Federal funding cuts are causing food bank shortages in Memphis and beyond

Veronica Wilder’s white hair is colored with streaks of pink, purple and blue. She’s something of a matriarch at First Congregational Church’s hot meal program, known for helping to clear tables, joking with staff, and even de-escalating arguments in the dining room. She seems to know everyone as she waits in line behind the Cooper Young church on April 9 with her partner, Moses Brown.

The Frayser couple both receive disability benefits, but find that the cost of rent, utilities, medication and Brown’s dialysis treatments leaves almost nothing for other necessities like food. As a result, the couple has also become familiar faces at the church’s weekly food pantry. 

First Congo serves hot meals Tuesday through Thursday, and sets up a free pantry on Wednesdays where clients can “shop” for groceries. But since early March, the food available in the pantry has gone through dramatic changes — both in quantity and quality.

“The meat — they don’t have any,” said Brown. “Lately, we didn’t get nothing but canned goods.” 

In the church’s basement, metal racks filled with nonperishable items like tuna, dry pasta and bottled juice line the walls of a large room adjacent to the dining area. Clients used to be limited to 10 items per person from these shelves. Now that number is down to seven. 
It’s an increasingly familiar experience across the Memphis area and beyond. Federal funding cuts to the USDA by the Trump administration are severely limiting the resources available to Memphis’ food banks, making it more difficult for the Memphians who rely on them to access nutritious staples like fresh meat and produce.

“We haven’t been able to order meat in over a month,” said Hunter Demster, who runs the hot meal and pantry programs at First Congo. “There’s a lot of fear going around… It seems like our numbers (of clients) are picking up, and our access to food is going down.”

Demster’s programs and many others around Memphis have long relied heavily on the free USDA food products distributed locally by the Mid-South Food Bank. This nonprofit serves as the regional hub for food aid in the greater Memphis area, serving 12 counties in Tennessee, 18 in Mississippi and one in Arkansas.  

Until recently, USDA food made up 20-25% of the inventory at regional food banks, Mid-South Food Bank spokesperson Nicole Johnson-Willis said. This food was coveted by local programs not just because it was free, but also because it often included nutritious items like meat and dairy products that are expensive to buy elsewhere. 

Now, funding cuts have restricted these products, limiting the agency to smaller shipments of mostly nonperishable goods.

USDA cuts at the federal level have also hampered the food bank’s ability to buy fresh food from local farmers. This has led to declines in the amount and the variety of food distributed to Memphians in need. 

“If things continue on the path it seems that we’re on, we’re going to have to shift big-time,” Demster said. “And what that looks like, we don’t know yet.”

How are USDA funding cuts trickling down to Memphis’ food banks?

The USDA has long been a major source of supplies and funding for local food banks through several federal programs. One is called TEFAP, or The Emergency Food Assistance Program. For decades, this program has provided regional food banks around the country with bulk shipments of food from a pre-approved list of grocery staples. 

But recent cuts have frozen $500 million of funding for TEFAP authorized by the Biden administration in December 2024, shortly before the Trump administration took power. This funding amounts to more than half of TEFAP’s total budget — and it’s unclear whether the money will ever return.

A December USDA memo stated that the funding expansion would “help emergency food organizations as they continue to deal with supply chain challenges and elevated food costs.” But USDA spokesperson Dirk Fillpot called the money “the Biden-era TEFAP slush fund,” saying that it has been “terminated” in part because “the pandemic is over.”

Another impacted USDA program is the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program. This pandemic-era initiative reimbursed regional food banks when they purchased fresh products like meat and produce directly from local farmers. 

But in recent weeks, the federal government terminated the LFPA as part of wide-sweeping cuts carried out by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. State departments of agriculture received notice in early March that LFPA funding would end in the next 60 days.

“Essentially, the program is over,” said Johnson-Willis. “We have reached out to the farmers that we know, that we utilize, and they already know that we will no longer be purchasing from them because we’re not getting reimbursement.” 

While already-approved LFPA money will still be distributed, no further money will be issued for reimbursements. Regional food banks can ask for more time to spend the money they already have, but cannot apply for more money through the program, Fillpot said. He added that the USDA is still purchasing and distributing some meat despite recent program cuts. 

Farmers and Memphians feel the impact

The now-defunct LPFA allowed regional food banks to form relationships with farmers and arrange to buy their products in bulk based on what’s available at any given time. But without federal reimbursement for farm purchases, food banks have had to break off these agreements.

“The cuts to funding for local food purchase for schools and food banks have impacted us (as) a small family farm participating in those programs,” said farmer Kelsey Keener, who owns Sequatchie Cove Farm just outside Chattanooga. He added that layoffs at local USDA offices are also making it more difficult for farmers to access information about the programs that help keep their farms afloat.

“Other cuts to USDA service centers are also impacting us as it is now more difficult to work with our local USDA office,” he said. While state funding will help him continue selling to food banks this year, these partnerships will end unless more federal funding becomes available.

“The farmers feel it, and we’ll feel it because we will see less food coming in,” Johnson-Willis said. “That’s the biggest thing — you may not see as much locally sourced, fresh food.”

Frayser resident Ruby Parson has seen this trend firsthand in the food boxes she picks up from Catholic Charities of West Tennessee’s drive-through food pantry with her friend Joni Nichols once a month.

“The boxes are less now,” said Parson. “Last time I got it, there was a big can of mixed vegetables, a bag of rice, beans and two more cans of vegetables. Used to be, they had everything. They’d give you bread too, and everything else; they’d give you stuff to make a complete meal.”

Nichols, also of Frayser, said she remembers when the food boxes included fresh fruit and vegetables as well as high-protein items like peanut butter and canned tuna. Once, she even got bacon at the drive-through pantry.

Now, meat and fresh produce are rarities. Parson and Nichols said the same is true at the Shelby County Health Department’s food bank — and that fresh food is often too expensive to buy at the grocery store. 

Rising grocery prices nationwide are especially impacting high-protein staples. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price of meat, eggs, poultry and seafood has increased by 7.9% in just the past 12 months.

What’s next for Memphis’ food banks?

For food assistance groups experiencing shortages around Memphis, recent weeks have been marked by uncertainty. Even state officials, who coordinate shipments of USDA products to regional hubs like the Mid-South Food Bank, are in the dark about future plans for federal funding.

“There’s no official word that’s been given down to the states just yet,” said Grant Pulse, a commodity distribution administrator at the Tennessee Department of Agriculture who helps place TFAP food purchases.

“We noticed that this week there were some cancelled orders, and our regional USDA contacts actually didn’t know that that was happening,” he told MLK50 on March 26. “So we’re just hoping that there’ll be news soon.”

In the meantime, clients like Brown and Wilder must make do with what’s available. On April 9, Brown chose carefully from the shelves of nonperishable goods at First Congo — tins of tuna, a bag of egg noodles, a can of corn, a bottle of grape juice. 

Their recent visit did include a welcome surprise — a cooler of frozen pork chops and turkey breasts, one package per customer. But Demster told MLK50 that these meats came from his hot meal program’s own rations, not from the food bank. 

He decided to dip into these reserves after hearing from clients how hard it has been to find protein anywhere else.

“It is a shame for us as a society to cut programs like this that provide the most basic tenets of humanity,” he said. “At the end of the day, it seems like they’re trying to kill poor people.”

Natalie Wallington is the housing reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Email her at [email protected].

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