Bay Area food banks, pantries struggle with funding cuts as demand continues to rise

A cornucopia of food flows from the trunk of Pete Arballo’s car on a recent morning.

A bright bag filled with limes, clusters of green grapes and fluffy brown bread. The Gilroy resident takes these items out of a shopping cart and meticulously arranges them alongside other groceries tightly wrapped in white plastic bags.

As he shuts the trunk, the 44-year-old has finished most of the family’s grocery shopping for the week, before he heads off to work around 11 a.m.

Instead of a grocery store, the precious haul comes from the St. Joseph’s Family Center in Gilroy, California, where staff and volunteers hold biweekly food distributions for families in need.

Arballo, who has been coming since 2021, looks forward to receiving fresh produce, proteins and snacks that can help his family of five save money on groceries. On special weeks, the distribution will include bananas, a favorite of his three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, who has special needs.

“Any help I can get, I need it,” Arballo said.

But as the demand for food-related assistance grows in the Bay Area, food pantries and banks are grappling with a drop in local donations to keep their operations afloat, while dealing with skyrocketing food prices and cuts in federal funding that support their programs.

Now, food organizations are tapping into their reserves to accommodate the loss of revenue and reallocating their food budgets to stretch their dollars, including by reducing portion sizes for recipients and cutting back on expensive groceries like eggs in favor of more affordable items like produce and meats.

Arballo has noticed the difference at St. Joseph’s — more and more people are showing up, but the food allocations are smaller. Fewer eggs, a little less milk, and a smaller box of root vegetables.

“Sometimes we don’t get chicken, sometimes we don’t get eggs, that’s understandable,” Arballo said. “I try not to expect everything, because at the same time, whatever you can get helps.”

His experience is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to changes food pantries and food banks have undergone in the past few years — a trend felt throughout the region.

“We’re all just a little shocked at how challenging it has become,” said David Cox, executive director of St. Joseph’s, as he showed a virtually empty storage room that would have been regularly stocked with donated food items. “I don’t think anyone really anticipated all of these events to happen simultaneously to create the situation we are in.”

Food insecurity in California, meanwhile, is on the rise, with 22% of all households — and 27% of households with children — experiencing hunger. Roughly 870,000 people in the Bay Area, or 12% of the population, have limited access to adequate food.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture halted $500 million worth of deliveries to food banks, as first reported by Politico. The move comes weeks after more than $1 billion in funding for hunger-relief programs was cut as part of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to reduce federal spending.

The recent avian flu outbreak has only exacerbated the problem, decimating chicken flocks by the millions and resulting in record-high egg prices. The U.S Department of Agriculture estimates that egg prices are expected to rise more than 40% this year, compared to about 2.2% for general food prices.

At St. Joseph’s, a majority of their donated food comes from Second Harvest Food Bank of Silicon Valley, but the quantity they receive — mostly in meat, eggs and milk — has slightly diminished over the years due to funding challenges, Cox said.

During the peak of the pandemic in 2021, St. Joseph’s served 11,372 people and distributed 7 million pounds of food. But last year, the center served 18,610 — its highest number of clients in the last six years — and only distributed around 6.4 million pounds.

At Second Harvest, $1 million worth of food, or about 630,000 pounds, was recently canceled due to sweeping federal cuts. The food includes protein-rich items like milk, chicken, eggs and cheese. The organization is currently trying to raise the money back through community donations. So far, however, they’ve raised only about $30,700 out of their $1 million goal.

Monetary donations have also declined since the pandemic, and the food bank is currently operating on a deficit, according to Chief Impact Officer Tracy Weatherby. The bank provides food free of charge to more than 400 local nonprofit and agency partners in the South Bay.

Eggs were cut from the distribution lineup in January because of rising costs, and replaced with chicken and other meats. The food bank continues to provide a nutritious mix of food, Weatherby said, including fresh produce along with dairy, protein, grains and pantry staples.

In the East Bay, the Alameda County Community Food Bank saw a $2 million hit to its food budget compared to the last fiscal year. The reason? Fewer monetary donations, according to spokesperson Michael Altfest.

Their contributed revenue is also down about one-third since the peak of the pandemic. The food bank is planning to cover funding gaps with its reserves, but it can only last for so long, Altfest said.

“Food banks are serving an ongoing increase in need now,” he said. “That outpouring and support that was driven by emergency (the COVID-19 pandemic) is no longer there.”

While the Alameda County Food Bank hasn’t notably decreased the amount of food it provides to more than 400 agencies in the county, Altfest said, its staff is reallocating the food budget to ditch eggs for more cost-efficient items, like more fresh produce and veggie protein like beans.

The Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano is continuing to see steady local donations, but staff are most concerned about how upcoming cuts to federal food programs will affect their ability to help local families, according to Caitlin Sly, president and CEO of the bank.

Recently, 11 loads of food the bank ordered through the federally funded Emergency Food Assistance Program were canceled. The bank typically relies on the program to help provide food to community members in need. The lost loads could have provided more than 250,000 meals filled with proteins and produce, like chicken and green beans, the organization said.

About 36% of the bank’s funding comes from government grants, while 37% comes from individual donations. The majority of its dollars go to its feeding and distribution program, according to the bank’s 2023 Impact Report.

The food bank also relies on support from Local Food for Schools, another federal program that will lose funding. The program helps states purchase food from local farmers and suppliers to serve at schools and child care centers.

“It’s heartbreaking to think about the families,” Sly said. “We’re going to have to explain why we can’t give them as much variety that we have been able to provide for the past three years.”

In the meantime, St. Joseph has other ways of getting extra items for distributions. They partner with local grocery stores like Safeway and Costco, which deliver leftover food items including produce, proteins and snacks. Not all recipients, however, have noticed a drop in the quantity of food they have received over the years.

Gilroy resident Maria Gonzalez said she hasn’t seen a difference in the amount. If anything, she said, the center is recently starting to give more groceries, especially fresh produce, which she enjoys.

Gonzalez started coming to the distribution center in 2021, and drops by once or twice a month to pick up groceries for herself, her ailing mother and a friend.

She is grateful for all the work volunteers at St. Joseph’s do, and hopes food pantries and banks will continue to be supported.

“I pray for them every day, they are wonderful people,” she said in Spanish. “They’re volunteering their time to help us. I’m just overall very grateful.”

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