CLEVELAND, Ohio – Six months from now, some of the towering shelves inside the Greater Cleveland Food Bank may stand hauntingly bare, their once-packed pallets reduced to empty spaces -- proof of federal cuts that have halted food supplies as the risk of hunger surges across Northeast Ohio.
Kristin Warzocha, president and CEO of the food bank, scans the shelves with her eyes on a recent afternoon, doing mental math to estimate how much food remains in storage.
She’s inside the distribution hub on Coit Road, where hulking shelves, each standing 27 feet tall, hold about 100 pallets of food, filled with canned vegetables, boxes of pasta, massive containers of fresh produce, and stacks of bread loaves to feed those in need.
This mountain of food behind Warzocha equates to roughly five semi-truck loads. It represents about one-twelfth of the federal supplies that would’ve been sent to Cleveland -- had President Donald Trump not canceled them.
Without warning, the U.S. Department of Agriculture last week canceled 553,000 pounds of food, equivalent to 20 semi-truck loads, that were slated for delivery to the Greater Cleveland Food Bank between April and July as part of the Emergency Food Assistance Program.
The food bank received no advance notice of the cancellations and, a week later, still has not been given an explanation for why its orders were cut or what it should do to compensate for the loss.
These reductions come on top of Trump’s recent elimination of the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, which stripped another one million pounds of food from the Cleveland food bank’s supply chain starting June 30.
“There are going to be a lot of empty pallet spaces in this warehouse … many more than you see now,” Warzocha said, shaking her head in disbelief.
Warzocha, who has worked at the food bank since 2000, is increasingly concerned about rising demand and an uncertain food supply.
Last year, the food bank set a record, serving approximately 424,000 people—the highest number in its 45-year history.
“The more people we’re serving, the more food we need,” she said. “This is the wrong time for these programs to be canceled. It is the wrong time for reductions in dollars for food programs, because we must have strong partnerships with the federal government and the state government to be able to sufficiently meet the needs of our community.”
Cleveland isn’t alone in feeling the impact. The Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank is losing 450,000 pounds of food, and the Second Harvest Food Bank of North Central Ohio will be short 148,000 pounds, the food banks said on social media.
For now, the Greater Cleveland Food Bank remains stocked. Donations and non-federal funding continue to flow in.
On Monday, the food bank learned that additional funding may be available through the USDA’s Emergency Food Assistance Program starting in June, but local leaders don’t yet know how much Cleveland could receive, or whether it will make up for the amount that was already canceled.
Even if that money never comes, Warzocha said she doesn’t expect the food bank will be completely empty, nor is she aware of any food going to waste. The federal cuts represent about 3% of the 54 million pounds of food distributed by the food bank last year.
But she’s still concerned about meeting the needs of people facing hunger, as are the volunteers who pass through the center each day.
In the food bank’s kitchen on March 28, Assistant Production Manager Natasha Adkisson and a team of 12 volunteers rapidly packed school lunches, forming an assembly line to fill boxes with sandwiches, fruit, vegetables, and milk.
“We feed a lot of hungry kids every single day. And in the summer, we basically double up on work,” Adkisson said. “We are in some hard times right now, and people are hurting. For some kids, this is their best meal of the day or their only meal of the day.”
Warzocha said food insecurity affects 25% of children in the food bank’s service area, which includes Cuyahoga, Ashtabula, Geauga, Lake, Ashland, and Richland counties.
“There’s food insecurity everywhere … In every county and in every neighborhood, there are people who are struggling,” she said.
Inventory Manager Nicole Walker knows this struggle firsthand. Growing up in Cleveland’s Collinwood neighborhood, she remembers the hardships her family and others faced in putting food on the table.
“Now, being able to do something on the other side and giving back to the community is amazing,” she said. “The work that we do literally brings me to tears.”
Watching workers unload a newly donated shipment, Walker said it was difficult to process the news of the recent funding cuts and order cancellations.
“It’s rough to know that some of this is not going to be here,” she said. “We’re not going to have as much food to give to the community.”
While the months ahead are filled with uncertainty, Warzocha said the focus remains on providing not just food, but hope.
“It’s life-saving work,” she said. “And the fact is, we need to be able to make sure that we can continue to provide the food that our community needs, and we can’t do that without strong support from the state of Ohio and the federal government.”