HOUSTON — When West Houston Assistance Ministries’ food pantry flooded around Easter, pantry manager Verita Duncan, knew it couldn’t stay closed for long. Within days, around 200 families were waiting for registration to reopen, prompting the food pantry to turn to local college students for help getting back on its feet.
“We decided to open back up the next Monday, and we had 50 families waiting for us that first day, and that is a small fraction of the need,” Duncan said.
The West Houston food pantry is one of hundreds of organizations facing increased demand for food while struggling with dwindling supplies due to federal cuts. Food banks in rural counties are even more vulnerable because they depend heavily on federal funding.
“Many of the smaller pantries are not able to take care of all those families,” Duncan said.
Earlier this year, Feeding America, the national network of food banks, released its 2026 Map the Meal Gap study, which uses 2024 data. The study found that 19.4% of Texans, or nearly 1 in 5, are experiencing food insecurity, and 1 in 4 Texas children are experiencing food insecurity, representing 26.1%, or nearly 2 million children.
Food insecurity means a household lacks enough money or resources to reliably access adequate food.
Potter County, home to Amarillo, has roughly 1 in 4 residents who are food insecure, with child food insecurity at 30.7% — one of the highest child rates found in this research. The Rio Grande Valley and Corpus Christi areas had food insecurity rates over 20%.
In the Houston Food Bank’s 18-county service area, which spans from Trinity to Brazoria counties and Robertson to Chambers counties, 18% of residents — roughly 1.44 million people — were food insecure in 2024, and food bank leaders say that number is on the rise.
Food insecurity in Dallas-Fort Worth climbed to 1.4 million people in 2024, with 36% of children in the region facing hunger.
Data from the Central Texas Food Bank also revealed that 1 out of every 5 families in the nine northern counties of its 21-county service territory — Bell, Coryell, Falls, Freestone, Lampasas, Limestone, Mills, McLennan and San Saba — experience food insecurity.
Texas’ safety net for food insecurity is supported by federal nutrition assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, food banks and school programs.
A food bank is a regional nonprofit that sources, stores and distributes food to local programs in the communities it serves, including pantries, school programs and more, making it the backbone of the hunger-relief system. Twenty food banks serve over 4 million Texans annually through a network of more than 4,000 partners.
“We’ve definitely seen that the utilization of these programs has increased at school-based programs or school districts themselves, and many of those schools are letting us know that many, many more families are seeking assistance,” said Melanie McGuire, senior director of programs at the Houston Food Bank.
However, the food bank system is not meant to address all food insecurity in the state because most of its resources come from philanthropy, but that is exactly what is starting to happen as federal assistance declines.
From February to June 2026, calls to 211 seeking food assistance increased 28.6%, while referrals to food banks and food pantries rose nearly 37%, from 4,230 to 5,785 referrals, according to data from United Ways of Texas.
The Map the Meal Gap study reveals that a significant portion of individuals experiencing food insecurity may not qualify for federal nutrition assistance programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Families not eligible for federal assistance must rely on local food banks and community meal programs to get by, placing a heavy burden on an already strained system.
“Every one of those households has a food-budget hole now, and some share of them arrive at a pantry,” said Celia Cole, CEO of Feeding Texas, the statewide network of food banks.
Texas food banks currently distribute more than 700 million pounds of food annually through a network of more than 5,000 community partners. Yet for every meal provided by food banks, SNAP provides nine.
“SNAP operates at a scale that can’t be replaced with our kind of food assistance,” said Cole.
Officials across all food bank networks are now wondering how it can continue without additional federal or state assistance.
The cost of federal cuts
In 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled two programs that supplied $1 billion in products directly to food bank warehouses. The USDA justified the decision, saying the Biden administration had created “unsustainable” expectations by spending beyond what was standard.
The drop in federal commodities has been drastic for Texas food banks.
Cole said the food bank network absorbed $88.4 million in federal funding reductions and received 40% less in federal commodities.
The Central Texas Food Bank lost $5.5 million in funding for food purchasing. The Houston Food Bank’s total projected federal funding cuts topped $32 million.
Cole said food banks now have to reduce supplies to food pantries and other community programs to cope with cuts in commodities and funding. She said rural food banks are even more exposed because they depended heavily on federal commodities and have thinner local donor bases.
“Food banks are rationing precisely so they don’t run out,” Cole said. “That could mean cutting distribution days and placing stricter limits on how often a family can visit a pantry.”
Cole said, for example, a family that could come to the food bank or another program twice a month might only be able to come once a month, leaving some families to spend days and nights hungry because there is nowhere else to turn.
The San Antonio Food Bank and Central Texas Food Bank have had to ration their food supply, and the Houston Food Bank had to reduce its workforce by 15% to offset federal funding cuts. El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank announced last year that 20% of its agency partners and 20% of its mobile pantries will no longer receive food from it.
The cuts to federal commodities have come at the same time that food banks are dealing not only with increasing food insecurity around the state, but also with more disasters that have drained resources quickly.
San Antonio Food Bank president and CEO Eric Cooper told Grist, a nonprofit climate news organization, he was concerned that food banks couldn’t meet emergency demand after the July 2025 Central Texas floods.
“Prior to this disaster, we just don’t have the volume of food in our warehouse that we need to have,” he said. “We have had to try to pivot a little bit to ration some of what we do have across the population we serve so that we can stretch [our supply].”
Rationing has a downstream impact on school programs, like food pantries and after-school programs, as many of their resources come from the same food banks.
To make up for the loss of federal commodities and funding, food banks must purchase groceries out of pocket to meet demand.
“It’s cutting into core operations,” Cole said. “It’s causing us to spend more money to get food in and out of the door.”
Food banks get their funding from donors, cities, counties or corporations, but during economic downturns, donations can drop just as demand reaches its highest. The High Plains Food Bank reported earlier this year a decrease in donated food, particularly shelf-stable items such as canned goods and box meals, the items most in demand.
“We have about eight churches that support us, so we let them know we are going to have to tap into the parishioners because the budgets are being cut,” Duncan said, admitting other food banks might not have the same type of support.
At the same time, cities and counties that provide assistance to food banks are struggling with increasing financial difficulties, forcing them to take a hard look at support for these organizations.
Austin is already considering reducing or eliminating three food programs that support college food pantries, home delivery services for seniors and food distribution to more than 90 partner organizations across the city because of financial concerns.
McGuire said one uncomfortable reality is that food banks can never meet demand for food insecurity, but they have stretched resources as best as possible. She said that with resources dwindling, food banks will have to find different ways to address food insecurity in Texas.
“Oftentimes food insecurity is a trade-off for families. When they are asking for food, it’s because housing expenses have gone up, or utilities have gone up, and less money is available to buy groceries,” she said. “So we’re trying to have those types of conversations about connecting families with traditional programs like housing and utilities assistance.”
The SNAP benefits cliff
A growing share of the food-insecure population in Texas earns too much to qualify for SNAP, but still can’t afford groceries. Even a modest decline in SNAP enrollment translates into demand food banks can’t absorb, especially as their own federal supply shrinks.
State data shows that in April, nearly 500,000 fewer eligible Texans were participating in SNAP than in April 2025 due to work requirements and immigration fears. However, food advocates say every one of those households still needs to eat, and much of that is landing on food banks.
“We can’t backfill a program that operates at nine times our scale, particularly at a time when the need is increasing, and our resources are declining,” Cole said. “The current situation asks too much of the charitable food sector and also too much of schools.”
Those who are kicked off of SNAP join a large number of those who were already considered food insecure, but had incomes too high to qualify for federal nutrition assistance. In the Texas Panhandle, more than 55% of people facing hunger earn too much to qualify for federal nutrition assistance, and in the Dallas-Fort Worth region it’s 54%.
“SNAP is supposed to be there during times of economic crisis, natural disaster, or a temporary benefit that can be the difference between putting food on the table or not,” she said.
Two in three food banks reported serving more people overall in December 2025 than a year earlier, averaging a 15 percent increase and 20 to 25 percent among larger food banks.
“The pressure is real. We are seeing a lot more people in our lines; we are seeing people more frequently in our lines with deeper needs,” Cole said.
Texas also faces a potential $826 million financial hit by 2027 from federal penalties and administrative cost shifts due to SNAP payment errors, fueling fears the state is scrutinizing each application to help bring down that error rate, leading to even fewer participants in the program who might need it.
A SNAP error rate does not reflect people fraudulently obtaining benefits. Instead, it’s based on unintentional mistakes by the agency or SNAP client that result in an underpayment or overpayment.
Cole said states were given very little time to improve payment accuracy and that most mistakes are processing errors, not fraud, but thousands are still being removed anyway.
“We’ve been really pushing for a two-year extension from Congress, which we think would give the state a more reasonable amount of time to hit those new accuracy standards, then we aren’t taking food assistance away from vulnerable Texans,” Cole said.
Cole said the legislature could face a decision about how to continue funding SNAP with these extra penalties, raising fears the state might remove anyone who is questionable, even for a minor clerical error.
“We have really been pushing the legislature to really understand the importance of SNAP, that it’s not only helping Texans, but the economy and particularly the agriculture sector and retail sector,” she said.
Cole said their donor fundraising is still strong, and the organization is working every day to find new sources of food, but at the end of the day, there is no replacement for what SNAP provides.
“We are working hard to protect SNAP and make sure it’s there because it’s our backbone defense in this country against food insecurity,” she said
Food banks are getting squeezed from multiple directions — less federal commodity supply to distribute and more people needing what supply they do have, right as the SNAP program they’re meant to supplement, not replace, is shrinking.
“This is unsustainable,” Cole said.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
Texas politics is a mess. We make it a readable mess.
Sign up for San Antonio Current’s new “Texas Politics This Week” newsletter.
Sign Up for SA Current newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
