They fight hunger in America. The government shutdown left them reeling.
- - They fight hunger in America. The government shutdown left them reeling.
Sarah D. Wire, USA TODAYNovember 15, 2025 at 2:04 AM
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The Missoula Food Bank & Community Center in Montana doubled their food order for the first two weeks of November to help handle a flood of requests and will spend “far and above” more than what they have budgeted this month, said Executive Director Amy Allison.
A half a dozen other food banks across the country told USA TODAY similar stories: They've carved massive holes in their budgets over the last six weeks as they tried to keep up with demand sparked by the federal government shutdown. It hit at the same time layoffs and rising prices had already boosted the number of people seeking help.
And now they're facing the rest of the year having already pleaded with every donor on their list to give as much as possible.
federal workers and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) recipients who have been affected by the government shutdown.
" style=padding-bottom:56%>Adult Education Manager with the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, Maria Lopez, of Woodland Park, holds boxes of food as she awaits the next vehicle, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025, in Leonie. The bank distributed approximately 2,000 boxes of food to federal workers and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) recipients who have been affected by the government shutdown.
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Adult Education Manager with the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, Maria Lopez, of Woodland Park, holds boxes of food as she awaits the next vehicle, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025, in Leonie. The bank distributed approximately 2,000 boxes of food to federal workers and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) recipients who have been affected by the government shutdown.
">Adult Education Manager with the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, Maria Lopez, of Woodland Park, holds boxes of food as she awaits the next vehicle, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025, in Leonie. The bank distributed approximately 2,000 boxes of food to federal workers and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) recipients who have been affected by the government shutdown.
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Kent Useary, 65, who lives on Detroit's east side, rides his scooter during a food distribution event at Jesus Tabernacle of Deliverance Ministries in Detroit, Mich., Nov. 5, 2025.
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Kent Useary, 65, who lives on Detroit's east side, rides his scooter during a food distribution event at Jesus Tabernacle of Deliverance Ministries in Detroit, Mich., Nov. 5, 2025.
">Kent Useary, 65, who lives on Detroit's east side, rides his scooter during a food distribution event at Jesus Tabernacle of Deliverance Ministries in Detroit, Mich., Nov. 5, 2025.
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1 / 24Faith communities, nonprofits and volunteers step up amid the federal block of SNAP
Adult Education Manager with the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, Maria Lopez, of Woodland Park, holds boxes of food as she awaits the next vehicle, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025, in Leonie. The bank distributed approximately 2,000 boxes of food to federal workers and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) recipients who have been affected by the government shutdown.
“The fallout is going to be huge and I don't think we can even really wrap our heads around that yet," Allison said.
The food banks said they expect to feel the impacts of the shutdown for months, even though the federal government reopened Thursday evening.
Soon benefits will resume flowing to tens of millions of federal food assistance recipients and paychecks will arrive for hundreds of thousands of federal workers. But those people used up what reserves they had during the 43-day shutdown, said Linda Nageotte, president and COO of Feeding America, which provides millions of meals of food support to organizations across the country.
It will take substantial time for people to feel financially secure enough to stop using food banks, she said.
“While our government may have reopened, the impacts are not like a light switch. We can't magically go back to the before times and everything feels normal,” she said. “For people whose lives have been so extraordinarily disrupted, it will take time for neighbors to be able to even out their household finances over the course of many coming paychecks.”
'There is no certainty now'
When the USDA announced in late October that "the well has run dry" and there would be no Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits in November, it was the first time federal food security had not arrived in the program's more than 60-year history.
Cutting off SNAP benefits shook people who had faith in the government to provide a safety net, said, Cyndi Kirkhart, CEO of Facing Hunger Food Bank in Huntington, West Virginia.
“The one certainty that folks had for a long time was regardless of what else is happening we’ll have SNAP benefits, we can provide for our families. There is no certainty now. I don't have it,” she said. “When you shake people, it takes a while to recover.”
Until the benefits actually arrive on people's EBT cards, the debit card facsimile used by SNAP recipients, she's going to act as if it isn't coming. Her food bank usually distributes 1 million pounds of food a month. They distributed that much in the first week of November alone.
Facing Hunger Foodbank hosts a mobile pantry on Nov. 4, 2025 at Christ Temple Church, in Huntington, WV.
She said the only reason the food bank made it through was the governor sent money and the national guard to help.
Some people may be warily looking at the next funding deadline, which Congress set at fewer than three months away.
The bill to reopen the government partially funds the federal government for nearly a full year and provides the Department of Agriculture with funding through September 2026.
So SNAP benefits will be safeguarded from another potential lapse in the budget for at least a year. But another shutdown would mean tens of thousands of federal employees could be furloughed or working with no pay again, as job cuts surge nationally.
"If I was someone that had been subjected to all of that, there would be a lot of distrust at this point,” said Gayle Carlson, president and CEO of Montana Food Bank Network.
More: Is another government shutdown fight around the corner?
Food in a car trunk at a Nov. 6, 2025 mobile pantry held at Fort Gay Senior Center, in Fort Gay, WV. Over 600 families were served and 12,124lbs of food were distributed.
Carlson said people have had to juggle paying their mortgage, utilities and other bills for more than a month and it will take time for them to feel settled again.
“People still need to eat and so they're going to be continuing to rely on their pantries until they get themselves stabilized,” she said.
In a normal week, her food bank would distribute about 350,000 pounds of food. During the shutdown there were single days when they distributed that amount.
Carlson expects the high need level to continue at least through the end of the year. “Possibly in January we may see a little bit of a decline. We'll have to see how that goes,” she said.
Volunteers from Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church and Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee distribute 38,040 pounds of food to more than 600 families during a mobile food pantry held at the church in East Knoxville on Nov. 13, 2025.Spreading food insecurity
With inflation making food more expensive and cost of living up across the board, food banks and pantries were already seeing huge demand before the shutdown, said Jilly Stephens of City Harvest in New York City.
In 2019, City Harvest saw 25 million visits to its food pantries, she said. In 2024 they saw a near doubling to 47 million
“Now this is layered on top. It is an incredible setback," she said of the shutdown.
Roughly 14% of U.S. households reported food insecurity on average between January and October, up from 12.5% in 2024, according to the latest data from Purdue's Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability. The overall rate had been declining since 2022, at the height of the pandemic, when an average of 15.4% of households were food insecure.
Purdue researchers define food insecurity as some members of a household at times not being able to afford a balanced meal, as well as occasionally having to skip a meal or eating less for financial reasons.
Purdue's survey has become one of the few remaining national measures of food insecurity after U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled its annual Household Food Security survey in September, which had been conducted since 2001. USDA said in September that its survey was "redundant, costly, politicized and extraneous."
Food banks and pantries were also dealing with more than $1 billion in federal funding cuts and pauses USDA made in the spring as part of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency attempt to downsize government.
USDA paused half the funding, or $500 million, for The Emergency Food Assistance Program, a nutrition program that purchased food from American farmers for emergency food providers. Some of the funding was later restored.
A truck from the Sheboygan County Food Bank is loaded with some of the 6645 boxes of cereal collected by Howards Grove students for the donation, Thursday, November 13, 2025, in Howards Grove, Wis.
When that funding was cut, the Missoula food bank lost 40% of what they expected to receive for the year, or about 91,000 pounds of food. It cost about $200,000 to replace that much food, Allison said. Other food banks provided similar figures.
USDA also cancelled the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, which helped food banks buy fresh food directly from local farmers. It would have funded about $500 million this year for food banks.
"We were struggling with food and then when you go lower food and higher demand, that's just a recipe that is not going to work out," Kirkhart of West Virginia said. “Even with the pandemic, we didn't experience anything like what we've gone through since the first part of October.”
'Untested challenges'
Changes to the SNAP program put into place under the GOP tax-and-spending bill this summer will bring “untested challenges” to the charitable food system, said Feeding America's Nageotte.
In early November new work requirements took effect that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will reduce SNAP participation by 2.4 million people.
For the first time in the program’s history, states will be required starting in 2028 to contribute to SNAP benefits if they have a payment error rate above 6%. Error rates were about 11% nationally in 2024.
“As those changes roll out, we know that there will be more people who lose their SNAP benefits and will need to rely more deeply on the charitable food system. So we're extraordinarily concerned about that," Nageotte said. “People across the country will lose benefits that have been keeping food on the table and they will face uncertainty again.”
Community support
The nation's loose network of food banks and pantries is not designed to replace federal food assistance, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. He and more than two dozen others states sued the Trump administration to provide full November SNAP benefits.
“SNAP is the way that Americans help feed other Americans and the food shelves and the others who do such a wonderful job, they can't make up the gap all on their own,” he said.
Allison said community support has given the Missoula food bank a buffer to get through the holiday season. Still, she is concerned about making it to the end of their fiscal year in June.
She said in the coming months she needs Missoula’s community to continue to show up and support the food bank financially and with fresh foods, including dairy and protein.
“I think food banks in general, and for ourselves definitely, need to continue to see the people in our community showing up as much as possible,” she said.
Sarah D. Wire, senior national political correspondent for USA TODAY, can be reached at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: They fight hunger. The government shutdown left them reeling.
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