‘We’re Going to Be Seeing More Food Insecurity’
Foodbank of Santa Barbara County Loses $5 Million
Courtesy Trump Orders, Ends In-Person Fundraisers
By Nick Welsh | May 1, 2025
Read more from our Reign of Administrative (T)error cover story.
Eric Talkin and Laurel Alcantar aren’t staring up at the sky to see when and how it might fall. It already has — and to the tune of nearly $5 million worth of food and federal dollars they would have used to buy food for those in need. Talkin and Alcantar are among the most public faces of the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County. By any reckoning, that’s a lot for them to lose, somewhere between one-third and one-quarter of the Foodbank’s capacity to provide for the many agencies throughout Santa Barbara County who feed those who need help feeding themselves.
Unlike many of the cuts still in the offing, these have already happened, courtesy of orders from the Trump White House to reduce or eliminate Department of Agriculture support for food bank programs.
Talkin and Alcantar harbor no illusions those cuts will be undone. “It’s all gone,” declared Talkin with a despondent finality. “There’s no maybe about it.”
He can quote you chapter and verse from the alphabet soup of government programs that just went up in smoke. He can also explain how some of those cuts will also hurt small local farmers who otherwise would have been paid to provide the Foodbank with freshly grown produce. He and the Foodbank have longstanding relationships with local growers; he’s hoping maybe some can help fill the breach. But that’s a big maybe.
“We are treating this like a disaster,” he said. “Like COVID was. But this is different. This is the first time we’re seeing demand for our help go up while at the same time our government funding is going down.”
Actually, it’s even worse than that. In a typical disaster, the bad news descends all at once, triggering an all-hands-on-deck emergency response by Talkin, Alcantar, and all 63 of the other Foodbank employees. This time, said Alcantar, the bad news is coming in waves. On July 1, the county’s food stamp program SNAP could get hammered as well. In the worst case, that’s 55,000 families who will be cut off and forced to find other sources of sustenance. And that’s just the start of a chain reaction of dire sounding what-ifs.
“We will see a surge in need,” Alcantar said.
In the short term, Talkin said the Foodbank will have to drill down to figure out where the most pressing need is. With less food to pass out, some people will have to do without, and others will have to do with less. Despite the county’s reputation for glitz and glam, Santa Barbara has the second-highest poverty rate of all 58 California counties.
“We have a lot of hidden or invisible people,” commented Alcantar.
Over the years, the Foodbank has relied on three major fundraisers — Empty Bowls events, as they were known. In a typical year, anywhere from 800 to 1,500 people would show up, though numbers have dropped since COVID. One of these events was a gala, usually held in some swanky estate. This year, there will be no Empty Bowls. They take a lot of staff, time, and money to put on. Tents are not cheap, either. Soup is not free. Everything takes more work than it seems; that’s almost a law of physics. All that time and money will now be focused elsewhere: on the basics of finding more food and getting it into the hands of people who need it the most.
As a result, the Foodbank will be “hosting” its first “un-gala” event this year, said Alcantar. “We’re asking people to stay home. Or maybe they can come tour our warehouse.”
Talkin added, “They can wear whatever they want.”
If people want to help, Talkin said, they can help deliver food or show up and sort it. Best yet, he and Alcantar said, is to give money. With money in pocket, they know how to multiply the return on investment far beyond the face value of the cash on hand. Donations can be made online at foodbanksbc.org, Alcantar said. Some people make regular donations of $5 a month. It adds up, she said. Everything helps.
Alcantar said she always tries to look on the bright side of things. It’s something she does. In this case, she said, “We have an opportunity here to figure out how to get by with less government funding.” It’s hard to tell if she’s joking.
Every year, she noted, the Foodbank serves 200,000 unduplicated people. That’s considerably more than before COVID came and went. “We’re looking at a 30 percent gap in our food supplies,” she said. “We have to figure out how to bridge that gap.” There was no question whether she was joking about that. She wasn’t. “We’re going to be seeing more food insecurity.”
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