When Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard closes for the week on Thursday evenings, it increasingly has no pallets of food remaining in the warehouse. Federal funding cuts have led to running out of food more often.
Last year, President Donald Trump cut $500 million of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). Since then, it’s been harder for food banks across the country, including Bloomington’s Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard, Hoosier Hills Food Bank and Pantry 279, to meet increasing local demand.
Megan Betz, CEO and president of Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard, said she used to get 20-25 percent of its food from the federal program. In January and February 2026, she received five shipments from TEFAP, totaling 9,422 pounds. At the same time last year, she had received 21 shipments, totaling 49,225 pounds.
Betz used to get frozen berries, frozen peach cups, canned vegetables and some protein through the program.
But right now, the only TEFAP food Betz has are raisins, craisins and frozen carrots. Because supply is low across the board, more people are going to multiple pantries to get enough food. Betz said it’s getting harder for a single pantry to meet demand fully. Demand at Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard increased 13 percent from 2024 to 2025.
“As the variety of foods is reduced in the pantry, then your ability to really have a full market basket is also reduced, so you're going to need additional resources,” she said. “…It is going to be a really challenging day to leave the pantry and feel like you can make a meal with what you grabbed today.”
To fill the gap, Betz has been looking at partnerships with other organizations such as the Midwest Food Bank and hosting food drives. She also gets food from private donations and farmers. But she’ll also have to purchase more food; she has between $60,000 and $65,000 to spend, but it only goes so far.
“This work is not what ends hunger," she said. "We mitigate hunger, and we're seeing the strain of using systems like this, of food pantries and food banks to prevent serious social problems. So we're putting energy into stronger relationships with our legislators, stronger advocacy, supporting our community, and using their voice to speak up for the food system they want. … "Until we have those things, demand is going to outpace what we're able to pull together.”
Cindy Chavez, executive director of Pantry 279, said the pantry served about 7,500 people a month last year. Now, an average of about 11,000 people a month rely on the pantry for food.
Pantry 279 used to get almost 30 percent of its food through the program. Now, Chavez is getting barely anything, and with fewer donations coming in, she has run out of food on occasion. The last time food came through the program was in January. She received a pallet of pears, fruit salad and some chicken.
“We've also been purchasing more food, which is something we're not used to,” she said. “We're not set up to purchase food. We don't make a lot of money here. We don't get a lot of money here.”
Last year, Chavez said she spent over $115,000 buying food. That’s out of the $400,000 the pantry had. This year, she’s on track to spend more. She still tries to find deals where she can, especially with meat and fresh produce.
“I'll call Kroger. They will give us a really, really good deal,” she said. “And I'll ask, ‘What's on sale? What's the cheapest you could give me on certain things?’ And it just depends on what they have, and I try to buy it.”
The rest of the pantry’s food comes from donations from families and private organizations, Chavez said. She doesn’t know when she’ll next get food through the federal program.
“Right now, the canned goods you're going to see on this aisle are what we have gotten from donations from Fit812, and local people who have donated canned goods over the past two days,” she said. “We're kind of running day by day. As people bring in donations, it hits the shelves.”
Going forward, Chavez said she’ll be posting on social media more and reaching out to organizations in the hopes they’ll host a food drive.
“It's going to just require a lot of creativity, a lot of thinking out of the box," she said. "As we reach out to companies and we reach out to businesses to try to get grants, to try to get them to run food drives, fund drives, everything else, we're just going to have to step back and just think harder without that. No, it's not sustainable.”
Julio Alonso, executive director and CEO of Hoosier Hills Food Bank, said the amount of TEFAP food he has distributed to local food banks in the past few years has decreased. Last year, Alonso distributed 1,131,915 pounds of TEFAP food, 155,000 pounds less than 2024.
From January 1 to February 19 this year, Alonso said he has received 34,000 pounds of TEFAP food. At the same time last year, he got 143,000 pounds of federal food. Alonso is projecting he will get about half a million pounds less of TEFAP food this year.
“It's very difficult to replace that food,” he said. “We can't do it through donations, because this is quality staple foods. It's mostly shelf stable, nonperishable food. But also, in the past several years, TEFAP has done a lot of fresh food purchasing and frozen food purchasing as well…So really, the only way for us to do that is through purchasing, and it's not really sustainable to make up that gap through purchasing, although we're going to do our best to make that happen.”
Alonso said it’s possible that he could receive "bonus" foods through TEFAP purchased by the USDA.
“We're hopeful that we'll see more of that food start to flow in, but we really can't count on that at this point,” he said.
In the meantime, Alonso said he’s working to hold more food drives and do food rescues.
"We go to retailers, wholesalers, grocery stores, prepared food rescue every day; that's our bread and butter,” he said. “Our trucks and drivers are out there collecting that donated food.”
With cuts to the Commodity Credit Corporation, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid, along with TEFAP, Alonso said it’s especially tough for families to make ends meet now.
“It's a very concerning situation,” he said, “because we think it could be a sort of perfect storm of people losing benefits at the same time that the private sources they're going to turn to for help are also losing benefits.”
