A nonprofit that delivers food to pantries across five counties in southeastern Washington is serving hundreds more people than it did last year while receiving about half the amount of food.
Between April 2025 and April 2026, the 13 pantries in Blue Mountain Action Council’s partnership network — in Walla Walla, Columbia, Franklin, Garfield and Asotin counties — saw the number of households they serve increase by an average of roughly 7%.
The biggest jump in pantry visits has been in Franklin County. During that period, Pasco’s St. Vincent de Paul pantry saw a 15% increase in people served, according to BMAC figures.
Meanwhile, the pounds of food the nonprofit received plummeted from 76,772 pounds to 34,357 pounds, according to BMAC.
That loss is from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s scaling back The Emergency Food Assistance Program last year. Through TEFAP, the federal government buys U.S.-produced food that makes its way to food banks, like BMAC’s, and other places serving financially vulnerable people.
Another loss in the “federal food” bucket is the USDA’s cutting of the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program. Created under the Biden administration during the coronavirus pandemic, the program helped organizations like BMAC buy food from local farms, ranches and producers from underrepresented groups, such as veterans, women and people of color.
BMAC can use other state funds to buy locally, “and we do it whenever we can, but that was a huge loss for us and for the state,” said BMAC CEO Danielle Garbe Reser.
Erik Mora, the nonprofit’s food bank director, said BMAC tries to maintain three months of inventory. The food bank, which would act as a food distribution site during a natural disaster like a wildfire or flood, has about a month’s worth now, he said.
“We don’t have the backstocks we once had. We’re not getting the shipments that we once had … so we’re having to make up the difference by using our purchasing power and our money to make up for those losses,” Mora said.
BMAC is also not getting the variety in food items it once did.
“If you’re not getting SNAP benefits, (if) you can’t go purchase culturally appropriate or diet-specific foods on your own and you’re relying on a food bank, and all they have are beans and some juice or whatever else that pantry can resource, it’s difficult,” he said.
BMAC expects to see more food pantry visits as more people lose their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. H.R. 1, “the One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that passed a year ago, tightened work and volunteer requirements for people to receive them.
In summer 2025, BMAC and community volunteers set up a gleaning program that brought in more than 15,000 pounds of food.
This summer, the program is expanding under a new gleaning coordinator who is helping BMAC connect with farmers, home gardeners, vendors — anyone who has a surplus of edible produce.
“We can take eggs, beets, lettuces, herbs — there’s a lot of things … that people have extra in their yard they might not think that can be donated, but it can, and we can send volunteers out to help,” Garbe Reser said.
Although BMAC will take canned and packaged groceries that can survive on shelves, dollar donations go even further: BMAC works with wholesalers to buy in bulk.
“We’re hitting all the possible angles we can,” she said.
