Chester County is expediting $75,000 in aid to food bank amid federal cuts, officials say

Chester County is speeding up a $75,000 grant to its besieged central food bank, the county’s three-person board of commissioners announced in a statement Wednesday.

The infusion comes as federal cuts and rising insecurity challenge the Chester County Food Bank, a primary source for community pantries and kitchens, according to the statement and an interview with CEO Andrea Youndt.

The money represents the county’s last remaining funds from the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act, the statement read.

In Chester County, officials have recently drawn from a mix of sources to fill the gaps faced by the food bank and its network of affiliated organizations. They include Chester County Prison’s work-release program and an agriculture initiative from the Chester County Youth Center, both of which were overseen by sustainability organization Trellis for Tomorrow, and a volunteer-staffed plot on Springton Manor Farm, which also serves as one of the county’s public parks.

“Ours is a community that rises to the occasion when there are emergency needs, and we will always look at ways to be part of the emergency response,” Commissioners Josh Maxwell, Marian Moskovitz, and Eric Roe said in the statement.

Philadelphia’s collar counties all work to fund services for those facing food insecurity. Montgomery County, for example, budgets $500,000 annually to the Montco Anti-Hunger Network, which then sends the money to pantries and community kitchens across the county, according to county communications director Megan Alt. But food assistance programs across the state now say they find themselves being pulled in two directions at once.

Prices are going up, thanks in large part to the inflation that’s hit nearly all consumer goods in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Yet government assistance to food programs is facing steep, transformational cuts: The U.S. Department of Agriculture in March canceled more than $1 billion in federal contracts with food banks, food pantries, and community kitchens, including $13 million to Pennsylvania food banks.

And the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that passed Congress last month limits who can receive food stamps and how they can apply for them, while shifting the burden of funding the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) onto states and expanding work requirements, including for older adults.

Chester County Food Bank saw its funds slashed through $250,000 in canceled orders for the Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, as well as $145,000 in cancellations through the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, known as the LFPA. The defunds and clawbacks come at a time when the amount of food Chester County Food Bank sends out is on the upswing, Youndt said: 6.1 million pounds between July 2024 and June 2025 versus 4.6 million pounds over the previous year.

All those factors combined to leave the CCFB with a seven-figure chasm between the money it has and the funding it needs, Youndt said.

“I think every food bank across the state has a gap right now,” Youndt said.

Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins exchanged tense words over the cuts in the spring. Shapiro strongly implied state food banks had been stiffed, and Rollins accused Shapiro of “playing games,” arguing that the Trump administration was still spending plenty to combat food insecurity.

But that battle escalated when Shapiro, the state’s former attorney general, sued the administration in June to try and get some of that funding released. (That suit is not to be confused with another in which 21 Democratic governors and attorneys general are suing to stop the USDA from collecting food stamp recipients’ personal information.)

With Washington in the Trump era rethinking its approach to public aid, however, tackling food insecurity might fall permanently to lower levels of government.

Youndt said of Chester County’s contribution to the food bank: “$75,000 is a step in the right direction.”