The Emergency Food Assistance Program

TFAP, T-E-F-A-P, I don't know how you pronounce it.

You know, Emergency Food Assistance Program.

Assistance Program, excuse me.

Been a long day.

And is, is the bulk of what you give out, is that, like, corporate and, and sort of, uh, like supermarkets and the like, or is it, is it kind of an even split between people donating food and, and corporations and, and the like, uh?

We do have, uh, USDA food from the TEFAP, TEFAP program.

Mm-hmm.

Um, that's a portion of it, and as well as the corporate donations, um, and a, a great deal is from the, the community.

So that's our service area.

And the way we work is that we describe ourselves as really the anchor of the Emergency Food Assistance Program, uh, for those who are in need in this region, and our mission has two parts.

It, um, obviously first being providing good, nutritious food, uh, to those who need a little bit of extra help putting, uh, food on their tables.

And second, um, is to really address the root causes of hunger and to be able to help people, uh, with food and opportunity so that they can transition to a place where they have greater financial stability and are not food, um, insecure.

So when it, when it comes to federal funding, obviously the largest portion of that is gonna be through food and nutrition, uh, the Division of Food and Nutrition.

Um, that's School Lunch, uh, TEFAP, uh, those kind of programs, um, Food Distribution on Indian Reservations.

So there is a, we have a large physical team, as you can imagine, and we've gotta track that.

And so so- sometimes there's actual pass-through dollars that we can send to our partners out, um, whether it's our food banks or our community partners.

Correct.

We are, uh, a TFAP or the Emergency Food Assistance Program food shelf, so we serve the... essentially the state of Minnesota, but most of our neighbors that visit us are fairly close to us.

So we've got a couple minutes left with, uh, Amy Schaffer, the food shelf manager, and Kristin Edmundson, the community impact manager for TI Resort and Casino.

What do you wanna close with, Kristin? You guys played such a key role in, in the people that visit Treasure Island and, uh, you make it very easy for people there to help the nonprofit of the month-

Correct.

We are, uh, a TEFAP, or the Emergency Food Assistance Program Food Shelf.

Um, so we serve the, essentially the state of Minnesota, but most of our neighbors that visit us are, are-

Sure

[laughs] So yeah, no, that's a great question.

I was saying that food banks are provided money through, um, TEFAP, which is also a USDA, uh, or, um, funding stream.

So what happens there, it's both that in a farm bill there's money for TEFAP, which is usually, uh, coming out of the nutrition title.

And so the big while the bill did not particularly cut TEFAP, what happened is since we haven't had a farm bill, there hasn't been more money given to food banks.

Mm-hmm.

So that's one issue.

And the third issue is that, um, there was actually also a cut to the local food purchasing for food banks and the commodities program.

So it's been a, almost like a triple whammy for food banks.