State officials warn federal grant cuts threaten CalFresh-linked programs and food banks

The California Department of Social Services told the Senate Budget Subcommittee 3 that recent U.S. Department of Agriculture decisions to cancel planned grant funding will reduce food assistance and threaten local food‑purchase programs and emergency commodity distributions.

"Any loss of federal funding of this amount is certainly going to have a negative impact," Jennifer Troia of the Department of Social Services said, describing canceled and suspended USDA programs that supported local food purchasing, emergency commodity distributions and other assistance to food banks.

The department said CalFresh (the state's administration of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) provides about $1,100,000,000 a month in federally funded food benefits and serves just over 5.5 million Californians. It also runs complementary programs including the California Food Assistance Program (CFAP), disaster CalFresh, and the new Summer EBT program known as Sunbucks.

Troia and other witnesses described three recent USDA changes. First, the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA and LFPA Plus) program rounds that had funded purchases of California‑grown foods were terminated; California's share of a proposed third round (LFPA 2025) would have been about $47,300,000 and the state has appealed that termination. Second, an expected $500,000,000 national augmentation to the federal emergency food program (TFAP) via the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) was informally canceled on April 2, 2025; based on food previously ordered, CDSS estimated the value of canceled food to California at about $60,000,000. Third, other one‑time emergency grants (including previously awarded LFPA funds) will not continue at the levels many food banks expected.

Becky Silva, government relations director for the California Association of Food Banks, told the committee that food banks statewide have already lost roughly $100,000,000 in value across LFPA, TFAP and other emergency programs and warned that demand remains high. "One in four people are paying for groceries with a credit card and are taking on debt to buy food," Silva said, and described large increases in lines at some distributions.

Officials said the state is pursuing appeals and monitoring federal decisions but emphasized limits on the state's ability to backfill large federal shortfalls. The governor's January budget proposal does include ongoing CalFood baseline funding, but witnesses urged the Legislature to restore or augment state funding to avoid service interruptions at food banks and to sustain local purchasing that benefits regional growers.

The department also said it has an emergency food reserve and can contract quickly in disasters; for recent Los Angeles wildfires the state issued more than $17,000,000 in replacement CalFresh benefits to more than 127,000 households across 13 counties and executed contracts to deliver 25,000 boxes of food and truckloads of bottled water to local food banks.

Food bank and advocacy witnesses requested specific state steps, including sustaining CalFood funding at $60,000,000 annually, supporting diaper bank funding, and urging Congress to reject SNAP cuts signaled in SJR 3.

The Subcommittee took no formal vote on these requests during the hearing.