WASHINGTON — Food banks across the country, already strained by rising demand, say they will have less food to distribute because of at least US$1 billion (S$1.33 billion) in federal funding cuts and pauses by the Trump administration, according to Reuters interviews with organisations in seven states.

Hunger in the US has ticked up in recent years with rising inflation and the end of pandemic-era programs that expanded food aid. President Donald Trump's administration has vowed to lower inflation by cutting back on government spending, including two US Department of Agriculture programs that helped schools and food banks buy food from local farms.

Reuters spoke with food banks in seven states who said cancellation and pauses of the programs meant they expected to offer less produce, meat and other staples in the coming weeks and months, leaving scarcer food for those reliant on free supplies that helped stave off hunger.

One reason is fewer expected shipments from USDA's The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), one of the agency's core nutrition programs that buys food from farmers and sends it to food pantries, some of the organisations said.

Vince Hall, chief government relations officer for Feeding America, the nation's largest food bank network, said the USDA is reviewing the programme and had paused half of TEFAP funding — US$500 million — sourced from the Commodity Credit Corporation, which generally gives the department a broad discretionary funding pool for various programs.

A USDA spokesperson told Reuters the agency is still making purchases to support food banks but did not respond to detailed questions about TEFAP spending and why food banks are seeing reduced deliveries.

In a letter to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins dated Tuesday, a group of 26 US Senators asked a series of pointed questions about cancelled food purchases, and TEFAP and other USDA funding cuts. The Democrats and two Senate independents said the loss would have a "significant and damaging impact upon millions of people."

Feeding America has spoken with the Trump administration about the pause and urged it to make a quick decision on whether to unfreeze the funds, Hall said. That pause compounds losses from the agency's cancellation of the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) programme, which funded about US$500 million annually for food banks, the organisations told Reuters.

Chad Morrison, head of Mountaineer Food Bank in West Virginia, said he saw on a weekly forecast from the state of West Virginia that about 40 per cent of the organisation's expected April deliveries of products like cheese, eggs and milk from TEFAP would be cancelled. That will reduce the amount of food its network of 450 food pantries and other feeding programs provide, Morrison said.

Food banks are handling unprecedented demand as US hunger rates climb after years of decline. In 2023, 13.5 per cent of Americans struggled at some point to secure enough food, the highest rate in nearly a decade, according to the most recent USDA data. In rural America, the hunger rate is even higher, at 15.4 per cent, the data shows.

Anna Pesek, a farmer in Delaware County, Iowa, said about 20 per cent of sales from her Over the Moon farm last year were from the LFPA, which sent her turkeys and pork to food banks across the state. Funding for that programme has also been cut.

She expects her pasture-raised products will no longer make their way to pantries without the agency funding.

"It feels really devastating," she said.

'It's frightening'

Food banks and pantries in West Virginia, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, California and Nebraska have together lost millions of dollars of federal funding and food deliveries in recent weeks, according to Reuters interviews.

Julie Yurko, president and CEO of Northern Illinois Food Bank, which serves 13 counties in the state, said that over the last 18 months, her organisation received US$3 million from the LFPA to buy onions, potatoes, apples and other produce from local farmers.

Without that programme, "we are going to have less produce to give to our neighbours," she said.

Illinois had US$14.7 million in funding terminated and another US$6.4 million in other USDA funds frozen in recent weeks, halting a food box programme that paired local farmers with food pantries, said Jerry Costello, director of the state's Agriculture Department.

Savannah Oates, advocacy and public relations manager at Community Action Partnership of Kern in Kern County, California, said about half the food for the organisation's food bank comes from TEFAP.

With deliveries paused, she said the group has about two to six months of supplies in stock and is hoping to supplement their offerings with leftover food from local restaurants.

In Charleston, West Virginia, Sara Busse, volunteer coordinator for Trinity's Table, a food aid group, stood in a parking lot and surveyed a meager delivery of USDA-supplied food: two boxes each of dried potato flakes and shelf-stable milk and two cases of vegetarian baked beans.

Before the Trump administration began, the deliveries filled an 18-wheeler, she said. Now, the programme may need to halt its meal service to senior groups altogether, she said.

"It's dreary, it's very frightening. We're all losing sleep," she said.

At Charleston's East End Resource Center, Martha Ross, 78, looked over Trinity's Table's sparse donations during a recent senior meal, noting it was far less than usual.

"I guess we'll get real skinny," Ross said, her voice tinged with dry humour.

Source: Reuters