USDA Cuts to Food Banks Reduces Food Available to MHCC Students

Mt. Hood students who use Barney’s Pantry are already feeling the effects of recent Trump administration budget reductions.

At the beginning of April, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture reduced the amount of food it supplied to food banks nationwide through The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which included the Oregon Food Bank, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Steve Herff, coordinator for Barney’s Pantry, said the cutbacks were quickly noticeable.

“Students are already seeing it; our shelves are bare,” Herff said.

The Oregon Food Bank has fewer items available for him to either purchase at a discounted price or distribute for free to students, he said.

“The amount of items that I normally was able to choose from to get is now (cut) down,” he told The Advocate. “We’ve lost a third of those items” from those previously made available, he said, and also the amount (quantity) of items that do remain available has been reduced. While students will definitely see the impact of the changes, Herff said the pantry is still there for those who depend on it.

“Come on by, come get some food,” he said. “The selection is not going to be as robust as it used to be but there is food here. Nobody is going to go completely hungry.”

That said, currently the pantry has a lot of (vegetable/fruit) produce but not a lot of packaged foods, Herff noted.

“I don’t have a lot of dry goods in right now. Dry goods have been harder to get and as they come in, I think we are seeing increased demand at the same time food prices have gone way up.”

One of the ways Herff has been working to maintain pantry food options is trading with Portland State University’s food pantry.

“(PSU) has been a great partner with us so far and we are working on sharing products” between the two schools, he said. Each checks if the other has extra inventory that can be swapped, to help lift both pantries. “Portland State is a much larger institution that gets a much larger allotment than we do, but at the same time we definitely get products that they don’t.”

Herff noted that students aren’t the only ones affected by cuts to USDA food grants.

Two other programs that have been affected by the culling of USDA grants are the Local Food Purchase Cooperative Agreement program and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program, which give food banks and schools grants to buy food from local farmers.

Herff said these USDA cuts have left farmers in a difficult position now that the food banks can’t buy their produce.

“We’ve got farmers that are already growing products that no longer have a market for that now. The Oregon Food Bank is not getting that product now, ‘cause they don’t have any money to buy it, and the farmer is now stuck with that product,” he said.

Farmers trying to find new buyers for their produce could attempt to flood local markets with their supply or try to export the goods, Herff said. Neither is a great option. 

Local markets would be “difficult to get into and then, if you are trying to export, well, tariffs now are making exporting even more difficult so we’ve put a lot of farmers into a very bad position, where they used to just have a direct line to be able to sell to the food bank and to the local school districts,” he said.

The USDA cuts are part of the far-reaching Trump administration effort to reduce federal spending it disagrees with, including some directives that have been blocked or paused by court orders.

“I think students just need to realize that their votes have a real impact and this is this is the impact of an election,” Herff said.

“This is a change of attitude from the federal government on how (it is) treating folks who are hungry and in need of assistance. These programs being cut is just directly hurting folks who are already struggling.”

Leo Fontneau