Montanans are feeling the loss after the Trump administration cut more than a billion dollars for food aid programs.
In the Mission Valley, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Food Sovereignty program distributed thousands of boxes of locally produced food to the community. The program was primarily supported by federal grants the Trump administration eliminated.
Food Sovereignty Program Director Dana Hewankorn says the program will be scaled down.
"We might be able to do much smaller distributions, but nothing on the scale that we've been doing at this point," Hewankorn says.
Many of these federal grants supported the development of local food programs for schools and daycares. About one in six children in Montana live in a food-insecure household.
The Montana Food Bank Network is feeling the impact of cuts to a $500 million federal program that supported families and children.
A program that helped schools buy food from local farmers and ranchers is also gone. Corvallis Schools Food Service Director Kathy Martin says it was a huge success at the time. She bought local beef and apples, even crunchy lentil snacks that students loved.
"Whenever we served something local, we had a map of the state and we showed exactly where that food was coming from, right to the kid," Martin says.
State education department head Susie Hedalen says her staff were able to find some funding to keep certain food programs afloat this year.
Martin says even with help from the state, some districts can’t afford to keep the programs going.
"You just have to be really creative with a really tight budget to just figure out a way to do it, to get the kids fed."
Martin hopes federal funding will return so Montana’s youth can be well fed with food from their own back yards.
