KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled shipments to food banks across the country, including Harvesters. CEO & President Stephen Davis says they weren’t given a reason behind the cancellation.
“The shipments that got canceled were really pivotal products for our neighbors,” said Davis. “They included things like protein, eggs, produce. Those are things that are hard for us to get, and so it’s really difficult to replace those.”
Harvesters is a regional food bank; it serves 340,000 people across 27 counties in Missouri and Kansas. Davis says approximately 1 in 8 people in the community are food insecure.
“One important thing to note is that hunger is on the rise,” said Davis. “We are experiencing levels of need that we saw during the peaks of the pandemic as far as number of individuals that are coming to our network of partners to receive food and services to help make sure they have enough for them and their families. This hurts. This is critical product that we need.”
The food shipments were part of a USDA program called TEFAP, or the Emergency Food Assistance Program. It’s one of the agency’s core nutrition programs that purchases food from farmers to send to food pantries across the country.
“For Harvesters, that represents around 41,000 cases that we would have received that we definitely needed to help meet that need,” said Davis. “Right now, we don’t know if that’s going to be replaced in some way or whether we’re just no longer going to receive that product.”
This comes as other federal support programs have been cut. Davis says local partner agencies have reached out, concerned with how they are going to provide to those in the community who need it. He says if the TEFAP program is completely cut, it would mean a loss of about 4% of the total food they distribute, or around 2.4 million pounds of food.
“We are waiting, we are advocating with our lawmakers to help give us clarity on what is next,” said Davis. “Will there be new loads that will replace these? Will there be some other program? We are certainly letting everyone know that we are in desperate need of product to make sure that we can support our network. These programs matter. They are really important programs in the work that we do.”
Davis says while they rely on federal programs, they depend more on the community donating food and funds, as well as volunteering.
“I want to make sure that our neighbors that are experiencing food insecurity know that Harvesters and our network of partners care about them, and we are here to do everything we can to help meet their need,” said Davis. “We want the broader community to know there are a lot of different ways they can help us right now. Right now, you can certainly raise your voice. If this is something that matters to you, call your federal lawmakers and let them know these nutrition programs are important and you hope they can continue to invest in these programs.”
Davis says while this cancellation is a setback, they have to continue their work in the community as best they can.
“We have to move forward; our mission is too important to not keep moving forward,” said Davis.
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