Latest USDA cut removes 700,000 pounds of meat, dairy and eggs from Columbus food bank

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Federal funding reductions are driving uncertainty for local food banks as another United States Department of Agriculture cut recently stripped the Mid-Ohio Food Collective of 700,000 pounds of food.

The Mid-Ohio Food Collective told The Dispatch the USDA has canceled deliveries of $1.4 million worth of mostly meat, dairy and eggs, amounting to a loss of 697,000 pounds of food. Matt Habash, CEO of Mid-Ohio Food Collective, said that while MOFC is losing assistance, demand for food banks is at an all-time high.

“These are your neighbors,” Habash said. “When you think of poverty issues and hunger issues, we get this image of a single person in the homeless shelter. The vast majority (of food pantry users) are people your kids go to school with, that live in your neighborhood.”

The Mid-Ohio Food Collective is being hurt by USDA reductions in several programs, including The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), as well as changes to the Commodity Credit Corporation and Section 32, which helps the government offload surplus commodities.

Federal, proposed state policies and cuts stretching food bank resources

The canceled USDA programs are just among the number of challenges that are now facing food banks in the region, including inflation, proposed cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and a proposed Ohio budget that strips $7.5 million from food pantries.

The USDA also recently canceled money for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA), which supplies assistance to local food banks, schools and organizations in underserved communities. The LFPA program provided more than $1 million in purchasing power to the collective, The Dispatch previously reported.

Habash said all these factors add up to a stretching of MOFC’s resources to provide high-quality, healthy food to the 20-county region it serves. Last year, MOFC distributed more than 83 million pounds of food to over 500,000 people across its service area.

“There’s going to be a lot of hungry people,” Habash said. “It’s just going to be less food available for people that need it now.”

Habash said that if SNAP benefits are cut, it will have a cascading effect on non-profits like MOFC, which are already seeing high levels of demand.

“There’s no amount of local private funding that will make up for that,” Habash said. “

He said there is a misconception that people who use SNAP and local food pantries are lazy, or don’t want to work. When the reality is, he said, that most people using food pantries work one or even two jobs to try and make ends meet.

Oftentimes, he said, that amid monthly expenses, many people who are “living on the edge” choose to cut their own food budgets to make ends meet.

“Nobody wants to come and get emergency food, they would rather provide for themselves,” Habash said. “That’s a big misnomer in this, that these people are not working. They say ‘Go get a job,’ well these people already have one.”

The cuts and uncertainty also threaten MOFC’s mission of providing fresh food to people. Last year, 64% of the food MOFC serves was fresh, according to MOFC data.

The desire for making sure people have access to healthy food, Habash said, coincides with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ initiative, and said that food banks have been working on a national “food is medicine” strategy.

“I suggest that we’re a high-value, low-cost health care strategy,” Habash said. “We’re getting product from farmers and being able to give that directly to people that see better health outcomes. And not having those dollars puts us far behind in terms of being able to do that work.”

While food drives and volunteering may be helpful, Habash said, the MOFC is not going to make up federal and potential state losses with private charity. Instead, Habash encouraged those concerned to call their state and federal lawmakers and tell them that these cuts are unacceptable.

“Charity giving is not going to be an answer,” Habash said. “(The community) has to say: ‘This is not okay. We should not have a hunger problem in America.’ Go down and talk to the legislature and say ‘this is our livelihood.’”

Cole Behrens covers K-12 education and school districts in central Ohio. Have a tip? Contact Cole at [email protected] or connect with him on X at @Colebehr_report