(Pictured: Shelves at western Washington food banks, like this one at Ballard Food Bank, may get harder to fill as the federal government reduces its spending on national food-security programs.)
Operators of food banks in King and Pierce counties are protesting federal cuts of funding for programs that help put meals on the tables of people struggling to get enough food, including seniors.
As of May 15, U.S. House of Representatives’ Agriculture Committee was considering a new round of changes to the SNAP (food stamps) program that would reduce federal funding to administer the program, and also cut actual food benefits. States would be called on to make up for the federal reductions.
In Seattle, elderly adults, families with children, and disabled persons “trying to make ends meet will bear the impact of these proposed changes,” said Otis Pimpleton, interim director of Rainier Valley Food Bank. He said food banks and other organizations “will need to step in to support our neighbors feeling the brunt of cuts. But these organizations are also feeling economic pressures.”
Nourish Pierce County, a network of food banks that serves 67 percent of food-insecure people in the county, has said in earlier statements that cuts in government funding would have “devastating consequences” for its clients.
“The people we serve—working families, college students, military members, and seniors on fixed incomes—are already making tough sacrifices. Federal food assistance exists to ensure that no one goes hungry,” and cuts in the funding “will leave our most vulnerable neighbors with fewer options,” said Sue Potter, chief executive officer of Nourish Pierce County.
Half of all Nourish Pierce County clients are children or seniors. In 2024, the agency’s 21 food bank sites and mobile services helped 66,807 people who visited an average of six times.
FOOD BANKS WORRIED ABOUT FEDERAL CUTS IN FOOD PROGRAMS
By Josh Cohen
Cascade PBS
It’s been a tough couple of years for local food banks and the people they serve.
The COVID-19 pandemic led hundreds of thousands more Washingtonians to visit food banks and pantries to feed themselves and their families. Despite the higher demand, pandemic-era federal programs helped increase access to food and lowered rates of food insecurity.
But those programs have since expired while demand has continued to rise, spurred by rising food costs and a worsening economy, and food banks are struggling to keep up.
Before the pandemic, non-profit redistributor Food Lifeline and its network of more than 300 food banks in western Washington, including Pierce and King counties, served about 800,000 people annually. In 2024, they served 1.7 million. One in four Washingtonians visited a food bank last year, according to the state Department of Agriculture.
Food banks will soon have an even harder time meeting demand due to cuts to federal food security programs in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA has already cut $500 million from the Local Food Purchase Assistance program (LFPA) and is in the process of cutting $500 million from The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). The agency said it’s redirecting the money so it can fight bird flu.
LFPA, a relatively new program created during the Biden administration, provides money to state agriculture departments to pass on as grants to food banks so they can purchase food directly from local farmers.
TEFAP was created by Congress in 1981 to purchase excess food from farmers. USDA distributes those commodities to the states, which in turn give them to food banks and meal programs. The program is a win/win for farmers and food banks: Growers get financial support when they have crops they either can’t sell or would have to sell at below-market rates. Food banks get staple foods for their clients such as milk, frozen and canned meat and dried fruit.
In addition to the USDA cuts, Congressional Republicans have proposed cutting $230 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which feeds more than 40 million low-income Americans.
“We’re going to see greater need as more folks lose government jobs and benefits, which includes SNAP and Medicaid, and as inflation continues to have an impact on price of these items,” said Jen Muzia, Ballard Food Bank executive director. “It’s really a perfect storm of factors impacting food supply and we’re seeing shortages.”
Food banks have always purchased some of the food that lines their shelves from retailers and wholesalers, but inflation has reduced how much they can afford.
“I’m having trouble stocking our shelves. Honestly, they’re empty,” said Muzia. “We had to stop buying eggs. The cost of eggs is now so high, and I can’t buy enough, I’d be better off spending that on other essentials that I can stock my shelves with. It’s really concerning. I’m worried about it.”
Washington is set to lose $11.8 million in LFPA funds and $10.5 million in food through TEFAP, according to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray’s office.
Food Lifeline’s chief development officer, Ryan Scott, said the organization expects to lose about $2 million in federal support in the coming year, which translates to about 7 million pounds of food the organization won’t be able to purchase. Food Lifeline purchases and accepts donations from farmers, wholesalers, manufacturers and retailers. It distributes about 75 million pounds of food to its network of western Washington food bank partners.
In addition to serving as an intermediary between USDA and food banks, Washington’s Department of Agriculture has its own food security programs. For the past two years, the state has invested about $32 million annually in food assistance.
Food security experts say the impact of USDA’s cuts will pale compared to the proposed $230 billion in cuts to SNAP benefits. Formerly known as food stamps, SNAP helps about 41 million low-income Americans purchase food. Just over 888,000 Washington residents rely on it.
SNAP provides nearly 10 times the amount of food that local food banks do. Feeding America, a national food bank network, estimates that between July 2022 and June 2023, food banks and pantries provided 85,100,281 meals in Washington. In that same period, SNAP provided an estimated 884 million meals in Washington.
“There’s no way any state can backfill or come close to mitigating” that loss, said Claire Lane, director of the statewide Anti-Hunger and Nutrition Coalition. “The idea of having SNAP cut so deeply is pretty unimaginable to me.”
If Congress does cut SNAP, food banks expect demand to increase, stretching their already thin supplies even further.
Source: Cascade PBS, a non-profit newsroom covering the Pacific Northwest