SLO Food Bank braces for yet another funding cut — this time from the state
Food banks across California are bracing for yet another funding cut, and San Luis Obispo County families and farmers will likely be hit the hardest.
As June 15’s state budget deadline looms, a 90% state cut to CalFood funding is on the table — and that means another link in the funding chain that allows organizations like the SLO Food Bank to feed an average of 45,000 people a month is about to give out.
In dollars and cents, the state’s new budget proposal includes a reduction of CalFood funding from $60 million in annual funding and $50 million in one-time funding in 2025 to just $8 million for the 2026-27 fiscal year.
SLO Food Bank CEO Molly Kern said this statewide reduction is hitting food banks in the aftermath of the federal funding cut of 20% to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program approved in last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that went into effect earlier this year, leading to elevated levels of demand for food banks.
She said state and federal funding cuts that effect food banks can be difficult for both the people who consume the food and the farmers who grow it; if the food bank has less money to spend, it won’t be able to keep buying from local producers.
“It is the anchor to our fresh food purchasing budget,” Kern said. “Last year, it allowed us to ensure that every single month, more than half of what we were distributing to our neighbors is fresh.”
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Kern said last year, the state was able to step up to cover some of the costs associated with the SNAP cuts, but in this year’s budget, one-time funding that bridged that gap isn’t coming to save the day.
The SLO Food Bank currently receives around 85% of its annual budget from local community members, which means it’ll still have the money to keep purchasing and distributing food to the people who rely on it most — but where that food will come from is in question.
CalFood benefits are specifically used to pay for food from local producers of fresh foods such as produce, milk, meat and eggs — all perishable items that are less commonly donated, Kern said.
While there is still time for the budget to be revised, there’s a good chance the proposed $8 million CalFood cut will go into effect this summer, California Association of Food Banks director of government relations Josh Wright said.
Already, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has forced around 737,000 Californians from receiving SNAP benefits via CalFresh, the statewide distributor of federal food benefits, he said.
On top of that, the Emergency Food Assistance Program, a federal program that supplements food banks with additional free sources of nutrition, was cut by 38% last year, adding more strain to an overtaxed system, Wright said.
“As CalFresh is cut off, CalFood — the state’s prime way of funding food banks — becomes even more important than it already is,” Wright said. “It’s an essential program that allows food banks to purchase California-grown and produced foods.”
The people who grow those crops will seeing the effects of these state-level funding cuts by the end of this year, barring any changes to the budget, Wright said.
“Here in California, we’re blessed with beautiful, bountiful crops and state funding sources like CalFood that are uniquely designed to provide for farmers and for people that need food at the same time,” Wright said. “That’s the beauty of these programs, is that they support both.”
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For the people who rely on the SLO Food Bank to meet their nutrition needs, funding cuts that threaten the availability of its services can hit close to home.
Leanne Rossi, an Arroyo Grande resident, hairdresser and mother of two, said she’s relied on the SLO Food Bank for fresh food staples like milk, eggs, meat and pasta for several years.
“When the whole shutdown happened, that was a big, big change,” Rossi said. “It doesn’t help our family any when things are being cut, or there’s no food or less food, just because we rely on the food bank.”
Rossi said having access to the SLO Food Bank for the majority of her grocery shopping needs has allowed her to feed her family with healthy food even when money’s tight.
“I don’t think a lot of people really understand how so many families are affected by this,” Rossi said. “Every family is different — things happen. Sometimes people can get what they need at a grocery store, and then sometimes they just can’t.”
Kern and Wright both said there’s a chance that with enough public support, there’s a chance that more funding could be diverted to CalFood in the upcoming budget, but with just over a month to go, they’re preparing for a reduction in benefits.
“We have community members that really refuse to see their neighbors go hungry,” Kern said. “Even when we had the federal shutdown in the fall and winter of 2025, our community stepped up to make sure that we didn’t have to turn anyone away, that we were able to say, ‘No matter what, the SLO Food Bank’s got your back.’”
