“This news comes at a devastating time: summer is fast approaching, when children lose access to free or reduced (price) school meals, and uncertainty remains around the future of subsidized food programs like Summer Feeding,” the post stated.
SHFB Operations Director Sarah Roberts said they only know this cancellation was because of U.S. administrative cuts and that there haven’t been a lot of answers.
“There has been no communication to the food banks. We have found out these loads have been canceled by going into our inventory system (from) the federal government and seeing just loads canceled,” Roberts said. “There has been no communication to the food banks from anyone at the federal level regarding this,” she said, explaining the federal food comes through the state agencies and is then dispensed down to local food banks.
Impact on community
Combined with the cancellation of the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program after June, Second Harvest Food Bank officials said the impact is $453,867 in food value lost and 378,222 fewer meals available for families. The dollar figure equals 4.6% of the food bank’s total 2025 budget, according to Development Director Jennifer Brunner.
The six canceled loads included essential items such as chicken, pork, milk, eggs, cereal, turkey breast and more. They come from the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) program, also known as bonus loads, that are a part of the Emergency Food Assistance Program, Roberts said.
“To have that not available now ... and we couldn’t even plan for it or anticipate it because it just happened,” Brunner said.
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey
Brunner said they started looking into cancellations because they saw other Ohio food banks having the same problem, such as in Cleveland and Akron.
“We don’t want people to give up hope. We have a really strong community of supporters, people that care that are involved. We may have to lean on them a little bit more,” Brunner said.
“(We) are really exploring revenue streams for the food bank. We are exploring ways to get additional food in creative ways, creative food drives. It’s just going to force us to be more creative because we have a team very committed to meeting the needs of the neighbors and so we’re going to try our best to do that.”
Need has not decreased
After 30-35% increases in the number of people served in both 2022 and 2023, Brunner said SHFB saw only a narrow decline in 2024 to about 56,000 unique people served — despite months of disruptions in service tied to warehouse repairs and September-October cancellations around community bomb threats.
She said most local food bank users are not there every week, but reach out when they have a car repair, medical bill or other financial stress on them or their family.
“Across the board, in addition to the price of food, the price of everything has gone up astronomically,” she said.
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey
Brunner surveyed SHFB users in February about how they would adjust if the food bank couldn’t help them.
“A lot of our neighbors, the parents said they would go without meals so their kids could eat. And they would reduce portions. When you hear first-hand accounts, you realize just how important this is to them.”
How the food bank works
Roberts said with SHFB being smaller, they don’t purchase any product, unlike most bigger-city food banks that have purchase budgets. About 50% of their products come through government programs, and the other 50% is donated through retail partners such as Kroger, Walmart and Aldi.
“Unfortunately, we know our retail donations are down as well and now that they’re cutting the government product, we don’t have a way to make that up,” she said. “We are less than 25 people distributing 5 million pounds of the food a year, we don’t have anything to fall back on.”
The LFPA program that is being canceled started during COVID and is one where money is given to the state to purchase food from local farmers that’s distributed to the food banks. The SHFB averages about $500,000 annually worth of product from this program.
This program catered specifically to local farmers to get dairy products from them, so it’s affecting not only the food bank but the farmers as well.
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey
Roberts said another program that may be cut is the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), also known as the senior program. She said each food bank in Ohio is given a caseload of seniors based on how many they serve in the county. SHFB’s is 900, but they don’t know any details on potential cuts.
“To be on the senior program you have to be age 60 or older and you have to meet the federal poverty guideline levels,“ Roberts said. ”We’re talking about cutting a program for people who are already poor."
Officials encourage the community to contact their local representatives and urge them to take action.
“It’s a balancing act with understanding that there is a problem and a need that we’re addressing, but also that we’re not going anywhere. That we are not going to disappear and not be able to support them. I don’t want people to panic or lose hope,” Brunner said. “If nothing else this brings awareness to the cause, it also brings awareness to our mission and the need in the community.”
Brunner said there are ways to support that are not monetary donations, such as sharing when they have an event or fundraiser on social media, bringing friends to volunteer, and talking to your workplace about if they have a matching gift program, if they want to do a corporate volunteer day or food drive.
Second Harvest Food Bank is at 20 N. Murray St. in Springfield and can be reached at 937-325-8715 or admin@theshfb.org.
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey
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