Share Food Program, the leading food bank for the Greater Philadelphia region, announced today that a critical federal nutrition program has been put on the chopping block by the Trump administration — a move that could result in the complete elimination of monthly food boxes, which are assembled and distributed by their organization, for more than 7,000 low-income seniors across the city and surrounding counties.
The news came in a memo from the Administration’s Office of Management and Budget, also known as a “skinny budget”, that lists a host of recommendations on discretionary funding levels for fiscal year 2026.
Of the long list, there is a recommendation to end the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), which was established to ensure low-income seniors over 60 meet their daily nutritional needs. The recommendation language states that the program should be replaced with “MAHA food boxes” and that the administration seeks to exclude food banks from the distribution process, with little explanation as to how or when this could be implemented.
These potential cuts to CSFP, combined with a recent $6.5 million cut to The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and a $1.5 million cut to the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA), represent a devastating blow to the region’s most vulnerable residents.
“These cuts aren’t just numbers on a budget line — they’re meals taken from the plates of our parents, our grandparents, our neighbors,” said George Matysik, executive director of Share Food Program. “We are sounding the alarm today because this will hurt people. Thousands of seniors in Philadelphia will lose one of the only consistent sources of nutritious food they have.”
For decades, CSFP has provided senior citizens with monthly boxes of nutrient-rich groceries — including shelf-stable milk, canned fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins. The program is targeted specifically to seniors making under $23,475 per year– helping prevent hunger, malnutrition, and chronic illness.
Share Food Program oversees the largest CSFP distribution in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and through its partnership with DoorDash, is the largest Project Dash home delivery program in the United States.
“We’re proud of the level of service we’ve been able to provide to our seniors—but these proposed cuts from the White House pushes us back by decades,” said Matysik, who formerly served as President of the National CSFP Association in addition to his role at Share.
“To zero out this program is not just a budget decision — it is a moral failure,” Matysik added. “We’re seeing more than a trillion dollars in military spending being proposed, while small blessings like food for seniors is being eliminated.
The people being impacted are the very people who built this country. They worked hard, they paid taxes, and now we’re telling them they don’t matter? Not on our watch.”
The additional cuts to TEFAP and LFPA will drastically reduce the amount of food Share can distribute to its nearly 400 pantry partners and local community agencies and 800 schools throughout the region. These reductions are expected to result in hundreds of thousands fewer meals each month for children, families, and seniors across Southeastern Pennsylvania.
“Our food bank has done everything in our power to meet rising demand — but we can’t fill a $10 million hole with volunteer hours and good intentions alone,” Matysik said. “If our elected officials don’t fight back against these cuts, they’re complicit in the hunger crisis that follows.”
Share Food Program is calling on federal leaders to immediately restore funding and protect the programs that keep food on the table for tens of thousands of Philadelphians.
