Pennsylvania’s secretary of agriculture, Russell Redding, has renewed his call this week in the United States Department of Agriculture to restore federal funding of $ 13 million recently reduced to farmers who sell products to food banks.
In a letter sent to the USDA secretary on Thursday, Brooke Rollins, Redding qualified the cancellation of the Federal Agency for the Local Assistance for Assistance for the Purchase of “illegal” and Harmful Food for the 190 Farms throughout the State benefiting from the program.
“Pennsylvania has maintained its end of negotiation,” wrote Redding. “The LFPA funds have been used by Commonwealth food banks to buy food directly from Pennsylvania farmers, in pursuit of the essential objectives of the program.”
In a Friday morning interview with LNP | Lancasteronline, Redding, said that the USDA staff confirmed that he had received his letter but had not responded to his request. Redding also said that the Federal Agency had not responded to its first letter of March 25 to its agricultural marketing service, which oversees the food bank program.
The USDA did not respond to a request for comments on Friday.
The first letter from Redding included a list of farms that benefited from the purchasing aid program, including more than a dozen in the county of Lancaster. The farmers contacted on Friday did not respond to a request for comments.
During a visit to Central Pennsylvania Farms, including a stop in the County of Lancaster, Rollins said that there were tens of millions of dollars “seated in the accounts of the Pennsylvania state” for the purchasing aid program.
Redding refuted it in his Thursday letter. He said that Rollins had the operation of the program: “On the contrary, Pennsylvania uses its own funds to operate the program and seeks the reimbursement of the USDA after these funds have been spent.”
The administration of former President Joe Biden launched the purchasing aid program in 2021. Since then, according to the State Agriculture Department, Pennsylvania has received two financing cycles totaling nearly $ 30 million. The USDA signed a new contract in December to continue the program with Pennsylvania in 2025.
On March 7, Redding said that his office had received a letter from the USDA announcing that it had canceled the food bank’s contract, indicating that the program “no longer affects the agency’s priorities”.
With the initial letter from Redding on March 25, Governor Josh Shapiro, at a press conference at Central Pennsylvania Food Bank in Harrisburg, threatened to bring legal action against the USDA if the funds are not provided.
Its administration has already continued the Trump administration on federal funding discounts that have had an impact on the Pennsylvania.
Joe Arthur, CEO of Central Pennsylvania Food Bank – The Food Bank Impacted closest to the County of Lancaster – said in a press release from the Shapiro administration that the reduction in the financing of the purchasing aid program would cost its organization $ 120,000 per month and “500,000 meals that will not reach children and adults who say to us.”
