The Maryland Food Bank in 2024. (File photo by Danielle J. Brown/Maryland Matters)
Jesse Albright, along with his brother and father, has been operating Albright Farms in Baltimore County for decades, producing beef, pork and, more recently, eggs.
But Albright is one of dozens of local farmers who may lose significant business opportunities due to a recent decision to end a federal program that helps food pantries buy locally grown produce for low-income households — which he says would “be a blow” to farmers and the community.
“I think it’s great that we can provide local product to our local community,” Albright said. “It would be a blow to anybody who’s been selling through the LFPA program.”
He’s talking about the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, shortened to LFPA, a Biden-era program that gives food banks extra funding to connect with local farmers and use their produce for meal assistance, as local products can be more expensive.
In March, the USDA, under the Trump administration, announced that LFPA program would come to an end in November, withholding millions from Maryland food banks that could affect not only the quality of food provided in meal programs, but also have a financial toll on the dozens of farmers who are part of those agreements.
Meanwhile, more Maryland families are looking to meal assistance programs, according to Meg Kimmel, chief operating officer of the Maryland Food Bank.
“At a time when there is historic levels of need that are not dropping, we cannot have our food distribution totals go backwards,” Kimmel said Friday.
The Maryland Food Bank serves as a meal assistance hub for a majority of the state, connecting with local food banks and pantries to expand outreach for families needing extra help putting food on the table. The Maryland Food Bank has LFPA agreements with 44 local Maryland farmers, and receives about $4 million through LFPA every 18 months.
Maryland Food Bank in 2024. (Photo by Danielle J. Brown/Maryland Matters)
Without those additional dollars, the Maryland Food Bank will have to “try to spread our dollars more broadly,” which will likely mean fewer purchases from local growers.
Capitol Area Food Bank is Maryland’s other food assistance hub, serving Prince George’s and Montgomery counties. The Maryland Food Bank covers the rest of the counties and Baltimore.
There are 33 local Maryland growers and farmers that work through the LFPA program with the Capitol Area Food Bank, which receives over $5 million from LFPA.
In a written statement Friday, Capital Area Food Bank CEO Radha Muthiah, said that “in Maryland alone, the LFPA has so far enabled CAFB to purchase and distribute more than 3 million meals worth of fresh local food, including items that we typically haven’t been able to offer to our clients due to higher costs.”
“The program has also been beneficial for farmers, giving them more certainty that they have a market for the foods they’re producing,” Muthiah said in the statement.
Albright can attest to that. Albright Farms entered an LFPA agreement with the Maryland Food Bank during the COVID pandemic, providing eggs for the food bank.
He said that the partnership with food banks through the LFPA program can help small farms, such as his own, build up production because they’re “growing product with the intent that they’re going to sell it to the food bank.”
“They’re putting an extra field of cabbage or tomatoes or sweet corn — whatever that product might be. They’re putting in additional acres and additional crop specific for the food banks that they’re selling to,” he said. “It’s no different with us and the chickens … We started small and as they’ve asked for more, we’ve grown our product more.”
Kimmel calls the LFPA a “win-win” for the food bank, families, and the local economy.
“We were able to leverage federal dollars to do things that we haven’t been able to do. We haven’t been able to buy highly-nutritious local food and pay farmers and producers a fair wage for their work. It was prohibitively expensive for us in the past,” she said.
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“It’s an economic stimulus program that has benefited our food system – there is nothing else that I have seen in the many years of being in this work that is remotely close to this,” Kimmel said.
If the LFPA program comes to an end on Nov. 30 as currently planned, Kimmel and the food bank will have to make hard decisions on how best to stretch their available funds. She said the first cost-saving action would be to invest in more fresh produce – which would be cheaper than protein, milk and eggs – but their goal is to sustain the number of pounds of food delivered to families. Asking for more donations would be a last resort for them.
Kimmel hopes the Trump administration will reconsider, and restore the program or create a new one that would achieve the same goals as the LFPA.
“It’s not just about buying food, it’s about investing and building in a stronger food system for our tiny little state, which I think is pretty magical,” she said.
Albright would also like to see the program continue, but he and his family are already talking about how to adapt if the LFPA agreements fall through.
“I think farmers have learned to be adaptive,” Albright said. “We try to plan – but I can’t plan for Mother Nature, so I think we’ve learned as a whole, farmers have to become adaptive to the ever-changing environment that we’re operating in.
“If we end up in a tight spot, we’ll have to figure it out,” he said.