The Regional Food Bank Hudson Valley is feeling the effects of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s cuts to The Emergency Food Assistance Program.
In 2025, the food bank expects to distribute 2 million fewer meals because of the funding cuts, a predicted 49% drop in TEFAP foods. Instead of the 48 meals per food-insecure resident delivered in 2024, the organization projects that only 25 meals per food-insecure resident will be delivered in 2025.
The original announcement that scheduled deliveries of food through the USDA’s Emergency Food Assistance Program were being halted or cut back came in early March, USA TODAY reported.
The cuts come as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency target a long list of government programs and federal jobs for sweeping cuts in recent months, coming on the heels of other cuts to the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement programs. The USDA told USA TODAY the LFPA cuts were a “return to long-term, fiscally responsible initiatives.”
Impact of USDA cuts in Hudson Valley
As of April 21, the Regional Food Bank Hudson Valley, which serves approximately 170,000 people per month across Orange, Dutchess, Sullivan, Ulster, Rockland and Putnam counties, said it has already stopped receiving food shipments to its Montgomery distribution center.
In 2024, 20 million pounds of TEFAP food was distributed by the Regional Food Bank, and over 4.8 million pounds — around 4 million meals — in Dutchess, Orange, and Ulster counties.
On April 21, U.S. Rep. Pat Ryan stood with farmers, faith leaders, educators and Regional Food Bank’s CEO, Tom Nardacci, to speak out against the funding cuts.
“Trump’s cuts at USDA are absolutely devastating for Hudson Valley families,” Ryan said in a statement. “Two million fewer meals in our district alone – that’s our kids, seniors and veterans going hungry. That’s our family farms being hurt.”
The food bank, Nardacci said in a statement, expects to lose 200 tractor-trailers worth of food product, and with it an estimated 8 million pounds of food, including meats, cheeses, milk, fresh fruits and vegetables.
The “truth,” Nardacci said, is that people will “suffer” from these cuts.
The food bank’s newly opened 50,000-square-foot facility was meant to double its previous Cornwall-on-Hudson facility’s capacity.
“Last year, we received over 400 tractor-trailers of food from the USDA. All that food was distributed,” Nardacci said. “This year, 27 tractor-trailers of USDA food have already been canceled. That’s 954,000 pounds of food that’s been canceled.”
In response to an April 9 statement by Ryan in which he claimed the cuts were “ripping food away from hungry children,” U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said on an April 13 Fox News Sunday broadcast the claim was “absolutely fake news.”
Rollins said the funds pulled back were “COVID-era funds that were specific to programs that had not been spent yet” and pointed to other community food bank program funding she said the USDA released two weeks prior.
The USDA awarded a $280 million grant to the Texas Department of Agriculture in late March to assist eligible Rio Grande Valley farmers and producers.
Ryan, in a subsequent statement on April 17, invited Rollins to visit the Montgomery facility and “see the harm for herself.”
With growing food needs, food bank ‘will find a way’
Christine Hein, executive director of People’s Place Kingston, said they see new faces every day, people who did not think they would ever need to turn to the not-for-profit organization, which provides food, clothes and responds to the evolving needs of Ulster County residents.
“The number of families relying on us is increasing rapidly,” Hein said in a statement. “To cut funding now, at such a critical juncture, would be a serious misstep — one that will ripple across our entire community, affecting not just those in immediate need, but the broader fabric of support and stability we all rely on.”
Jeff Crist of Crist Bros. Orchards said this will not only affect people who are food insecure, but farmers as well.
“These cuts aren’t just devastating for families who rely on the Food Bank — it’s taking a crucial source of income from farms across the country.”
The Regional Food Bank Hudson Valley will continue to focus on meeting the rising need, searching for options to address the funding cuts such as working with retail partners to rescue more food, collaborating with New York farmers and producers to source more products, as well as asking donors for additional resources.
“In the food bank industry, we are accustomed to challenges and will find a way to meet the growing need for our neighbors,” Nardacci said.
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