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Federal cuts to a popular food aid program are proving to be unpopular with two key constituencies: people who grow food, and people who eat it.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture last month canceled a three-year contract to provide $13 million to Pennsylvania food banks, who were to use the money to purchase food directly from 189 participating local farms. The Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA) launched in 2021, using COVID-era federal relief aid to shore up the emergency food system and help struggling farmers too.
The cancellation was part of a multi-billion-dollar reduction to food assistance programs announced by the USDA last month. The agency said the program, along with one focused on schools, “no longer effectuate the goals of the agency.”
The move was decried by food banks, anti-hunger advocates and farmers who warned it would further burden organizations already concerned about aid cutbacks.
Inflation, skyrocketing food prices, and high costs of living mean more people are relying on food banks, said Lisa Scales, president and CEO of the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. USDA data show more people are insecure today than were during the pandemic, and her organization is on track to distribute 47 million pounds of food this year — 3 million pounds more than last year.
“Many of the neighbors we serve today are working, but just don't earn enough income to make it until the next paycheck,” she said.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro appealed the USDA’s termination, which state Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding described as “unlawful.”
“[I]t is hard to imagine a program that better furthers the statutory priorities of USDA than one which — as LFPA does — supports local farmers, helps promote supply chain resiliency, and provides healthy food to the neediest residents,” he wrote in a letter to the agency.
Redding and other state officials visited the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank in Duquesne Wednesday, meeting for a roundtable discussion with anti-hunger organizations and farmers about the risks posed by federal funding cuts.
With the cancellation of the LFPA alone, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank stands to lose nearly $5 million over three years. That money would be used to purchase high-demand items like milk and eggs for the 600 food pantries in the food bank’s 11-county network.
The termination “makes it much harder for us to now be able to support those local farmers and to source that local food that is fresh and in high demand for our community members,” said Colleen Young, the food bank’s director of government affairs.
For farmers like Art King, whose Harvest Valley Farms in Butler County has worked with the food bank since the 1990s, the program was a way to support local agriculture and combat food insecurity.
“It's very heartwarming whenever I see people come to the food bank … and they tell me how lucky they are to be able to get our fresh food,” said King at the Wednesday event. “But I think that probably every food bank in the state should be able to get fresh food from local farmers.”
Now, both groups are in a more precarious position. Farmers are losing a source of income, and there will be less food on food bank shelves.
State officials hope to offset some of the federal cuts. Shapiro’s 2025-26 budget proposal includes a $4 million increase for the Pennsylvania Agricultural Surplus System and $4 million more for the State Food Purchase Program. Both programs help food pantries and other hunger-reduction programs purchase food.
“These are proven programs that work,” Lt. Gov. Austin Davis said Wednesday. “They're truly the definition of a win-win: Farmers get paid to produce food. Folks in need can eat fresh, healthy food.”
But even if those allocations make it into the final state budget later this year, future disruptions from Washington could easily swamp state and local officials. Ramped-up efforts to curb federal spending represent a continuing concern for state governments and anti-hunger groups.
“There is no world where the state government can just absorb the cuts that the federal government is talking about,” said Davis.
Even larger federal programs appear to be at risk.
A U.S. House of Representatives budget resolution doesn’t explicitly cut programs like Medicaid or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), sometimes referred to as “food stamps.” But the spending plan requires House committees with jurisdiction over those programs to make huge cuts in spending. Many observers say those programs are all but certain to end up on the block.
SNAP provides $367 million in food assistance across the Commonwealth each month, said Hoa Pham, deputy secretary of the state Department of Human Services office that oversees SNAP in Pennsylvania.
SNAP works “symbiotically” with the charitable food network to keep people fed and local farms and grocery stores afloat, Pham said: “Any changes on either side of this partnership and unnecessary disruptions that risk our food bank [or] risk SNAP, risk access for food for people who rely on these systems.”
That uncertainty has the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank scrambling to shore up other sources of support.
“We are at this point advocating for finding additional dollars, finding additional food sources to be able to keep up with the demand that we know is still going strong in the community,” said Young. The food bank is encouraging people to donate or reach out to elected officials and advocate for food assistance.
“Our mission and our goal has always been [to] meet the demand where it is,” she said. “If that looks like us getting more creative and trying to figure out how are we going to source more food with fewer dollars, that's what we'll do.”
