuts amount to around 434,000 meals in its Nebraska counties and 76,000 in its Iowa counties, Heartland’s president and CEO Brian Barks tells TODAY.com.
On March 31, Great Plains Food Bank CEO Melissa Sobolik shared a cancellation order with TODAY.com. The notice shows a total loss of around $1.3 million of food, as well as a specific CCC order loss of 11,250 cases of eggs, 500 cases of pulled pork, 480 cases of sliced turkey breast, 1,365 cases of shredded cheddar, 900 cases of canned chicken, 578 cases of dried cranberries and 475 cases of frozen chicken legs.
As of March 27, Food Bank of Iowa had 16 truckloads — nearly 400,000 pounds of food — that hadn’t yet been canceled but were in question. They expected two loads in April and the remaining deliveries in May and June.
“Ours is among many food banks which simply don’t know how this is going to play out,” Annette Hacker, Food Bank of Iowa’s VP of strategy and communications, told TODAY.com. She said they were already purchasing food (spending an estimated $1.12 million from April through July) to try and make up for the loss, “and even that will not cover it.” The next day, Hacker confirmed to TODAY.com that all 16 truckloads had been officially canceled.
Feeding Tampa Bay was slated to provide around 100 million meals this year, of which the CCC funds around 20 million, CEO Thomas Mantz tells TODAY.com.
“Now, do I think we’ll lose all of that? I don’t,” he says. “I want to be clear about that. We don’t want to catastrophize, but that’s the size of the partnership.”
Much of this remains uncertain
Mantz clarified that what his team and peers were hearing coming out of D.C. wasn’t exactly clear-cut. He is remaining hopeful and optimistic that things will change over time.
“I think we still don’t quite know fully the impact of what this may be,” Mantz says.
Many of these canceled shipments weren’t slated to start arriving until later in April or May, but representatives we spoke with say there’s virtually no way to replace what’s lost with donations or private fundraising — the gap is too large.
“Philanthropy can’t overcome this loss,” Mantz says.
But there are some privately funded food banks that don’t rely on USDA funds at all or as heavily. A representative for New York food rescue program City Harvest tells TODAY.com the nonprofit was not impacted by the cuts.
“These reductions don’t just affect people facing hunger — they also hurt the retailers, farmers, and businesses that supply fresh, local food to our region,” Beth Martino, CEO of Three Square Food Bank in Southern Nevada, tells TODAY.com.
What is CCC?
While the CCC (Commodity Credit Corporation) is a discretionary fund — meaning, it’s up to each administration to decide what to do with — it’s most recently been functioning as a way to help food banks acquire more food for the public while putting money directly into the pockets of individual American farmers. Leaders we spoke with said this first began in 2018, but the USDA didn’t respond to TODAY.com’s request for comment.
“It’s a program that works really well,” says Mantz. “It’s a terrific private-public partnership.”
He says it “enlivens” the farming community, which faces its own challenges, and “puts good, healthy food on the tables of those we serve, who will proportionately buy unhealthy food, because that stretches farther in the budget.”
The CCC is just one of three monetary arms of TEFAP. There’s also the entitlement fund and Section 32 Bonus Product. The USDA announced on March 24 that it had approved bonus spends for vegetables, fruits and tree nuts. Bryant says the spend amounts to $261 million, though TODAY.com could not independently verify the number.
Several food banks we spoke with say they had seen bonus product offers come through at the end of March and beginning of April, where pantries can acquire preapproved goods without having to use their entitlement funds. These goods are typically designated as Section 32 when the product’s market needs support, according to the USDA. Hacker tells us that, on March 31, Food Bank of Iowa received two USDA bonus offers for fresh, dried and frozen fruit and tomatoes.
“An enormous amount of the food that we provide at the Food Bank of South Jersey is local produce, local eggs, local dairy — almost all of our vendors,” Geiger says. “Using state money, using donated money, and the money that comes through the TEFAP program.”
So, with these cuts, Mantz adds, “not only do you have less food in the community, not only do the farmers get less support federally, but you also start to introduce long-term health outcomes that are potentially negative for people that don’t have access to good, healthy, nutritious food.”
Sarah F. Geiger, senior director of programs and services for Food Bank of South Jersey, tells TODAY.com the number of people they’re feeding has only increased since the pandemic. She says the USDA funds have been crucial for them the past few years as both individuals and companies have less money to donate.
And as demand for food banks continues to climb, reducing their resources is detrimental to feeding hungry neighbors.
Demand is high
Geiger calls today’s levels of demand “unprecedented.”
“It has simply been unsustainable since the pandemic,” she says. “We’ve not come back.”
This is especially true, Bryant says, for working families who aren’t eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
“Florida is not traditionally a high-wage state,” Mantz says. “We have a lot of tourism industry, leisure industry, and so from a need standpoint, in our community, we’ve continued to see significant growth (in hunger). We don’t see anything in the future that would change what’s happening for the families that we serve.”
Radha Muthiah, CEO of Capital Area Food Bank, tells TODAY.com this reduction means neighbors experiencing hunger who come to the bank will be able to take home less food — and a smaller variety of food — than in the past few years.
Pantries offer farm-fresh foods through these programs
Food banks offer more than just the canned and packaged goods often asked for in donations. Thanks to partnerships with local farmers and funding through programs like the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement (LFPA), they are able to function like a farmers market, too.
Since 2021, this program has been keeping food banks a source of fresh, nutritious and local produce and proteins. In December, the USDA announced the availability of $1.3 billion for local food programs — including Local Food for Schools (LFS) — and then came the $1 billion cut in March.
When a food bank in Southern New Jersey, for example, is able to use dollars to purchase vegetables and meats from Southern Jersey farmers, not only is that money then staying within local communities, it’s getting those relying on banks fresher and more nutritious foods. If someone in South Jersey can get their corn from a local farmer rather than a farmer in Illinois, there are fewer trucks on the road delivering that food, which means it spends less time in transit and can maintain peak levels of nutrients by the time it reaches your neighbor’s plate.
How can food banks afford to offer the same level of produce you’d find at a high-priced urban farmers market? The LFPA funds.
Who do these cuts hurt the most?
Around 13.5% (or 18 million) of US households were food insecure at some point in 2023, according to the USDA. Feeding America puts that number at around 47 million individuals.
Vince Hall, chief growth revenue officer of Feeding America, says that while hunger affects such a large portion of Americans, it does disproportionately affect children and those in rural areas.
According to Feeding America’s stats, nine out of the 10 U.S. counties experiencing the highest rates of hunger are rural.
Executive director of Feeding Indiana’s Hungry, Emily Weikert Bryant, tells TODAY.com that rural areas of her state will feel this loss more greatly than urban areas. Those counties rely more heavily on foods acquired through USDA programs as there are fewer opportunities for retail donation.
“The cost of solving rural hunger is significantly higher,” Hall says. “It involves transporting smaller quantities of food over much larger distances to reach smaller rural communities.”
So, what now?
Several food banks we spoke with say part of their mitigation strategy is to speak with their local elected officials to make sure the policymakers understand the impact of the decisions being made. Many are hopeful that these conversations will lead to reversals or other decisions to course-correct the funding cuts.
“This isn’t someone far away. This is someone next door. This is a colleague, right? This is potentially a customer. This is a friend and a neighbor,” Mantz says. “There’s a good chance that if you’re reading this story, we’re taking care of someone you know — and proudly.”
Almost everyone we spoke with across the country said an ideal future includes a strong bipartisan farm bill, which they say they’ve been waiting on for years.
“And it needs to include that they have these strong investments in agriculture and nutrition programs like SNAP and like TEFAP,” Geiger says.
Hall also mentioned a bipartisan bill as an important next step here.
Food banks are already stretched, and making cuts like these is “not the way to go,” Geiger says, calling these programs and SNAP “critical” for “functional society.”
She adds, “I think people underestimate how quickly we can be those people in line that we serve.”