Urgent – Tell Congress by 12/18: Don’t let USDA cut food support for food banks!

URGENT: Tell Congress that food banks, like Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida, will lose about 50 percent of the food they receive from USDA – a dramatic decrease of about 850 million nutritious meals food banks provide nationwide. Congress may vote on this issue as early as this week. Send your message by Friday, December 18th.

During a time when there is no end in sight to the nation’s public health and economic crises and when more families than ever need help finding their next meal, food banks can’t afford to lose any food.

Food banks need a dependable food supply to ensure they can continually provide for families, children and individuals who face hunger in the United States. The USDA is one of the most reliable sources of food for food banks, providing 1.7 billion meals in 2020. But the food USDA provides is expected to drop by half next year, making it exceptionally difficult for food banks to provide for the growing number of families facing hunger.

Since the pandemic began, the Feeding America network of food banks has reported seeing a sustained 60 percent increase in demand for food assistance. To help meet this need, food banks have distributed more than 5 billion meals during the 2020 fiscal year —a 24 percent increase from 2019. With an increase in demand and distribution, we must ensure that food banks have enough food to support every single person who needs it.

It’s critical that the USDA continues to supply our food banks. In this time of extreme crisis, I urge you to act swiftly and ensure the USDA does not cut its support. We also believe it’s still critical for Congress and the Administration to pass another robust pandemic stimulus relief package that includes a boost in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). For every meal that food banks, like Second Harvest, put into the community, SNAP puts out the equivalent of 9 meals. A decrease in food to help feed the increasing number of families without enough to eat and the lack of a boost in SNAP will lead to more hunger in our communities. We urge Congress to act on both immediately.

Tell Congress: don’t let a single person who needs help putting food on the table go hungry. Make sure USDA doesn’t cut its food support for food banks!