Lowcountry Food Bank, nonprofits struggling amid recent federal funding cuts

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) – The Lowcountry Food Bank is feeling the impact of a decision by the United States Department of Agriculture to put an end to two programs that provided money for schools and food banks to purchase from local farmers.

One of these canceled programs, the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, will impact the Lowcountry Food Bank since they purchase food from 13 different area producers throughout the year.

“We work with 13 farmers in the 10 counties we serve, but across the state of South Carolina, there are many, many more local farmers that benefit from this program. And it’s one of those things where we don’t want feeding people to become a political cry. We don’t want feeding people to become something that polarizes people. Feeding people and our neighbors getting food is a basic human right,” Brenda Shaw, the Chief Development Officer at the Lowcountry Food Bank, says.

Shaw says the impact this will have on their local farmers is sizable, to say the least. She says this program was a great economic resource for these farmers and allowed the food bank to support them while also providing nutritious food to the community.

“One of the things we learned during the pandemic was how important a strong domestic food ecosystem is,” Shaw says. “I think programs like this have really helped build up local farmers. So, we hope that if the programs are cut maybe there is a way for the program to be rebuilt, renamed, a different iteration of it, because I do think it is one of those things that we absolutely learned during the pandemic that we have to have a strong domestic food ecosystem.”

She says that understanding the economics of really supporting the infrastructure of food services is going to outweigh the cuts that may take place. She says it is very important to support these local farmers in the local economy and to keep these funds within their community.

Shaw says that though the cancellation of the program will unfortunately impact the local farmers that they purchase food from, the Lowcountry Food Bank is not going anywhere and they will get through this.

She says that with the recent proposed cuts to different grants and funding, they are undertaking a risk assessment to see what areas of the food bank will be impacted.

She says that they are already seeing the impacts of food costs with increased tariffs and are preparing to potentially see cuts in other areas. Fortunately, Shaw says only a small percentage of their funding sources are federal, but that is not the case for many food banks and nonprofits, plus many other organizations are dependent on the Lowcountry Food Bank.

The Lowcountry Food Bank serves over 200,000 people and works with over 240 partners. In 2023 alone they distributed over 42.8 million pounds of food. Any loss of funding that the food bank experiences will trickle down and impact the other organizations they serve, ultimately meaning less food going to community members in need.

They are working to find alternate resources for funding, including through private funding sources, to make up for the money that will be lost.

“We have a very generous community… we ask and our community steps up all the time. This is just another one of those times where we are going to look at it and… let’s be real about what the situation is and hope that our community steps up and supports us again” she says.

Shaw says that the largest percentage of help they receive comes from the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which accounts for over $12 million worth of the food they distribute, or about 26%. This is more than double the amount they raise every year through donations and fundraisers, but they hope and believe it is less likely that program will see cuts.

After the LFPA cuts, though, Shaw worries about cuts to programs like the Commodity Supplemental Food Program which helps them serve over 3,000 senior citizens a month. This accounts for about 1.2 million pounds of food they send out every year.

South Carolina is a top 10 state for senior food insecurity so they want to make sure they continue to do everything they can to alleviate that.

Shaw says that, with the help of the community, they work hard and find an alternate source of funding to continue the work that they do.

Copyright 2025 WCSC.  All rights reserved. This article was originally published by WCSC Live5 News by Autumn Klein on March 19, 2025.