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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Ohio bills further regulating SNAP use, fraud prevention, see activity as cuts loom
A 'SNAP welcomed here' sign is seen at the entrance to a Big Lots store in Portland, Oregon. (Getty Images) As Ohio food assistance recipients await decisions on the federal and state level about whether they will see large cuts to their benefits, some state legislators are trying to iron out other details related to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Congressional budget reconciliation is ongoing in the U.S. Senate, after what anti-hunger advocates say would be a nearly 30% reduction in SNAP benefits was approved by the U.S. House in their draft of budget documents, encouraged by the Trump administration as part of efforts to slash federal spending. Advocates say the cuts will be devastating for low-income families across the country, with rural communities disproportionately impacted, according to the national Food Research & Action Center. The Ohio Association of Foodbanks said the loss of SNAP funding would restrict services 'vital for everyday Ohioans in every Congressional district.' The potential cuts come as legislators work on the state's SNAP program, with bills ranging from supplements to the benefits for older Ohioans to a push to prevent the defrauding of Ohioans who need the funds. Most recently, supporters of House Bill 163 – which would make the electronic benefit cards (EBTs) that hold SNAP benefits chip-enabled, like most mainstream credit and debit cards – spoke on the impacts chip technology would offer to households. The modernization of the EBT cards would help stem fraud through 'skimming,' a method of stealing information from the swipe of a card and capture of PIN numbers at checkouts. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The Ohio Poverty Law Center said fraud occurs for many individuals 'in the first few days after benefits were loaded, leaving them without benefits until the next month.' Joree Novotny, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks said there was a congressional 'pathway' for state agencies to reimburse victims of benefit theft, which took nearly $17 million in SNAP benefits from more than 34,000 Ohio households between June 2023 and Dec. 2024. But the pathway ended in December of last year, when Congress decided against extending authorization for replacement of those benefits, Novotny told the Ohio House Agriculture Committee during a recent hearing on H.B. 163. Since then, it's unclear how much has been stolen from Ohioans and other SNAP beneficiaries, because Novotny said 'theft reports are no longer being collected.' Still, she said emergency food distribution representatives say the 'issue remains pervasive.' One of the sponsors of H.B. 163, state Rep. Tristan Rader, D-Lakewood, is working with fellow Democratic Rep. Desiree Tims to create a state program to replace stolen SNAP benefits in a bill that would appropriate $17 million from the state's General Revenue Fund for the task. State-level budget discussions have included maintaining work requirements for SNAP participants, along with other regulations related to waivers for SNAP participants. The state budget approved by the House also included a requirement that the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services seek a waiver from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to exclude 'sugar-sweetened beverages' from items that can be purchased using SNAP benefits. While the provision of the budget doesn't specify types of sugar-sweetened beverages, a bill introduced recently by Republican co-sponsors singles out soft drinks as an item they want to see removed from the SNAP-eligible list of products, along with candy, chips, ice cream and 'prepared desserts such as cakes, pies, cookies or similar products.' If the bill passes, those products would join alcoholic beverages, tobacco, hot foods or 'hot food products prepared for immediate consumption' as SNAP-exempted items. Last week, the sponsors of the bill said exempting 'junk food' from SNAP eligibility is one way of ensuring to taxpayers that their money is being spent for the betterment of Ohioans. 'What this bill's all about is helping focus folks who are using taxpayer money – which we're glad to provide for folks that are having a rough time, don't have resources at home, whatever the case may be – but just helping them realize there are better choices here than the stuff that adds calories … and no nutritional benefits,' Sen. Tim Schaffer, R-Lancaster, told the Senate Health Committee. Bill co-sponsor, Sen. Terry Johnson, R-McDermott, pointed to a change 'demographically in our country' toward obesity and health problems, 'and it's primarily the nutritional things that we consume.' 'We're doing America a great disservice by ignoring the fact that what people actually need is clean air, clean water, clean food, good exercise and a little bit of sunshine,' Johnson said. Committee member Sen. Beth Liston, D-Dublin, wondered whether discouraging sweets and soda consumption should start with a different population for which taxpayers subsidize food assistance, like the military or public universities. 'If you're looking at how to make the best impacts, I think looking at only poor individuals that are struggling to get by may not be, certainly not the largest population,' Liston said to the bill sponsors. 'There are many other tax-funded foods that we purchase, and if you're going to be looking at it holistically, just the SNAP program is a pretty small population.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
4 days ago
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Advocates: Huge numbers of Ohioans stand to lose food benefits if GOP House budget becomes law
A food drive. Stock photo from Getty Images. The executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks is trying to get the word out: If the budget passed by the U.S. House of Representatives becomes reality, it could trash the state budget and make many, many Ohioans go hungry. The matter goes next to the U.S. Senate. But the members of the Ohio delegation aren't talking. The House-passed Republican reconciliation budget — President Donald Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill' — would hand out $4.6 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years. In an analysis, Trump's alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, estimated that 70% of the benefit would go to the 'top 10% of the income distribution.' Meanwhile, the 'Department of Government Efficiency' — led by the world's richest man — has been looking to cut services for average Americans. One place the Republican House budget seeks to achieve some of those cuts is to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Also known as food stamps, the program provides debit cards for food. To qualify, Ohio recipients generally have to have net income at or below federal poverty guidelines — $32,150 a year for a family of four. Benefits awarded under the program are pretty modest, $6.28 per person, per day on average last year. And, as a reflection of the high level of poverty in the state, one in nine Ohioans — or 1.4 million — received them last year. Whether Ohio's poorest will get those food benefits in future years is an open question in light of the One Big Beautiful Bill. 'The House-passed Republican reconciliation plan would cut nearly $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) through 2034, based on Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates — by far the largest cut to SNAP in history,' the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote last week. 'As a result of these cuts and other policies in the legislation — which are being used to pay partly for trillions in tax cuts skewed to the wealthy — millions of people would lose some or all of the food assistance they need to afford groceries, when many low-income households are struggling to afford the high cost of food and other basic needs.' The bill would force states to take up the slack by forcing them to pay based on error rates. In other words, they'd have to pay at least 5% more and then go up a sliding scale based on how often they were found to pay recipients too little or too much in benefits. It also would greatly increase error rates by eliminating the current tolerance for small errors — those up to $57. This all might sound technical, but the consequences for Ohio would be huge. If it had an error rate of 6% or less (which it doesn't, even under the current, more-tolerant system), the state would have to pay $158 million more a year into the program, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. At the top end, with an error rate of 25% or more, Ohio would have to pay $790 million more a year. Under the Republican bill, error rates would surely go sharply up. But even under Ohio's most recent rate, the state would take a massive hit. At 15% errors, the state would have to come up with $473 million a year. 'That's almost $500 million in new state revenue that they would have to come up with just to maintain current levels of benefits,' said Joree Novotny, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks. 'That's roughly equivalent to the entire state investment in the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services' which administers SNAP in addition to many other programs. Novotny is worried that Ohio's food banks would be stretched even worse under such cuts than they were after expanded SNAP benefits during the covid pandemic expired. 'We know that we can't ever make up for the value that SNAP benefits provide to low-income working families, seniors and people with disabilities,' she said. 'We're not designed to be a first-line grocery store. SNAP invests directly in local economies. Benefits are spent at local grocers. The removal of this investment in that supply chain… I'm not only concerned about access to affordable food for people with lower resources, but also sustainability and resilience in the food-supply sector as a whole.' Novotny said two bad-but-likely results would be bigger food deserts and less access to healthy nutrition. Those outcomes would be particularly devastating to low-income families who have seen food prices grow 27% between mid-2020 and the beginning of this year. Asked whether Gov. Mike DeWine opposed the SNAP cuts in the Republican bill, his press secretary, Dan Tierney, was noncommittal. 'As we have seen, these proposals can change dramatically as the process proceeds,' Tierney said in an email. 'We have generally reserved comments until after final proposals have been adopted.' The offices of Sens. Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno were asked if they would support the cuts when the House bill came before them. Neither replied. For her part, Novotny said she has an even deeper concern than overwhelmed food banks and growing food deserts. Asked what would happen if states can't or won't find the money the House budget is demanding for SNAP, she said, 'We can't get a good answer to that.' 'Fundamentally, will SNAP remain an entitlement? Will states have to administer the program at all?' she asked. 'Fundamentally, it's hard to understand how it would be required of a state to participate in the program if there's such a significant cost burden.' The question, at bottom, is whether the already huge number of poor Ohioans will swell and whether they'll be pushed even deeper into poverty and food insecurity. 'I'm most concerned about what it would mean for the structure of the federal nutrition safety net,' Novotny said. 'SNAP is and always has been an entitlement program. If you're a worker who, through no fault of your own, loses your job and while you're seeking work you need help affording groceries so that you can stay in your house… SNAP is there. Or if you're a person who receives a really serious cancer diagnosis and you have to use some (Family and Medical Leave Act benefits) to come and get treatment, SNAP is there. If you're a low-wage working family, or if you're a senior on a fixed income, SNAP is there and the benefit has always been fully federally funded.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
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Supporters say Hunger-Free Campus Act would benefit Ohio students' well-being
Stock image of a food pantry courtesy Hurlburt Field. Advocates recently spoke out in favor of a bill that would help Ohio college students dealing with food insecurity. A bill that would require the Chancellor of Higher Education to create the Hunger-Free Campus Grant Program had supporter testimony last week in the Ohio House Workforce and Higher Education Committee meeting. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The program would award hunger-free campus grants which could, for example, create an on-campus food pantry or a partnership with a local bank, provide students information about SNAP, have an emergency assistance grant available to students, or have a student meal plan credit donation program. Ohio House Reps. Sean Patrick Brennan, D-Parma, and Jim Hoops, R-Napoleon, introduced Ohio House Bill 157, which had 15 people submit supporter testimony. H.B. 157 would appropriate $625,000 for fiscal year 2026 and 2027 for the program. 'The Hunger Free Campus Act would incentivize colleges and universities to establish basic needs programs, like an on-site food pantry or emergency assistance grant program as well as connecting students to resources,' said Sarah Kuhns, external affairs manager of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks. The Ohio Association of Foodbanks has worked with more than 30 Ohio colleges and universities to create food pantries or distribute food to students struggling with food insecurity, she said. 'Throughout our network's engagement on the issue of college student hunger, it has been clear that the approach has been patchwork, leading institutions to establish basic needs programs only if they have the connections, the will and the funds to do so,' Kuhns said. Students who are unable to meet their basic needs are more likely to have a hard time in class, take longer to finish their degree or drop out, Kuhns said. Some food pantries on Ohio's college campuses said they are interested in providing microwaves and stoves near the pantry, so commuter students or those with limited access to a kitchen can cook the items they receive from the pantry, she said. State Rep. Tom Young, R-Washington Twp., was surprised that food insecurity on college campuses is an issue. 'I don't have anyone coming up and saying, 'We have students starving on campus and things like that.' I just can't get my head around it,' he said. 'Why is this such a big issue that no one knows anything about?' In response, Kuhns said food insecurity is often an invisible problem. About 23% of college students experienced food insecurity in 2020 and 59% of food-insecure students potentially eligible for SNAP did not report receiving benefits, according to a report released last summer by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. State Rep. Tracy Richardson, R-Marysville, asked what population of students are experiencing food insecurity and Kuhns said this affects all demographics of students — commuter, non-traditional, and those living on campus. Deacon Nick Bates, director of the Hunger Network in Ohio, said he regularly hears from campus ministries about the growing need to help food insecure students across Ohio. 'Students cannot learn hungry,' Bates said. 'Food insecurity on college campuses leads to lower GPA's and lower completion rates.' Sophie Gephardt, a graduate social work student at Ohio State University, talked to students facing food insecurity last year when she did her undergraduate thesis on food insecurity experiences of Ohio State social worker students. 'Some common themes included poor diet quality impacting energy and health, concerns about rising food costs, and overall constant stress and mental health concerns due to food insecurity,' she said. 'The Enact the Hunger-Free Campus Act would be incredibly beneficial to getting students connected to resources that they so desperately need.' Meeting students' basic needs leads to higher retention and graduation rates, said Stephanie Dodd, executive director at Community Campus Coalition. 'These outcomes contribute directly to Ohio's workforce development priorities and long-term economic growth,' she said. Follow Capital Journal Reporter Megan Henry on Bluesky. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Their small farms helped stock food pantries. That program is going away.
URBANA, OHIO — Oaks and Sprouts, Tonni and Graham Oberly's family farm, got the email from the Ohio Association of Foodbanks just after five o'clock on the first Friday in March. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, had notified the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services that it was ending a program that gave state, tribal and territorial governments federal dollars to stock food pantries from farms within a 400-mile radius. The Ohio Association of Foodbanks, in turn, shared the notice with the more than 150 farms that supplied the state's food pantries with fresh produce, meat and dairy. One of them was Oaks and Sprouts, whose younger and diverse owners are just the type of growers the USDA's Local Food Purchase Assistance program aimed to connect to food-insecure Americans. Last growing season, Oaks and Sprouts had a contract worth up to $25,000 with the program, a significant amount for the small farm. The produce made its way to food pantries in nearby Springfield and Dayton and, from there, to the Ohioans who rely on them to feed themselves and their families. For Tonni Oberly, a trained doula with a background in public health, joining that distribution chain connected her work at the farm to the focus of the city and urban planning doctorate she had recently completed: how place impacts the health of Black mothers and children. 'Food is such an important part of that — access to food in your neighborhood, access to healthy food, the affordability of food — how food impacts our maternal and child health outcomes is really crucial,' Tonni explained on a crisp April day as she and Graham walked through the hoop house where they were germinating seeds for spring planting. The federal program had also allowed the Oberlys to diversify their farm's revenue stream beyond the traditional sales to restaurants and at farmer's markets. It had given them a measure of predictability as they built a regenerative farm on land previously cultivated by Graham's aunt and uncle and, before that, his grandparents. 'We can plant seeds and know that they're sold, versus with the farmer's markets, you plant and you hope people buy it — or even selling to restaurants, they don't preorder months ahead of time,' Graham explained as he and Tonni stood on the acre of land where they grow garlic, tomatoes, patty pan squash and lettuce varietals that include romaine, butterhead and salanova. The Oberlys estimate that they were able to hire two of their four seasonal employees last year because of their contract with the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, known as LFPA. They try to pay a good wage for the work — $17 an hour. That's a decent amount for a place like rural Champaign County, where the median household income is about $20,000 less than nationally and the poverty rate is just over 10 percent. The farm's goal, they explained, was to grow food in a way that is good for the land, their employees and their customers. Tonni named Oaks and Sprouts for a passage of scripture in Isaiah: 'They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.' It is a metaphor for living a righteous life. The email from the Ohio Association of Foodbanks landed as Oaks and Sprouts was in the thick of planning for its fifth growing season — the third in which the Oberlys planned on participating in the LFPA program. It attached a USDA notice saying that the Trump administration had 'determined this agreement no longer effectuates agency priorities and that termination of the award is appropriate.' After the current contract year closes on June 30, the LFPA program, which authorized $900 million worth of locally raised healthy foods for anti-hunger organizations, would end. Created by the Biden administration in 2021, the Local Food Purchase Assistance program was at once an attempt to support small local farms and an acknowledgement that one of the most direct ways to bring healthy food to hunger-vulnerable populations is to buy it from underserved farmers nearby. But a USDA press release announcing its creation featured words like 'equity' and 'climate,' targets of President Donald Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency in their efforts to root out so-called 'woke' federal programs. Even before Trump took office, the Oberlys' program coordinator with Ohio CAN (Community + Agriculture + Nutrition), as LFPA is branded in this midwestern state, had warned them that its renewal could be in jeopardy. Still, Oaks and Sprouts, like the vast majority of the farms participating in Ohio CAN, began planning for the 2025 growing season. There were reasons to be hopeful. For starters, while the Local Food Purchase Assistance program was part of the Biden administration's broader COVID-19 relief effort, its funding stream was first used for direct food purchases during Trump's first term. Ohio CAN, like many state-level local food purchase programs, is also widely popular. Independent experts who analyzed its first year in the Republican-led state concluded that it was a 'success by any measure.' Trump's picks to lead key federal agencies in his current term also seemed to be working in the program's favor. Take Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. One of the first things she did upon confirmation was to send state, local and tribal governments a letter that outlined her 'vision for the Department's 16 nutrition programs,' including a commitment to 'create new opportunities to connect America's farmers to nutrition assistance programs.' Then there's Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former environmental lawyer, the figurehead of the 'Make America Healthy Again' movement and an outspoken critic of processed foods. One of his top priorities is encouraging states to prohibit the more than 40 million low-income Americans participating in the USDA's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, from using benefits to purchase soda and candy; so far this year, more than a dozen states have been considering such legislation. Many experts say a more effective way to encourage healthier eating is to improve access to fresh foods, exactly the type that LFPA farms were producing and selling to food pantries. More than 1.3 million Ohioans participated in SNAP during fiscal year 2024, or about 12 percent of the state's population, according to a Center of Budget and Policy Priorities analysis of USDA data. While the majority of SNAP recipients are White, Black Ohioans are overrepresented when compared to the overall state population. An anonymous survey by the Ohio Association of Foodbanks showed that more than 40 percent of people who visited emergency food distribution centers in 2023 had at least one household member under the age of 18 and nearly as many reported living in a household with someone who is disabled. The country's safety net to prevent hunger is a complicated web of federal programs. Most are housed within the USDA and many are jointly administered by federal and state governments. These include SNAP, previously known as food stamps; the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC; school meal programs; Meals on Wheels, focused on seniors; commodities purchases for food banks; and the Local Food Purchase Assistance program that Tonni and Graham Oberly's farm participated in. Pulling on the thread of one program puts tension on the others. For example, once a family exhausts their SNAP benefits for the month, they may rely on one of the country's more than 60,000 food pantries and emergency meal centers to feed themselves. As the USDA is ending programs like the LFPA, Congress is looking at other food assistance programs to find the $1.7 trillion in savings over the next decade needed to renew Trump's 2017 tax package, which primarily benefited corporations and the wealthy. The confluence of cuts and changes, coming as more Americans than ever rely on government help for food, has hunger-relief advocates worried the safety net will unravel. Congress has proposed changes to SNAP that include recalibrating the formula used to calculate benefits, adding work requirements for some parents and forcing states to take on a larger portion of the funding. Rollins, for her part, sent a letter to states in April reminding them that it is ultimately the USDA that has the authority to grant their requests to waive the time limit on able-bodied adults receiving SNAP benefits unless they meet work requirements. Earlier this month, the Trump administration also ordered states to hand over SNAP recipients' personal data, including their Social Security numbers, addresses and, in at least one state, citizenship status, National Public Radio reported. The directive came amid the administration's broader push to amass Americans' personal data and target immigrants. Though people in the country illegally are not eligible for SNAP benefits, their U.S. citizen children might be. Last month, USDA directed states to enhance identity and immigration status verification as part of Trump's broader immigration crackdown, even though there is no evidence that immigrants are improperly participating in the program at significant levels. Advocates worry that in the current climate, using the SNAP program to collect participants' data could have a chilling effect on seeking food assistance. The USDA also recently paused $500 million from a separate program that buys large quantities of food from farmers for food pantries, with food banks in Ohio, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and elsewhere losing millions of dollars worth of shipments as a result. When the administration ended the LFPA, it also terminated a $660 million program that linked local farms to schools and child care centers. The changes and uncertainty are coming at what Vince Hall, the head of government relations for Feeding America, the nationwide foodbank network, called an already 'very precarious moment for food banks because there's no resiliency left in the system.' 'They're stretched to the breaking point. They are serving unprecedented high demand, the highest in over a decade. They are dealing with a decline in donation revenue from the pandemic highs that has been quite steep. The decline of financial donations from the pandemic highs, combined with some of the highest — in fact, record — levels of demand at food distributions has just stretched them to the breaking point,' Hall said. 'If we have policy adjustments that disqualify people from the SNAP program, or if we have a recession and unemployment goes up, or if we have a series of natural disasters, there are any number of things that can work to increase demand, and the food banks just aren't ready,' he added. In an emailed statement, a USDA spokesperson noted that as of mid-May, states still had $246 million in unspent LFPA funds. 'The secretary encourages states to utilize these dollars for schools, charitable feeding organizations, and other programs that serve those in need,' the statement said. Alabama has exhausted its funds; Ohio had about $435,000 left from $26.6 million allocated; just $1,500 remained in Tennessee's coffers, according to an official tally. The spokesperson added: 'On any given day, the Department issues more than $405 million worth of nutrition benefits across its 16 nutrition programs. There is no need for new programs, but perhaps more efficient and effective use of current.' These are not reassuring words to many of the program's participating farmers and food pantry operators, whose best-case-scenario path forward is for the program to be revived under the administration's own branding. Graham and Tonni Oberly had to pivot quickly. After they received the email from the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, they secured a spot for this season in a farmer's market in Dayton that is larger than the one where they used to sell their produce nearby. They are adding cut flowers to their lineup and growing Chinese Cabbage for the first time, while also trying to expand the number of local restaurants to which they sell what they grow. But the modicum of predictability that the Local Food Purchase Assistance program gave this new farm for the past two seasons — the USDA considers farmers and ranchers 'beginning' for their first decade and eligible for special assistance — will be gone this year. As will the direct line for Oaks and Sprouts to help address food insecurity in their own community. Graham Oberly grew up on the Ohio-West Virginia border in a family that fought mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia, earned a degree in natural resources management and worked as a sustainability coordinator for The Ohio State University before moving into farming. Oaks and Sprouts is a marriage of the Oberlys' passions. The regenerative farm is a way for Graham to tend the land of his ancestors and preserve it for future generations. With the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, the farm was also a way that Tonni could expand her work caring for Black mothers and children. More than 47 million Americans — including one in five children — are considered food insecure, meaning they do not have enough food to eat or access to healthy foods. Rural Americans are more likely to face hunger due to lack of transportation, lower wages and racial discrimination. The highest rates of food insecurity are among Indigenous and Black Americans, according to a Feeding America analysis, with Black children twice as likely as White children to face hunger. USDA research also shows that households with children headed by a single mother are more likely to be food insecure. And food-insecure women are more likely to be obese than food-insecure men or children, with all of the related health issues, in part because they prioritize providing healthy foods for their children instead of themselves, according to the Food Research & Action Center. In Ohio, the food insecurity rate is slightly higher than the national average. In 2023, Ohioans visited the state's food banks 14.7 million times, up more than a third over the year before. Ohioans are eligible for food bank use if their household is at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level — and more than a quarter in the state qualify, or about 3.4 million people. Of the 43 percent who were also receiving SNAP benefits, nearly all of them — 93.4 percent — reported exhausting those benefits within the first three weeks of the month, according to the Ohio Association of Foodbanks. Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-era stimulus package provided direct assistance to taxpayers, $350 billion for state and local governments, and $130 billion to help safely reopen schools, among other provisions. The plan also earmarked $1 billion for USDA programs to build capacity in the country's food-banking system amid unprecedented need and global supply chain disruptions. Half of that money went to additional purchases via The Emergency Food Assistance Program — and that is the $500 million canceled by Trump's USDA in March. Another $400 million was slated for what became the Local Food Purchase Assistance program. Biden's USDA renewed both pandemic-era programs due to their popularity. While more than 90 percent of all U.S. farms qualify as 'small,' with gross cash annual farm incomes of $250,000 or less, they account for just 17 percent of the total value of food produced in the country, according to USDA statistics. Still, they play a critical role in diversifying the overall food ecosystem by supplying produce, dairy and meat that are not available from large-scale agribusiness. Many grow a variety of crops instead of focusing on one or two. Since they are often serving their own communities, they are less vulnerable to disruptions to complex global supply chains. In 1973, as global demand for U.S. farm exports exploded, Earl Butz, the agriculture secretary under Republican President Richard Nixon, told American farmers to 'get big or get out.' Farmers mostly listened. In the years since, while the number of farm acres has remained roughly constant, the number of farms has continued to decline. When Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary under Biden, released data from the 2022 Census of Agriculture, he noted that in over five years, the country had lost 142,000 farms — a roughly 7 percent decline. 'As a country, are we okay with losing that many farms? … Or is there a better way?' Vilsack asked. The Local Food Purchase Assistance program was an acknowledgement that one of the most direct ways to bring healthy food to hunger-vulnerable populations was to buy it from underserved farmers nearby. More than 95 percent of American farmers are White. They are also older — the average age of a U.S. farmer is just over 58, according to USDA statistics — and predominantly male; women make up only 36 percent of farm operators. Under Vilsack, who also served for the entirety of Democratic President Barack Obama's two terms, agriculture policy aimed to address the decline in small farms by extending credit and other types of support to people historically less likely to farm — namely women and people of color. White men's dominance over U.S. farming is not happenstance. It's the result of more than 200 years of official government policy that reflects the fraught relationships the country has with race and land. In the 1830s, the U.S. government forcibly relocated thousands of Indigenous Americans from their ancestral lands in the east, where they had cultivated for generations, to a different climate in the west. Thousands of them died from disease, starvation, exhaustion and exposure to the elements during a brutal journey that came to be known as the Trail of Tears. In the 1860s, in the waning months of the U.S. Civil War, General William Sherman pledged that when the Union won, formerly enslaved Black people, who had farmed for White enslavers, would be eligible to receive 40 acres and a mule to farm their own land. President Andrew Johnson reversed course after he took office, returning the land to White people. People of color — and women — struggled to access credit, including via the USDA, to buy the land and equipment needed to start even a small farm in the decades of Reconstruction that followed the Civil War, throughout the Civil Rights and feminist movements, and into the 1990s. Between 1999 and 2010, the USDA paid settlements in three class actions brought on behalf of Black, Latinx and Indigenous peoples — Pigford v. Glickman, Garcia v. Vilsack and Keepseagle v. Vilsack — arguing that the agency had discriminated against them when they sought loans and other assistance. In 2022, Biden's Inflation Reduction Act created a $2.2 billion fund to compensate farmers and ranchers who experienced past discrimination, including women. The federal judge in the Pigford case, Paul L. Friedman, noted that '[a]s the Department of Agriculture has grown, the number of African American farmers has declined dramatically,' and the USDA and 'the county commissioners to whom it has delegated so much power bear much of the responsibility for this dramatic decline.' 'The Department itself has recognized that there has always been a disconnect between what President Lincoln envisioned as 'the people's department,' serving all of the people, and the widespread belief that the Department is 'the last plantation,' a department 'perceived as playing a key role in what some see as a conspiracy to force minority and disadvantaged farmers off their land through discriminatory loan practices,'' Friedman wrote. This history — and a tacit recognition of the role USDA played via its discriminatory practices — underpinned the ethos of the Local Food Purchase Assistance program. In its first year in Ohio, the program bought from 164 growers. A majority of them were classified as 'socially disadvantaged,' which for the LFPA, the USDA defined as women; Black, Indigenous and other people of color; LGBTQ+ people; veterans; and small, emerging and disabled farmers. That year, nearly 12,000 pounds of grains, 223,000 pounds of dairy and milk, 39,000 pounds of eggs and more than 2.5 million pounds of produce that these farmers produced went into the state's food pantries. The more than $9 million worth of food was distributed via five hubs and 12 regional food banks, according to a report independent researchers produced for the Ohio Association of Foodbanks. The researchers noted: 'Overall, producers were drawn to participate in the Ohio CAN program because sharing high quality products with communities in need was often central to their core mission and personal values.' A farmer called the program a 'godsend' and said they felt like they were on the 'front lines of food insecurity and food instability.' One foodbank representative in a historically redlined area, where banks discriminated against residents of certain neighborhoods because of their race and ethnicity, said it was the first time a farmer had offered them okra and they hoped 'we'll be able to work more closely with her to get larger, larger quantities in next year.' The USDA's decisions to end the Local Food Purchase Assistance program and to cancel planned commodities purchases for food banks have not been popular. The Iowa Farmers Union helped small farms facing lost contracts send press releases about the impact. Singer-songwriter Willie Nelson, a founder of the annual Farm Aid concert, penned an open letter to farmers encouraging them to protest the cuts. Food bank administrators from Oregon to Maryland to Florida have warned it will stress their ability to meet still-historic demand that has not diminished since the pandemic. There have also been public spats between Trump's USDA and Democratic governors like Pennsylvania's Josh Shapiro, who accused the agency of reneging on a three-year deal; Rollins said he didn't have his facts right and was 'trying to make this a political issue.' For the Oberlys in Ohio, the politics are personal. Their five-year-old farm was just starting to be woven into the constellation of state and federal programs that fed food-insecure neighbors while giving Oaks and Sprouts a toehold in a precarious industry that employs one in eight Ohioans, either directly or indirectly, and generates billions in the state each year. The end of the Local Food Purchase Assistance program severed the Oberlys' direct path to care for the people in their community, along with their land. Or as Tonni Oberly put it: 'Supporting the local food system is one of the best ways to support the local economy, it supports farmers and community members — it's a win-win.' The post Their small farms helped stock food pantries. That program is going away. appeared first on The 19th. News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday. Subscribe to our free, daily newsletter.
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ohio food banks face challenges as state budget cuts impact need and distribution
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Ohio food banks say the two-year state operating budget is cutting the needs of hungry Ohioans short. The state budget currently has about 24.5 million dollars for food banks, most of the money coming from the federal program Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF. The Ohio Association of Foodbanks said that will not go far enough. Pastor Susan Roark, who runs a pop-up food pantry each week, said she sees the need firsthand. 'It has been a struggle. It is a weekly effort,' she said. 'We distribute about 20,000 pounds of groceries every single week.' Roark runs her pop-up food pantry every Saturday, from 12 p.m. to 2:30 pm. She said during that two-and-a-half hour time frame, about 250 to 350 Ohioans show up. 'We started in December of 2021, and we had about 50 people showing up each week,' she said. 'And it has just continued to grow as the word has spread in the community.' Reynoldsburg City Schools cuts 51 teachers As the need goes up, so does the price of food. That's why the Ohio Association of Foodbanks said they are looking for an additional $4.93 million per year to help cover those costs. The Mid-Ohio Food Collective, for example, distributed more than 83 million pounds of food in 2024. A spokesperson said in 2018 that the average cost per pound of state-purchased produce was 19 cents. In 2024, it was 29 cents. 'I don't care who you are, we've all seen those prices go up. Eggs are nearly $7 a dozen. That's ridiculous,' Roark said. 'So, we have just seen that need continue to grow.' Governor Mike DeWine said while making sure Ohioans have food is very important, 'we have a lot of needs in Ohio.' He said food banks have been prioritized as best as they can. 'What we tried to do during the pandemic when we had extra federal dollars, we put a lot of those extra dollars, those one-time dollars, into our food banks,' DeWine said. 'We were proud to do that, and we think it was the right thing to do, but that does not necessarily mean that we, this time, cut.' DeWine said food banks are seeing flat funding as compared to a 'normal' budget year, when the state did not have an influx of federal, one-time, COVID-19 relief dollars. 'People are complaining, but they're really complaining about us giving one-time money to the food banks, and now we can't give one-time money because it was one-time money, and now it's gone,' DeWine said. 'Every single week, we are having more and more families and individuals come. So, it is critical that the funding not be decreased, but that it be increased,' Roark said. 'Because this need is not going to go away. It's just not.' The budget passed the Ohio House on Wednesday and now heads to the Ohio Senate. Ohio Senate President Rob McColley (R-Napoleon) said that in the last budget cycle, they reined in TANF spending to ensure it was not being misused or overused. In this budget cycle, he said he has not looked specifically at food bank funding yet and is unsure what his chamber will do right now. The statehouse is on spring break for the next two weeks, but the budget must pass by July 1. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
