A recent announcement from the Rhode Island Community Food Bank that truckloads of more than 500,000 pounds of food scheduled to arrive between April and August were cancelled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is just one of multiple ripple effects of a federal funding freeze on USDA grants felt locally and nationally. The Rhode Island Food Policy Council joins food producers, distributors, and fellow nonprofit organizations across Rhode Island and all fifty states in puzzling over how to feed food-insecure residents with dramatically reduced budgets.
RIFPC is a founding partner of Rhody Feeding Rhody Alliance, a collaboration of local farmers, fishers, food pantries, food rescue organizations, distributors, and others who work to provide fresh, local, and culturally appropriate food to food-insecure Rhode Islanders at a fair price to producers and harvesters.
Funded in part through a USDA Local Food Purchasing Programs (LFPP) grant, the alliance has made a significant impact of food access and security by:
- building 115 new partnerships between local farmers and hunger relief agencies
- providing 104 Rhode Island farmers with increased revenue totaling more than $845K
- creating 18 new and 141 maintained jobs
- creating 97 new local food access points such as food pantries and community food pickup sites, and
- fed 77,900 food-insecure people.
R.I. Senator Jack Reed joined 31 of his colleagues in calling on the USDA to reverse more than $1 billion in cuts to the LFPP, noting that the cancellation of the funding hurts hungry students and families, farmers and other food producers, and the economy as a whole.
“These reckless cuts to essential USDA programs will have an outsized impact on low-income families and on the local farmers, fishermen, and food producers who have benefited significantly from expanded local markets for their goods,” said Senator Reed. “By cutting these vital USDA programs, [President Trump] is making his priorities crystal clear – billionaires come first and American families come last.”
Read news release from Senator Reed
https://www.reed.senate.gov/news/releases/reed-trumps-cancellation-of-usda-local-food-purchasing-programs-hurts-hungry-students-and-families-local-farmers_the-economy