Food banks across New England are scrambling after the Trump administration this month cut some $1 billion from programs that help them obtain food for distribution, increasing concerns about meeting demand when hunger is already soaring.
For many of the region’s pantries, food given out with the support of federal assistance amounts to 10 to 30 percent of their total distributions. The unexpected cuts are likely to disrupt food availability for communities nationwide, local leaders said.
“The Greater Boston Food Bank is already facing increased demand for nutritious food across our network of 600 food pantries across Eastern Massachusetts,” Catherine D’Amato, president and CEO of the food bank, said in a statement. “The cancelations of federal commodities will reduce food throughout our region, making it more difficult for food insecure people to feed themselves and their families.”
The uncertainty comes at a time of increasing food insecurity in New England, with many hunger relief organizations struggling to meet soaring demand. In Massachusetts, about 18.4 percent of all households reported being food insecure in September 2024, close to the COVID-19 peak of 19.5 percent.
Vince Hall, the chief government relations officer at Feeding America, said USDA officials told the organization that $500 million provided last year to support The Emergency Food Assistance Program was terminated. That’s in addition to the $420 million that was cut from the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, which helps hunger relief organizations purchase food from local farmers, earlier this month.
About $3.3 million worth of food provided through the emergency food program scheduled to be delivered to Massachusetts food banks was canceled, the Greater Boston Food Bank told the Globe Thursday. Nearly $2.3 million worth, or about 105,000 cases, was slated for the Greater Boston Food Bank, the region’s largest hunger-relief organization.
Democratic Whip Katherine Clark condemned the cuts in a statement Thursday.
“Amid skyrocketing grocery prices, Republicans just stole more than $3 million in emergency food assistance from families across the Commonwealth — including 90,000 cartons of eggs. Nationally, they’ve robbed hungry families of more than $500 million in groceries,” she said.
Heather Paquette, the president of Good Shepherd Food Bank in Maine, said the organization was notified earlier this month that it would be losing out on $1.2 million in funding it expected to get over the next three years to help it purchase food from local farmers. Fifty percent of emergency food assistance deliveries the charity was scheduled to receive in the next several months have also been canceled, Paquette said.
“We are already really running to meet the increasing need in the state of Maine with the stable sources of funding that we have been able to depend on for decades,” she said. “An adjustment of that sort to the [food] we’re moving through the state of Maine has significant negative impact on our ability to do our work.”
Though some charities are hoping to recoup costs via private donors or state funding, the unexpected changes are likely to cause shortages in distribution, especially in the next few months.
“Because this is so sudden, we were really not planning for this, so we have to accommodate in the short term,” said Elsy Cipriani, executive director of the New Hampshire Food Bank.
The organization learned two weeks ago that the close to $1 million it was set to receive over the next three years through the emergency food assistance program was canceled and is trying to minimize the impact of the cut on partner agencies.
“But again, maybe we have to make some internal adjustments in terms of the number of staff members that are working in that program,” Cipriani said, referring to the NH Feeding NH program.
Jason Jakubowski, the president and CEO of Connecticut Foodshare, said a delivery of 34 trucks was canceled and cost the organization about $1.75 million to replace, he said. Connecticut Foodshare also learned that it would lose $1 million in funds from the LFPA earlier this month.
“This has been a real gut punch for a number of different constituencies over the last couple of weeks. We’re nervous, and so are our local pantries,” he said.
Andrew Schiff, the CEO of Rhode Island Community Food Bank, said the organization ordered 24 truckloads of food with the money provided to the state through the increased Emergency Food Assistance Program funding. As of Thursday, they had received 10 truckloads. Fourteen truckloads, amounting to about 500,000 pounds of food, are in limbo.
“Now, at least the stories we’re hearing, we’re expecting it to be canceled,” Schiff said.
Without federal assistance, food banks are unlikely to be able to keep up their current scale of operations.
“It’s unrealistic to think that there is a way that we’ll be able to accomplish the goals that every food bank in the nation has without the ability to rely on USDA funding,” Paquette said. The Good Shepherd Food Bank serves about 140,000 people a year.
Jakubowski said the $2.75 million that was cut from Connecticut Foodshare would amount to close to five and a half million meals. The organization is hoping the state government will help it recover some of the cost, but Jakubowski is worried the recent cuts are just the “tip of the iceberg.”
“My biggest fear is that we’re entering an era in which more people are hungry, but we have less food to provide them,” he said. “That’s the nightmare scenario for us and for our local pantries.”
Paquette said that for Good Shepherd, the 50 percent reduction in funding is “unrealistic” to recover.
“We will do everything we can to close that gap,” she said. “But it’s not realistic. We could have used an additional 10 percent versus the reduction of 50 percent, given the increased need we have in our state.”
Emily Spatz can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @emilymspatz.
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