Colorado food pantries scramble amid steep federal funding cuts

Colorado’s food banks and pantries are reeling from a recent wave of funding cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration and are uncertain how to replace millions of dollars in fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy, beans and other groceries that feed thousands of hungry Coloradans every year.

The cuts come at a time of rising need across the state, said Erin Pulling, CEO of Food Bank of the Rockies.

“We’re facing the highest rates of food insecurity that we’ve seen in more than 10 years,” Pulling said. “Not only do we need these funds replaced, but food banks and food pantries need more support than ever.”

Food Bank of the Rockies serves around 400,000 people every year, and a recent cut to a federal emergency food assistance program means the organization lost funding for about 7% of daily meals distributed, Pulling said.

It’s a particularly hard loss because the high-quality groceries provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture program are the core of what people get from the food bank, rounded out by donations from individuals.

Yet another federal cut eliminated money to buy food from local producers, known as the Local Food Purchase Assistance initiative, Pulling said. In the past few years, that has amounted to about $2 million in food purchased from about 50 farmers and ranchers across Colorado and Wyoming. If the organization can’t replace both sources of funding, there will be less food given to fewer people.

The same cuts hit Feeding Colorado, which represents five food banks serving all of the state’s 64 counties, executive director Mandy Nuku said. It has taken millions of dollars of food off the table that otherwise would have been distributed this year — about 20% of the food distributed by the food banks and as much as half of the food stocked in rural areas comes from the USDA’s Emergency Food Assistance Program, she said.

“Food is what often drives people into the network of social services, but it’s rarely their only challenge,” Nuku said. “We know that the problem is growing at a greater pace than the resources, and so any cuts to federal programs like this makes it harder to serve our neighbors.”

When federal immigration agents descended on metro Denver apartment complexes this year, workers at the Village Exchange Center thought the crackdown might scare many of the north Aurora nonprofit’s clients into hiding.

But the opposite has happened, with more and more people seeking help as deep federal funding cuts jeopardize the work of food banks across the state, CEO Amanda Blaurock said.

“We’re making adjustments across the board. We’re trying to raise money in different ways, and I’m reaching out to everyone I know, but it’s pretty extreme,” Blaurock said.

The cuts mean about a third of the Village Exchange Center’s budget has disappeared in recent months, including $2.1 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to support the food pantry and Venezuelan migrants, tens of thousands of whom sought help from the center last year. Blaurock said 800 to 1,100 families obtain meals and hygiene products from the food pantry every week.

In a termination letter sent by FEMA, the agency cited direction from Trump and said that “grant programs that support, or have the potential to support, illegal immigration through funding illegal activities or support for illegal aliens … do not effectuate the agency’s current priorities.”

The cuts could threaten the jobs of 10 full-time employees and contractors in the immediate future, and without additional funding, Blaurock said, the center will run out of money to stock its food pantry by the end of July.

“It’s all created a vulnerability that’s very sad for our community and for our team,” she said. “It feels very personal.”

Pulling said she hopes the USDA will launch new programs to replace those that were cut. One recent batch of funding for federal emergency food programs is “a start of what we need to see to meet the need,” she said.

“I’m hoping the general public knows the tremendous need we’re facing and that more people will send contributions,” she said. “We are more dependent on the generosity of the public than ever before.”

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