It was a bittersweet victory.
After years of lobbying for more state funding, Connecticut’s food pantries secured $9 million in the biennium budget passed by lawmakers last month — $3 million for the coming fiscal year and $6 million in the following year, far more than the annual $850,000 previous budgets had allocated.
But almost before the ink was dry in Hartford, congressional lawmakers in Washington, D.C., slashed federal funding for food assistance programs in their sweeping budget reconciliation bill, which President Donald J. Trump signed into law last Friday.
“We are very appreciative to the state for giving us those extra funds,” said Jason Jakubowski, president of Connecticut Foodshare, which serves 600 pantries across the state. “Unfortunately, it will not come anywhere close to fully making up for the cuts that we’re seeing on the federal side of things.”
The federal budget legislation cuts around $185 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, which supplements grocery budgets for low-income families. In Connecticut, more than 400,000 people got SNAP benefits in 2025, according to the state Department of Social Services.
In a statement following the federal bill’s signing, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins praised the legislation, which includes tax relief for farmers and ranchers. “Through the President’s leadership, the bill Makes Agriculture Great Again, bolsters the farm safety net, makes crop insurance more affordable, and protects two million family farms from the death tax,” Rollins said.
“While expanding programs to support the farmers who feed, fuel, and clothe America, this legislation also tackles the fraud and waste that has run rampant in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),” Rollins’ statement continued. “The bill holds states accountable for their error rates, strengthens work requirements, and prevents illegal aliens from receiving SNAP. President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill is a win for farmers, ranchers, rural communities, and American taxpayers.”
The SNAP cutbacks come after USDA canceled other nutrition assistance programs earlier this year — the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food for Schools program — that provided roughly $5 million to Connecticut schools and food banks to purchase fresh food from local farms. Days later, the agency canceled fresh food deliveries under another program, known as The Emergency Food Assistance Program or TEFAP.
“These [grant program] cuts, alongside the huge cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in the 900-page ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, show that the Trump Administration is not interested in helping families with the affordability crisis,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-CT-2nd District, who voted ‘No’ on the bill.
Still, the boost in state funding was a significant increase from years past and moves Connecticut slightly closer to the levels of funding neighboring states provide for nutritional assistance. New Jersey and Massachusetts, for example, have contributed $85 million and $41.5 million respectively to their food banks in recent years.
A portion of that new funding in both years will now need to go toward replacing LFPA funds, according to Jakubowski. And once federal SNAP cuts take effect — in the coming years — more families are likely to seek food assistance at the state’s food pantries.
“I’m especially concerned about the USDA’s termination of the LFPA — it was both cruel and short sighted,” said state Rep. Aundre Bumgardner, D-Groton, cosponsor of failed state legislation that sought $20 million in the biennium budget for nutrition assistance. Bumgardner said the result will be hungrier families and fewer resources, especially in his district in eastern Connecticut.
Pressured pantries
The funding concerns have arisen at an overwhelming time for food pantries.
Summer can be particularly challenging for their operations. With children out of school, pantries face higher demand — but donations tend to drop off from their usual apex during the December holiday season.
Organizations like Hands on Hartford, Person to Person and Friendly Hands Food Bank say the elevated seasonal demand comes after a sustained trend over the past year or more of client demand exceeding expectations. Food pantry leaders say they’re facing as much demand now as they did in 2020, during the peak of the pandemic.
“People do face a lot of food insecurity, and with the food costs going up, I think it’s important for us to stay around and be able to help,” said Jennica Torres, who oversees Hands on Hartford’s choice community food pantry. Seniors living on fixed income among the most affected, Torres said, as the cost of food has risen.
At 24.6%, Hartford’s food insecurity rate is the highest in the state. Since late 2023, staff and volunteers at Hands on Hartford’s food pantry has consistently served roughly 1,000 households per month — well over the 850 they budget for. At first, they thought it was a temporary blip, but the monthly numbers have remained elevated.
CT Foodshare said their partner pantries have faced a 10% increase in the number of individuals served since February. According to Feeding America, food insecurity in Connecticut increased from 10% in 2019 to 14% in 2023.
“We are seeing long lines as long as we were during the pandemic,” said Jakubowski, noting that federal and state funds were boosted to food pantries during COVID-19. “But the amount of food that we have to give out is back to where it was pre-pandemic,” he said.
And once federal SNAP cuts come into play, Jakubowski said he expects demand to rise even further.
Friendly Hands Food Bank in Torrington is the biggest pantry in northwestern Connecticut, serving over 10,000 individuals each month. Executive Director Karen Thomas said the pantry is seeing clients from the COVID-19 pandemic return and reactivate their accounts to seek food assistance.
She noted that funding cuts to CT Foodshare, which supplies Friendly Hands with groceries, would in turn affect them. “This produces a trickle-down effect wherein if their money gets cut, they have less food to offer our pantry,” she said.
Person to Person (P2P) operates four self-select pantries, two in Darien and Norwalk, and two mobile pantries in Stamford. Although the demand in Darien and Norwalk has leveled off, P2P’s mobile pantries are now serving double the number of people they served during the pandemic.
Less than a quarter of the organization’s budget comes from DSS, and a large portion is donated. P2P also receives TEFAP contributions from CT Foodshare, which the organization anticipates will soon be cut back.
Rep. Courtney recently visited Access Community Action Agency in Norwich, where he met with the agency’s staff to discuss the impact of federal cuts to nutrition assistance and preparation for the future.
“At a time when so many families are already struggling with the high cost of living, cutting USDA food assistance programs that help keep people fed is inexcusable,” the congressman said in a statement.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
