Empty shelves at Gallup pantry reflect growing hunger in McKinley County, Navajo Nation
Special to the Times | Donovan Quintero
Racks usually filled with frozen meat sit empty inside the Gallup Community Pantry on April 1 in Gallup as funding shortages make it harder for the nonprofit to buy food.
GALLUP
The towering green industrial shelves inside the Gallup Community Pantry warehouse stretch nearly to the ceiling, built to hold pallets of food for thousands of families in McKinley County and parts of the Navajo Nation.
On April 1, most of them stood empty.
U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M., walked past rows of bare steel racking during a tour with executive director Alice M. Perez. A few cardboard boxes marked “FFK” for the pantry’s Food For Kids program and several crates labeled for large family distributions were among the limited supplies left on the floor.
“You can see our empty shelves,” Perez told the congresswoman.
Perez said the pantry’s strain has deepened since February as federal funding sources many nonprofits and feeding organizations rely on became harder to access.
“The minute that Mr. Trump got into office, he cut so many federal funding opportunities and all of them affected nonprofits and feeding organizations,” Perez said. “And so, we’ve been on a rampant merry-go-round of what’s available. You have 10 days to apply for this one, you have 20 days to apply for this one, and the windows are going to close.”
Leger Fernández said the visit showed how hard conditions have become for communities already under strain.
To read the full article, please see the April 9, 2026, edition of the Navajo Times.
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