CNN
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Over the next few weeks, shelves at dozens of food pantry in Fresno County, California, will be a little empty. Visitors are unable to bring many groceries home, and their bags contain fewer nutritious items such as chicken, eggs, milk and cheese.
That’s largely because the USDA suspended $500 million delivery to food banks nationwide last year, which the Biden administration announced last year.
The Central California Food Bank, which distributes food to 60 pantrys in the county, has recently learned that 13 truck loading of 13 trucks of grocery, scheduled to be delivered between April and July, has been cancelled. Food Bank CO-CEO Natalie Caples said that because supermarket prices are high, it comes when many residents are struggling to buy food.
“My food bank in Fresno can’t magically come up with $850,000 and £500,000 of food in a cancelled backfill,” Caples said, noting that the nonprofit is already running in the deficit. “That means that when neighbors show up at these distribution sites they’re reducing their food, and they get less varieties of food.”
The USDA has confirmed Feeding America, a national network of over 200 food banks and 60,000 diet programs, and agents are considering funding, said Vince Hall, the nonprofit’s chief government affairs officer.
“It is our hope that the review will end with the decision to continue investing in food purchases from CCC (Commodity Credit Corporation),” Hall said that coast-to-coast food banks are at risk of not having enough items to meet their needs. The problem is particularly severe in rural areas, with food banks further relying on the groceries provided by the government.
The $500 million in funding comes from USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation. This may provide additional resources to purchase food from American farmers and ranchers and send it to emergency food providers. The suspension comes shortly after the agency announced it would be closing two Covid-19 ERA programs that will provide money to food banks and schools to buy food from local and local farmers and ranchers, as well as to stop the roughly $1 billion in funding.
Requested for comment on the suspension, USDA said the Biden administration had created “unsustainable programming and expectations using the Commodity Credit Corporation.”
The agency continues to buy food for its emergency food aid program, and launched on October 1st, spending more than $166 million so far. It also purchased over $300 million in a variety of poultry, fish, fruits, vegetables and tree nuts through another subsidized program, and recently approved $261 million in the purchase of fly awards, vegetables and tree nuts.
Politico first reported a suspension of food delivery.
In the metro area of Washington, DC, the Capital Area Food Bank is in a hurry to exchange cancelled $1.3 million food delivery, said Radha Muthiah, CEO of the nonprofit, which last year provided 64 million meals through more than 400 partner agencies. Approximately 27 trucks, equivalent to 670,000 meals, including chicken, eggs, blueberries and other nutritious items, are currently listed as “returned” on the USDA portal, she said.
Food banks will try to close at least some of the gap by relying on supporters, including food retailers and wholesalers, businesses, foundations and individual donors, but it will be difficult to do it in such a short period of time, Mutia said.
“We are trying very hard not to reduce the amount of food flowing through our network because we know that more individuals may need it, which may be affected by some of the cuts in the federal workforce,” Mutia said.
However, not all food banks can rely on private and corporate donors to compensate for the loss of food that USDA offers.
Feeding in southwestern Virginia serves 26 counties primarily in the country, with 10 trucks suspended, including $513,000 worth of food. According to Pamela Irvine, CEO of the nonprofit, there are no resources to buy food to replace currently cancelled delivery.
“We have to make some tough decisions, like our families and neighbors who are struggling right now,” Irvine said. “It could be that some of our agents and programs need to provide less food, or maybe they need to provide food to people with fewer neighbors.”
