The halting of these deliveries, first reported by POLITICO, comes after the Agriculture Department separately axed two other food programs, ending more than $1 billion in planned federal spending for schools and food banks to purchase from local farmers.
USDA halts millions of dollars worth of deliveries to food banks
The halt in deliveries comes after the Trump administration separately slashed $1 billion for schools and food banks to buy food from farms.
It’s not clear how much of the $500 million for the emergency assistance program has been cut, but one USDA employee, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, said the Trump administration has been trying to claw back CCC money the Biden administration previously allocated in order to devote funds to other priorities.
USDA was supposed to spend $148 million of the $500 million early this year to buy dairy products, eggs, blueberries and more. But last month, the department notified state agencies that it was canceling solicitations from suppliers, according to a Feb. 20 email that Feeding America sent to its network of food banks and was viewed by POLITICO. . .
The emergency food assistance network gets its funding from a mix of money from the farm bill and through commodities USDA purchases. But the patchwork funding system has left the program unable to meet increasing hunger needs, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent years of food inflation, anti-hunger advocates say.
The Biden administration responded to the demand on food banks by supplementing the emergency assistance funding with roughly $2 billion from the CCC fund in 2022 and 2023, then the additional $500 million in 2024. But Republicans have argued that President Joe Biden used the CCC money for climate and nutrition initiatives that are outside the congressional mandate of the fund.
Many of the organizations that rely on funding from the emergency assistance program were also receiving funding from the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement, one of the other food programs USDA axed recently.
The clawbacks come as Congress is weighing shrinking the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps 40 million low-income Americans afford food. That could further exacerbate the pressure on food banks, which provide just one meal for every nine that SNAP supplies.
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