Ohio food banks face challenges as state budget cuts impact need and distribution

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Ohio food banks say the two-year state operating budget is cutting the needs of hungry Ohioans short.

The state budget currently has about 24.5 million dollars for food banks, most of the money coming from the federal program Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF. The Ohio Association of Foodbanks said that will not go far enough. Pastor Susan Roark, who runs a pop-up food pantry each week, said she sees the need firsthand.

“It has been a struggle. It is a weekly effort,” she said. “We distribute about 20,000 pounds of groceries every single week.”

Roark runs her pop-up food pantry every Saturday, from 12 p.m. to 2:30 pm. She said during that two-and-a-half hour time frame, about 250 to 350 Ohioans show up.

“We started in December of 2021, and we had about 50 people showing up each week,” she said. “And it has just continued to grow as the word has spread in the community.”

As the need goes up, so does the price of food. That’s why the Ohio Association of Foodbanks said they are looking for an additional $4.93 million per year to help cover those costs. The Mid-Ohio Food Collective, for example, distributed more than 83 million pounds of food in 2024.

A spokesperson said in 2018 that the average cost per pound of state-purchased produce was 19 cents. In 2024, it was 29 cents.

“I don't care who you are, we've all seen those prices go up. Eggs are nearly $7 a dozen. That's ridiculous,” Roark said. “So, we have just seen that need continue to grow.”

Governor Mike DeWine said while making sure Ohioans have food is very important, “we have a lot of needs in Ohio.” He said food banks have been prioritized as best as they can.

“What we tried to do during the pandemic when we had extra federal dollars, we put a lot of those extra dollars, those one-time dollars, into our food banks,” DeWine said. “We were proud to do that, and we think it was the right thing to do, but that does not necessarily mean that we, this time, cut.”

DeWine said food banks are seeing flat funding as compared to a “normal” budget year, when the state did not have an influx of federal, one-time, COVID-19 relief dollars.

“People are complaining, but they’re really complaining about us giving one-time money to the food banks, and now we can’t give one-time money because it was one-time money, and now it’s gone,” DeWine said.

“Every single week, we are having more and more families and individuals come. So, it is critical that the funding not be decreased, but that it be increased,” Roark said. “Because this need is not going to go away. It’s just not.”

The budget passed the Ohio House on Wednesday and now heads to the Ohio Senate. Ohio Senate President Rob McColley (R-Napoleon) said that in the last budget cycle, they reined in TANF spending to ensure it was not being misused or overused. In this budget cycle, he said he has not looked specifically at food bank funding yet and is unsure what his chamber will do right now.

The statehouse is on spring break for the next two weeks, but the budget must pass by July 1.