Latest news with #LFPA
Epoch Times
5 days ago
- Business
- Epoch Times
Shapiro Sues USDA Over Termination of Farm-to-Food Bank Program
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) filed a The program, known as the Local Food Purchasing Assistance (LFPA) Program, was intended to fund Pennsylvania's local food system through 2027. It supported 189 farms and supplied fresh food to 14 food banks, including the Share Food Program in Philadelphia, where Shapiro announced the legal action Wednesday.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Shapiro sues Trump administration over canceled farm and food bank funds
Gov. Josh Shapiro announced his administration has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over its cancellation of millions of dollars in federal funding to farmers who supply food banks throughout the state. (Commonwealth Media Services) PHILADELPHIA — Gov. Josh Shapiro announced his administration has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over its cancellation of millions of dollars in federal funding to farmers who supply food banks throughout the state. 'I'm tired of waiting for someone to stand up for our farmers and our food banks. That task falls to us,' Shapiro said Wednesday in Philadelphia. 'The USDA and the Trump administration ignored our farmers, and they ignored folks who are hungry here in Pennsylvania.' Shapiro said his administration filed a lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg asking a judge to reverse the USDA's decision to cancel its contract with the commonwealth. The program, known as the Local Food Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA), was established by President Joe Biden's administration in response to concerns over the coronavirus pandemic in 2021. In December, Biden's administration renewed the contract with Pennsylvania for three years and $13 million. In March, the Trump administration announced that the program was ending. 'This lawsuit calls on the USDA to simply honor its commitment to our farmers, to honor its commitment to folks who are hungry and to simply follow the contract that they signed,' Shapiro said In Pennsylvania, LFPA provides funding that supports 189 farms and 14 food banks. Shapiro said it represented between 10% and 15% of the annual market share for many of the farmers participating in the program. The back-and-forth between Shapiro and the Trump administration over the matter has spanned multiple months. In March, Shapiro held a press conference at a food bank in Harrisburg sounding an alarm on the program's cancellation. He said his administration appealed to get the money and wrote a letter to Trump's administration in late March. In April, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins made a trip to multiple central Pennsylvania farms where she claimed the money for food banks was, in fact, available. She said Shapiro and other officials either didn't 'have their facts right,' or were playing political 'games.' Shapiro disputed the claim at the time and re-upped his criticism of Rollins' explanation Wednesday in Philadelphia. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE The LFPA initiative works as a reimbursement program, Shapiro said, so the state doesn't get the money until after it pays farmers and provides receipts. A USDA spokesperson told the Capital-Star that they 'do not comment on pending litigation,' and directed inquiries to the U.S. Department of Justice. George Maysik, executive director of Share Food Program in Philadelphia, said the food bank serves more than 500,000 people per month in the greater Philadelphia area and demand has risen over 120% in the last three years. 'The LFPA program was designed to provide some level of relief for the 14 food banks like us across the commonwealth who are serving that rising need,' Maysik said. He addressed Trump directly, criticizing his administration's decision to cancel the program. 'You had a deal with food banks serving 67 counties trying to alleviate poverty,' Maysik said. 'And above all, Mr. President, you had a deal with the American people and you broke your word.' 'The art of the deal,' he scoffed. Julie McCabe, executive director of Pennypack Farm & Education Center, explained her 13 acre vegetable farm in Montgomery County participated in the LFPA program to provide products to local food banks. 'Our produce giving program has grown tremendously,' McCabe said. 'From just over 8,000 pounds donated in 2017 to more than 26,000 pounds given in 2024.' While Shapiro said his administration has increased investments to connect farmers with hungry people, he said the state doesn't have the money to backfill the federal cuts, if the lawsuit is unsuccessful. Still, Shapiro said he has reasons to be optimistic that he would succeed. 'I've got a pretty good track record when I take Donald Trump to court,' said Shapiro, who served as the state's attorney general during Trump's first term. 'We're going to win this, and we're going to get our money back for the good people of Pennsylvania.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Miami Herald
30-05-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
A federal program sent local farmers' fresh produce to food banks. It's being cut
Stew — a big pot of it — with onions, potatoes and bell peppers. Maybe a little bit of meat, if they're lucky, Jackie Brown muttered, chewing over potential dinner ideas for her family as she surveyed the produce refrigerator at the Feeding South Florida food bank in Pembroke Park on a recent afternoon. She was planning a week of meals for herself and the five grandchildren she's raising, all big eaters, and needed something hearty that would also yield leftovers. Brown, 59, is one of the 1.2 million South Floridians who relied on Feeding South Florida, the region's largest food bank, last year to supplement their groceries. As rising costs of living have nudged more locals into greater financial precariousness and closer to hunger, the organization reported that nearly two in 10 South Floridians turned to it last year for food. But recent federal funding cuts mean Feeding South Florida's budget is about to shrink by more than 30%. As part of its push to reduce federal spending, the Trump administration shuttered the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA), a $900 million initiative started in 2021 to help food banks purchase produce from local farmers. In doing so, it lopped $13.5 million — nearly all of the food bank's federal funding — from Feeding South Florida's budget. That means fewer vegetables on the table for families like Brown's, and fewer orders for the farmers who grow them. ▪ ▪ ▪ Particularly toward the end of the month, Brown relies on food banks like Feeding South Florida to put meals on the table. 'That's what I use the food bank for,' she said, 'to fill in that last week of the month before I get more [food stamp] assistance.' Like many across the country, and especially in South Florida, her household has felt the squeeze of rising prices. U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows grocery prices have jumped roughly 30% since 2020. Over the same period of time, Miami-Dade's rate of food insecurity — people who don't have enough to eat — has spiked by 50%. On any given day, roughly 400,000 Miamians, 15% of the county's population, don't know where their next meal will come from. Compounding that vulnerability are proposed major cuts to federal spending on food assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps, on which nearly 3 million Floridians, including Brown and her five grandchildren, rely. For Brown's family and others that are either food insecure or close to it, food banks have become especially important for ensuring access to fresh fruits and vegetables. The local produce purchase program is largely to thank. Feeding South Florida estimates that nearly half of its produce is purchased with money from the program. Without the funding, the food bank told the Miami Herald it anticipates 'a reduction in both the volume and variety of fresh foods available' at its food banks and that its 'capacity to provide nutritious food will be significantly affected.' Robin Safley, the CEO of Feeding South Florida's umbrella organization, Feeding Florida, emphasized the economic importance of guaranteeing access to healthy, fresh food. Those served by her organization's affiliate food banks disproportionately deal with chronic health issues, including diabetes, said Safley. 'Many of them are also on Medicaid,' she noted, 'so those chronic conditions can really drive up the cost of health care.' Healthy eating plays a critical role in mitigating those costs, she added. But beyond those health impacts, Safley pointed out that the program has given local farmers more opportunities to sell produce in their home communities. ▪ ▪ ▪ At his farm in Palm Beach County earlier this month, J.D. Poole shouted over the sound of water raining from pipes affixed to the ceiling, cooling boxes of freshly picked corn below. A third-generation farmer from Belle Glade, Poole co-founded Scotlynn Sweet-Pac Growers in 2012. Still based in Belle Glade, the company plants, harvests and ships thousands of acres of sweet corn, pumpkins, cabbage, watermelon and asparagus each year. Thanks to the federal food purchase initiative, from which Florida received and dispersed more than $20 million to food banks last year, Feeding South Florida has been a major buyer from Poole. He estimates his farm sends more than 1 million pounds of produce each year down to the food bank, which purchases those orders with money from the program. Poole said the arrangement accounts for roughly 10% of Sweet-Pac Growers' annual revenue. The program was particularly helpful for selling perfectly good produce that grocery stores wouldn't buy because of slight aesthetic imperfections, he added. 'Rather than walk away and take a huge financial loss' on those vegetables, the program helped his business recoup planting investments that otherwise would've been lost, while at the same time 'providing really good, fresh food at a reasonable cost to the needy.' If not for the program, that produce would've been thrown out. That's what will likely happen now. He was grateful to provide for those in need, but Poole says he can't afford to harvest, process, package and ship his produce to food banks on his own dime. He hopes the president will reconsider the program's termination. A Trump voter, Poole is generally content with the administration thus far. And he backs Trump and the Department of Governmental Efficiency's (DOGE) purported efforts to eliminate the 'fluff' in government spending. But, he said, this initiative is not fluff. 'It's a very needed program.' Poole is far from alone in the agriculture community in his assessment. Aaron Shier, the government relations director at the National Farmers Union, a D.C.-based advocacy group, said the program has been important for many community farmers and strengthened local food supply chains, all while feeding people in need. U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a Florida Democrat who sits on the House Appropriations Committee's agriculture subcommittee, described the program as a 'win-win for our local farmers and for families in need.' Its cancellation is a 'gut punch,' she told the Herald, especially for small farmers and food-insecure people. People like Brown. The grandmother's disability benefits and SNAP assistance alone aren't enough for her to provide for her dependent grandchildren, whose mother died and whose father isn't in the picture. But Brown, turning to her friend Lathoya Bennett, said she feels lucky. 'Lots of people, lots of homeless people, can't even get here to get [this food]. We really need more of this.' Bennett nodded as she looked over the piles of carrots and onions: 'This is really a blessing.' This story was produced with financial support from supporters including The Green Family Foundation Trust and Ken O'Keefe, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New York's food banks brace for triple whammy of federal cuts, tariffs and even higher costs
A tiny storefront in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, has been a lifeline for Marco Ramirez and his family of four. Three years ago, the 56-year-old began visiting the food pantry operated by Reaching-Out Community Services after his hours as a restaurant cook were cut. Every two weeks, he stops by to select items from a computer kiosk and waits for staff to wheel out his order, free of charge. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Ramirez packed his bags with staples like rice, meat, cooking oil and juice. Without the pantry's help, he said, his family wouldn't be able to afford pricey items like eggs. The pantry is part of a vast network supported by the Food Bank for New York City, which recently lost 75 tractor trailer loads of food — 2.5 million meals — due to cancelled shipments from the US Department of Agriculture following President Donald Trump's abrupt cancellation of over $1 billion in nutrition funding in March. 'We're the country's largest USDA-supplied food bank, and anytime there's a cut or a rollback or a pause, the impact to us is that much more exponential,' said president Leslie Gordon. The organization serves the New York City area, where a recent study estimated the poverty rate hit a new high of 25 percent. For food banks across New York state, the state of emergency that began with the pandemic in 2020 never ended. Already stretched thin from years of rising food costs and food insecurity, hunger relief organizations are now contending with a panoply of federal cuts and tariffs, which are expected to severely disrupt supply chains and further hike prices. Headlines about steep declines in port activity have renewed fears that shelves nationwide could go empty in a matter of weeks. Trump's cuts have derailed programs like the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA), which allowed food banks to purchase food from local farms, and the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which ships food directly to banks and helps cover operational costs. In recent years, the USDA has expanded TEFAP to meet increased demand from more Americans turning to pantries to stay afloat. New York's newly passed state budget provided little relief. For months, advocates had urged Governor Kathy Hochul to join the legislature in increasing funding for two state-run hunger programs as a way to cushion the blow of federal cuts. But funding for both programs remained largely unchanged in the final deal released last week. Nourish New York will see a modest increase of $750,000 for a total of $55 million, while the Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program will remain flat at $57.8 million. The legislature had proposed funding the programs at $75 million each. In the wake of federal cuts, the Regional Food Bank will distribute 2 million less meals across 23 eastern New York counties, which span from just north of Westchester to the Canadian border — after opening a new 50,000-square-foot distribution center in Montgomery in December. 'These cuts mean families going hungry; kids, veterans, and seniors going hungry, and farmers going out of business,' said Congressman Pat Ryan after visiting the food bank last month. 'Trump needs to put country before politics, reverse these cuts immediately, and restore the food shipments to put money back in our farmers' pockets and nutritious meals back on Hudson Valley families' tables.' Over 16 million pounds of food across the state will no longer be distributed due to federal cuts, according to Ryan Healy, advocacy manager of Feeding New York State, which represents 10 food banks across the state, including the ones interviewed for this story. 'Not only is the impact of these cuts felt by our food banks and community partners, it's felt by the farmers and agricultural producers,' Healy said. In addition to USDA shipments, eight of the network's food banks received LFPA funding, which has been a boon to local farms across the state. 'We had about a million pounds of food that were cancelled that we were expected to be distributing right about now,' said Ryan Brisk, vice president of operations and procurement at Feeding Westchester. 'A million pounds is 25 tractor trailer loads of food.' That particular shipment included what Brisk called the 'most highly coveted items' sought by food pantry users, like fresh produce and frozen meat. TEFAP shipments have accounted for a quarter of the organization's food supply. In 2024, Feeding Westchester saw an average of 229,000 visits each month, including 80,000 children and 36,000 seniors. Many visits come from families where adults work multiple jobs, as well as veterans and seniors living on fixed incomes, Brisk said. That need has not tapered off since the onset of Covid-19: 'It was the pandemic passing the torch to inflation.' In Long Island's Nassau and Suffolk counties, Island Harvest has doubled the amount of food it distributes since 2019. 'The need for emergency food is greater now than it was during the pandemic,' said Gregory May, director of government and community relations. 'The trends are really going in the wrong direction.' Island Harvest relies heavily on donated food, which makes up roughly 75 percent of its stock. May worries whether those donations will continue as businesses feel the crunch of a tightening economy. The situation could become even more grim if the federal government moves forward with cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program(SNAP), also known as food stamps, May said. Congressional Republicans are now considering a drastic overhaul of the program as a way to partially cover another round of Trump tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. 'I don't think a lot of people realize how connected they are to the emergency food system,' May said. 'A cut to one program is really a cut to every program.' Staff at FeedMore Western New York are still trying to make sense of how a variety of cuts — TEFAP, LFPA, and funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has also been paused — will impact their bottom line. Feedmore serves Erie, Niagara, Cattaraugus, and Chautauqua counties. 'We are being impacted in every way you can imagine by decisions being made by the federal government,' said public relations manager Catherine Shick. Last year, the organization received nearly $15 million in federal support to operate its food bank network, provide SNAP outreach, deliver meals to the homebound, and supply community kitchens. FeedMore has increased the number of people it serves by 46 percent since 2021. Tariffs add yet another 'unknown' that FeedMore has to monitor, with some vendors warning of potential food price increases, Shick said. Inflation was cited as a top affordability concern for Billi-Jo Mendez, a first-time pantry user in Brooklyn who was next in line to Ramirez on Wednesday. 'In all my years, I've never come to a pantry,' said Mendez, 52. 'I came for extra help.' Mendez said she and her husband have been making do on their own, but recently received custody of their three grandchildren. Her basket included sacks of apples and carrots, as well as cereal and baked chips for the kids. 'It's so sad,' Mendez said of federal cuts. 'A lot of people are going to go hungry without assistance from a program like this.' Gordon at Food Bank for New York City said it's too soon to tell exactly what impact tariffs will have, but the the current situation is unlike past 'rough patches.' 'There's a lack of predictability that is causing things to be more upended than they have been before,' Gordon said. 'We definitely have not seen this convergence of external factors to this degree, and all at once, impacting the good work we're trying to do for people who need us.'
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
USDA Canceled Funding to Help Source Produce for Schools
This article was originally published in The Beacon. In 2020 and 2021, the COVID pandemic exposed weaknesses in the United States' supply chain for key items in American households. The Biden administration spent millions of dollars through the U.S. Department of Agriculture on new programs that helped farmers sell their produce to local schools, create produce boxes for households and provide more direct food access to their communities. The Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) and Local Food for Schools (LFS) programs provided incentives for schools and community organizations to buy food from local farmers. They allowed states to create contracts with farmers so schools could purchase their foods and gave farmers the promise of a guaranteed sale when harvest time arrived. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Now, with rocky trade partnerships and tariffs looming, President Donald Trump's administration has slashed the remaining money for the programs, leaving farmers across the country heading into their growing season unsure who will buy their produce. 'We really figured out how to get local farm product into community spaces under LFS and LFPA,' said Thomas Smith, the chief business officer at the Kansas City Food Hub, a cooperative of farmers near the Kansas City area. 'We were making our whole organization around meeting those new needs, because we believe in the government's promise that they believe in local food.' The Trump administration canceled about $660 million in funding for the programs that was to be paid out over the next few years. Through the programs so far, USDA has paid out more than $900 million to states and other recipients. KC Food Hub took on the challenge of helping farmers, school districts and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education work together to streamline the processes under the Biden-era programs. It was almost an instant success. In 2024, the cooperative brokered more than $500,000 in sales for small farmers in the Kansas City region — more than the group had seen in its first five years of operation. KC Food Hub hoped that the new partnerships would continue putting money back into farmers' pockets and was aiming for over $1 million in sales for the farmers they represent. Now, they're huddling with school districts across Kansas and Missouri to try and keep some of the contracts alive in the absence of the federal money. The local food programs were an extra pillar of support for small farmers across the country. USDA data show that since 1980, the number of farms across the U.S. has decreased from about 2.5 million to 1.88 million in 2024. Part of that struggle, Smith said, is like many small-business owners, farmers are forced to take on many different roles. 'What they really want to be doing is farming, knowing their soil, knowing their land,' Smith said. 'But because there is no distributor like the Food Hub in most communities, they have to be business people, too. They have to be in the board meetings, meetings with school administrators. And that just puts so much stress onto the food system.' Over the years, as small farms have dwindled and larger operations have consolidated agricultural production in the United States, the middle market and distributors like the Food Hub have phased out. When it comes to large-scale distributors, there are plenty of places a farmer could turn to sell their products. But the return for that farmer when selling to a large distributor is much lower. 'You get pennies on the dollar,' Smith said. 'No respect to your work, no respect for your worth.' There are other USDA programs that dedicate money to states through their nutrition assistance programs and set aside funds for seniors and low-income families to buy produce from local farmers. Studies show ripple effects through local economies when higher quantities of local food are purchased. A 2010 study found that for every dollar spent on local food products, there is between 32 cents and 90 cents in additional local economic activity. For Mike Pearl, a legacy farmer in Parkville, the programs pushed him to expand faster than he'd planned. Now, without the guarantee of those contracts, he's scaling back his production plan for the year. 'If you think about it, it was an early game changer,' Pearl said. 'We were able to, for the first time … grow on a contracted basis for a fair price for the farmer, in a way that we never would have been able to do before.' That encouraged Pearl to increase production and begin making upgrades before he felt completely ready to do so, he told The Beacon. New equipment, growing more produce and hiring more staff were all side effects of the local food purchasing agreements. 'I'm not sure that a lot of vegetable farmers were actually ready for it,' Pearl said. 'I wasn't prepared for it. But we made some changes to grow a bit more and do as much as we can on a short runway. We were set up for a perfect storm.' Anything extra Pearl produces will be donated, as his farm is one of the largest donors of food in the Kansas City area. But other farmers are left with questions about what will happen with their crops — and their revenue. It raises a question of trust that Maile Auterson has encountered throughout her life as a fourth-generation farmer in the Ozarks and the founder of Springfield Community Gardens, which facilitates local produce boxes and the LFS programs in the Springfield, Joplin and Rolla areas. 'We promised the farmers,' Auterson said. 'The biggest insult to us is that we cannot follow through on the promises we made to the farmers that we had made with that money.' The area her group serves was set to get $3 million in federal funds over the next three years. While Auterson is trying to fulfill some of those contracts, the trust that small farmers were building with the government through the program has been severed, she said. 'We talked the farmers into participating and scaling up specifically for this program,' Auterson said. 'Then when we can't follow through, the government has done what they were afraid the government would do, which would be to not look out for the small farmer. It's a terrible moral injury to all of us.' Smith said the Food Hub is in talks with its participating school districts — including Lee's Summit, Blue Springs and Shawnee Mission — to continue their purchasing agreements even without the federal funds. So far, even with the funding cancellation, 95% of 2024's produce sales are set to be maintained through this year, Smith said. 'As small farmers, they can't meet the streamlined industrial agriculture price points, but we can come close,' said Katie Nixon, a farmer and the co-director of New Growth Food Systems, which is affiliated with the West Central Missouri Community Action Agency. 'Our quality is usually a lot higher,' Nixon said. 'Lettuce, for example, will last three weeks in the cooler, whereas lettuce coming from greenhouses in God knows where will last a week before they turn to mush.' The Blue Springs School District saw a 40% increase in the use of its cafeteria salad bars after switching to local produce, Smith said. And school districts often find less waste and more savings, despite the slightly higher price when purchasing the produce, Nixon said. Research shows that farm-to-school programs, like sourcing local produce and teaching kids about farming, resulted in students choosing healthier options in the cafeteria and eating more fruits and vegetables. Schools also saw an average 9% increase in students eating their meals from the school cafeteria when they participated in farm-to-school programming. During Trump's most recent Cabinet meeting at the White House, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kenendy Jr. said the administration is planning a massive overhaul of the federal school meals program. 'It's going to be simple, it's going to be user friendly. It is going to stress the simplicity of local foods, of whole foods and of healthy foods,' Kennedy said. 'We're going to make it easy for everyone to read and understand.' Auterson and Nixon feel that the cancellation of the program is retribution for those who benefited from policies and funds initiated during the Biden administration. 'They're hurting everyone,' Auterson said. 'Everyone is suffering from them being retributional.' This article first appeared on Beacon: Missouri and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
