(C) Common Dreams
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‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Bears Down on Food Banks [1]
['Chris Costanzo', 'July']
Date: 2025-07-08 20:01:09+00:00
‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Bears Down on Food Banks
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The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ signed into law on July 4, is landing with a thud among food bank leaders who fear aggressive cuts to SNAP and Medicaid will put more pressure on the hunger relief system.
Provisions in the law put more than five million people at risk of losing at least some of their SNAP benefits. In addition, nearly 12 million people are expected to lose their Medicaid health insurance over the next decade, adding to the economic woes of the country’s most vulnerable.
The cuts increase the odds that more low-income, food-insecure people will seek out assistance from food banks, which have been in an ongoing struggle to keep up with high demand ever since Covid. The cuts to SNAP and Medicaid benefits follow other cuts imposed earlier this year that siphoned off $1 billion in direct federal funding to food banks (see our seven takeaways on those cuts here).
“It’s a terrible time,” said Catherine D’Amato, President and CEO of Greater Boston Food Bank. “These cuts are going to force more food insecure individuals to turn to already overextended and underfunded hunger relief organizations across the country. We anticipate that there will be a very large impact and a very large cascade.”
Food banks are responding in a number of ways:
1/ Prioritizing food
A crisis brings about focus, and that’s the case for the many food banks that said they would be prioritizing getting food out the door for the foreseeable future. The Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma, for example, plans to increase the amount of food it buys in 2026, despite a variety of budgetary pressures. “We’ve shifted our approach to where we’re putting more of our dollars back into the mission, which is food,” said Jeff Marlow, CEO. “That’s the name of the game.”
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Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma went into fiscal 2026 knowing that it would have $1.4 million less to spend on fresh produce and proteins due to the pullback of the federal LFPA farm-to-food bank program. It plans to make up the difference and then some by moving away from shelf-stable commodity items and pivoting heavily toward the acquisition of fresh food. It will bid on low-cost truckloads of fresh food made available through Feeding America, focusing specifically on stone fruits and root vegetables that have a longer shelf life.
In fiscal 2026, the food bank’s food-purchasing budget will amount to $6 million, up from $4.3 million in fiscal 2025. “Being able to go into this budget year knowing that we have less cash compared to 2025, but we’re going to invest more into food than we did in 2025, I think that’s a win for all of us,” Marlow said.
2/ Going big on going local
There is a growing sense among food bankers that there will be less support available from the federal government going forward, no matter who takes office in four years. That shift is bringing more attention to local support. “Local sustainability is the big message,” said Erik Talkin, CEO at Foodbank of Santa Barbara County. “We’ve got to get more local with how we provide food for ourselves. It’s just the reality of the beast.”
Foodbank of Santa Barbara County is getting more local by launching its own version of the LFPA farm-to-food bank program that will take advantage of the food bank’s existing relationships with local growers and aggregators, while minimizing some of the bureaucracy of the now-closed federal program. The food bank has taken about $1 million from its working capital reserves to get its program going and expects fundraising will support it long-term.
Donors are already responding to the idea that a dollar would go to help struggling farmers, as well as provide healthy food for neighbors in need, Talkin said. “People love that kind of double or nothing thing, so that’s going to be the core of our fundraising efforts over the next quarter,” he said.
3/ Hoping for the best from private donors
It’s hard to imagine being able to meet the growing demand for food without the help of private donors, but it’s also hard to imagine private donors being able to fill the gap left by shrinking government support. “When federal support just gets decimated, there’s no way charitable philanthropy can fill that gap,” said Leslie Bacho, CEO of Second Harvest of Silicon Valley. “It’s just too great.”
Even so, Second Harvest of Silicon Valley is sounding the alarm. It hosted a press conference last month that brought five Bay Area food banks together to draw attention to the impact of the SNAP cuts. “What we need in this moment is people continuing to raise awareness about the need for food security and the critical role that food banks play,” Bacho said.
One outcome of the new law is that corporations and many individuals will benefit from tax savings, potentially giving them more capacity to give. As the negative impacts of the law start to play out, “the triage of philanthropy will start to occur” and likely follow Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in prioritizing basics like air, water and food, said Eric Cooper, CEO of San Antonio Food Bank. “What we’ve seen in previous natural disasters or man-made disasters is that when we start to move towards rock bottom, people start to move more investments into basic needs,” he said.
Cooper has found success in emphasizing the multiplier effect when he talks to donors. Much in the same way that every $1 of donation leads to ten meals, every dollar taken away eliminates ten meals. Recently, when Cooper walked a foundation through the multiplier effect of discontinuing its $100,000 of annual support, the foundation ended up doubling its investment. “Because we’re so efficient in the use of $1, when we lose $1, the community loses a ton of food,” Cooper noted. “That’s what’s so devastating and that’s what I think donors don’t really understand.”
4/ Finding silver linings
While there’s plenty to despair in the new law, it’s also generating more creativity in looking at new solutions. When Lowcountry Food Bank in South Carolina assessed the vulnerability of its programs to federal funding cuts, it also tried to find opportunities. It determined that three of its community programs – senior food boxes, summer meals and nutrition education under SNAP Ed – were vulnerable to potential cuts, leading it to consider ways of running them that might offer more flexibility and greater impact – without the regulatory constraints that come with federal funding.
“We’ve now taken each of these programs and done a deeper dive analysis of what revenue we’ve been generating and at what expense?” said Nick Osborne, CEO. In addition to greater efficiencies, the assessments could lead to new funding opportunities, he said. “Is there a better way of doing this, in terms of funding that we have, but also funding that we could possibly secure in the future?”
5/ Managing the budget
Food banks are using all the tools at their disposal to manage their budgets, including tapping their reserve funds, finding efficiencies, managing staff levels and even rationing food. It’s about mission continuity,” said Cooper of San Antonio Food Bank, which has a six-month reserve. “In mission continuity, there is this expanding and contracting response. Do you expand more resources to mitigate rationing, or do you move to rationing sooner rather than later, to mitigate expenses? So all of that kind of business play is where I think food banks are finding themselves.”
Compared to the pandemic era when resources were flowing, food banks are becoming more diligent in managing their budgets. “We’ve really been working over the past couple of years to have people more closely manage their expenses and really ruthlessly prioritize what we need to be focused on,” said Bacho. Through attrition and some restructuring of departments, for example, Second Harvest of Silicon Valley has eliminated some staff positions, going from more than 300 at the height of the pandemic to about 275 today, she said.
6/ Calling for empathy
The law imposes new burdens on people who already have difficult lives. Veterans, homeless people, former foster kids, people who are older, and parents with teenage children will now have to work or volunteer at least 20 hours a week to receive SNAP benefits. A single mother with one child who loses her benefits, for example, would see the family’s food assistance drop from a maximum of $536 to $292 monthly, according to the benefits technology provider Propel.
Sister Caroline Tweedy, Executive Director of St. John’s Bread & Life in Brooklyn, thinks legislators need a better understanding of the experiences of such vulnerable populations. “I often think that people who are making the decisions are people who have never stepped foot in a food pantry,” she said. “Because if they did, they wouldn’t be voting like this.”
7/ Staying the course
Food banks are accustomed to operating in adverse scenarios. “We’ve always had good news, then bad news, and bad news, and then worse news, and then a little bit of good news,” said D’Amato of Greater Boston Food Bank. “It’s really this back and forth.” The upshot is that food banks are durable, she said. “We’re going to be here. We’re planning to steady on and to fight and to do what we can.” – Chris Costanzo, with additional reporting by Gabriela Flores.
Image, top: This image comes directly from The White House website.
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