A Glimmer of Hope at the Food Bank
The stoppage of $500 million in commodities to food banks across the country set off alarms locally. Those commodities are now restored, but cuts to SNAP still loom.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Contact Martin
Like most food banks around the country, the Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank depends on government support to meet the growing stream of people coming to its doors seeking assistance.
So when the Trump Administration indicated in March that it would not be delivering $500 million of discretionary TEFAP (The Emergency Food Assistance Program) commodities, there was concern that the nation’s food safety net would be severely damaged.
“Because of the great uncertainty when that first cut was announced,” Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank CEO Dan Maher told the Advance, there was something of a “community panic” over a possible shortage of food.
That concern was justified, as TEFAP accounts for about one-third of the organization’s food.
Fortunately, the situation is improving.
First came an announcement that $261 million of TEFAP commodities would be freed up under a different funding stream.
Then on August 1, the United States Department of Agriculture announced it was going to purchase “up to $230 million in fresh seafood, fruits, and vegetables from American farmers and producers to distribute to food banks and nutrition assistance programs across the country.”
This second announcement almost “restores the total food volume available through [TEFAP]…. It is almost faithful to the Biden administration amount the Trump administration inherited,” Maher wrote in a text message to the Advance.
Maher said that when the administration restored half of the $500 million that had been cut, it “gave us some hope that there would be partial remediation.”
“This [second announcement],” he continued, “gives us a sign that these vital community funds might not be cut as deep as they could be.”
Not Out of the Woods
While the restoration of TEFAP funding is good news, Maher and others who work in supporting nutritional needs remain deeply concerned about the reductions in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” will cut federal funding of SNAP by $187 billion through 2034 (about 20 percent), according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
According to Eddie Oliver, executive director of the Federation of Virginia Food Banks, the federal government is compounding the problem by requiring states to backfill the cut to SNAP: “The federal government in Congress is calling it a cost shift to states, and the estimates we’re looking at is Virginia would now be responsible for anywhere from between $350 million to $450 million per year.”
If the state can’t come up with that, upwards of 200,000 Virginians would lose benefits. “We [the food banks],” Oliver said, “would have to essentially triple our output [to meet this loss]. That means three times the number of trucks, three times the number of warehouses. We distributed over 170 million pounds of food last year to over 700,000 people. To make up for the SNAP cuts, we’d have to triple that.”
And there is no pathway to make this happen. So even with the restoration of TEFAP dollars, food banks across the nation are going to face more demand owing to SNAP cuts with no more commodities to help meet the need.
Still, the restoration of TEFAP offers a glimmer of hope for the future.
Says Maher: The near-restoration of the $500 million that had been taken away is “Somewhat of a sign that the funding is going to be different.” It may never again be whole, he continued, so, “We just have to wait and see.”
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
Our media group also offers the most-extensive election coverage in the region and regular columnists like:
And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”