\n<\/p>\n
Most food banks<\/span> rely on a combination of federal or state dollars, private giving and partnerships with businesses that donate leftover food. While the cancellations were disruptive to all food banks, according to their representatives, those that receive state funding or have strong community support said that they have weathered the cuts better than others.<\/p>\n The Food Bank of Central Louisiana, where Cornwell and Green\u2019s groceries come from, gets more than half of its food from the federal government and receives very little state support. It serves rural areas of Louisiana, which has the highest poverty rate in the nation, according to U.S. census data.<\/p>\n The Trump administration canceled 10 orders for the food bank totaling over $400,000 of pork, chicken, cheese, dried cranberries, dried plums, milk and eggs, records show. The food bank has struggled to keep up with demand following the cuts and a decrease in private donations. Staff told ProPublica they used to distribute 25-pound packages of food, but over the summer, some packages shrank to about half of that weight.<\/p>\n The longtime director of The Food Bank of Central Louisiana told ProPublica the organization\u2019s warehouses are emptier than usual.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not turning people away with no food. It\u2019s not to that point,\u201d said Jayne Wright-Velez, who has been the executive director at the food bank for 30 years. \u201cBut people are getting less food when they come to us.\u201d<\/p>\n The organization has tried to fill the gap with produce donations, but transporting and distributing fruits and vegetables is challenging, and multiple patrons told ProPublica the produce had gone bad by the time they received it.<\/p>\n On a recent morning, Codie Dufrene, 23, came to collect food for her grandfather and his neighbors, who live 45 minutes from the closest grocery store.<\/p>\n Codie Dufrene holds a cantaloupe she received from The Food Bank of Central Louisiana.<\/p>\n Usually, the trunk of Dufrene\u2019s car would be full. Not lately.<\/p>\n Dufrene received chicken for the first time \u201csince way before the summer.\u201d But the poultry came from a donation that hardly made up for the 74,000 pounds of chicken that never arrived in June.<\/p>\n She said that though her family is grateful and will use whatever they get, the quality of the food can be discouraging. Dufrene pointed out the condition of a cantaloupe she received. \u201cYou can tell \u2014 they\u2019re frozen and they\u2019re already super, super soft.\u201d She said her mother would likely give them to her pigs, \u201cbecause people can\u2019t really eat those.\u201d<\/p>\n Wright-Velez said the food bank trains its staff on food safety and does its best to check everything before it goes out, but it\u2019s difficult to do at a large scale. \u201cEspecially in the heat of the summer, things just go bad so quickly,\u201d she said. \u201cThe clock\u2019s ticking as soon as we get the donation.\u201d<\/p>\n Jayne Wright-Velez, executive director of The Food Bank of Central Louisiana<\/p>\n The Emergency Food Assistance Program<\/span> was created in 1983 to purchase farmers\u2019 surplus food and distribute it to low-income people. The program\u2019s budget is typically authorized every five years as part of the Farm Bill, but in 2018, the first Trump administration added funds to help farmers struggling under retaliatory tariffs the U.S. faced amid trade disputes. The additional, discretionary federal funds helped food banks serve more people; last fiscal year, they got nearly twice as much money from the fund as they did from their congressional allocation.<\/p>\n Now characterizing the additional funding as a \u201cBiden-era slush fund,\u201d the second Trump administration cut $500 million that had already been allocated. The government is still distributing food through other parts of the program, but food banks were caught off guard by the canceled deliveries because it\u2019s rare for funding to be cut mid-year. Food bank managers, some with decades of experience, couldn\u2019t recall a disruption like it. With the Farm Bill slated for renewal this fall, officials who run food banks worry that any additional cuts would cause them to have to scale back the number of people they serve.<\/p>\n Already the need is greater than what food banks have on hand, said Shannon Oliver, the director of operations at the Oregon Food Bank.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re having to kind of prepare for the fact that there\u2019s just not going to be enough food, and having to be clear with setting the expectation that we\u2019re doing everything we possibly can,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The USDA did not respond to questions or requests for comment. In a May letter responding to senators\u2019 concerns about the funding cut, the agency said it had made additional food purchases through another program and that the emergency food program continues to operate \u201cas originally intended by Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the pandemic is over, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has not and will not lose focus on its core mission of strengthening food security, supporting agricultural markets, and ensuring access to nutritious foods,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most food banks rely on a combination of federal or state dollars, private giving and partnerships with businesses that donate leftover food. While the cancellations were disruptive to all food banks, according to their representatives, those that receive state funding or have strong community support said that they have weathered the cuts better than others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[1122,317,5220,1725,613,1305,10067,247,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-25644","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-aid","9":"tag-arrived","10":"tag-canceled","11":"tag-food","12":"tag-heres","13":"tag-million","14":"tag-pounds","15":"tag-propublica","16":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}