SAN ANTONIO – Volunteers work hard at the San Antonio Food Bank to fill bags with food for families in need, but with recent U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) funding cuts, food bank staff say they’re saving money wherever they can.
They’re figuring out how to stay afloat while still serving families in need.
“We’re going to have to do some rationing,” said San Antonio Food Bank CEO Eric Cooper. “Some of these cuts are so big that it won’t be possible for us this year to make up the difference.”
Nearly $4 million in the Local Food Purchase Assistance program (LFPA) was lost. Those funds gave food banks money to buy food from local producers.
“We brought in about $1.5 million between us, directly with the food banks and our customers that dealt with the food banks themselves,” Sadie Elstner said.
She’s the owner of Elstner Processing, a meat processing company in Weimar, Texas. As a small business, she said the LFPA money was a big help.
Now, they’re playing catch-up and cutting costs where they can.
“We were up to like 23 employees, not including me and my husband. Now, we’re down to like 13,” Elstner explained. “I took myself off the payroll because.. you know, I just can’t afford it anymore.”
She said her business is going to be okay, though she was hopeful for another round of funding. San Antonio Food Bank CEO Eric Cooper said that’s one less food source to feed the community.
“That was almost $4 million in support each year,” he explained. “These were truckloads of protein, and dairy and some of the core staple items that we need. So we’re just trying to understand where USDA is going.”
Cooper said with job cuts and proposed cuts to the food program ‘SNAP’, the food bank just can’t keep up.
“We need the federal government. We need state government to be supporting us as we’re working to nourish families,” he shared. “We can’t do it alone, and so please, you know, don’t abandon us.”
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