US did not issue a ‘food shortage emergency’ declaration

A man inside a vehicle began a 22-minute video by claiming that the U.S. declared a "food emergency" and imploring viewers to stock up on canned goods.

"The federal government has just declared a major food shortage emergency in multiple states," he said in the video, shared Aug. 8 on Facebook. "Major emergency, 40% reduction is what we are dealing with right now, at least 40%, and this has been declared in six different states that I can find so far."

The video was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The video was made by a YouTuber who goes by Patrick Humphrey and has more than 90,000 subscribers. First posted Aug. 7 on YouTube, it represents a larger theme on Humphrey’s channel: He regularly posts videos about alleged emergencies and warnings from federal officials.

But two federal agencies, the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told PolitiFact they had made no such food shortage declaration. 

"This is absolutely false," FEMA said in an email.

About eight minutes into the video, the narrator claimed that the Agriculture Department made the declaration for Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Maine. He displayed an image that included headlines from an Aug. 3 news article from the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Iowa and another from the same newspaper a year earlier. 

Both articles said the Agriculture Department had allowed for "emergency grazing and haying" in parts of Iowa due to drought conditions. 

The USDA declaration is part of a federal program that allows farmers to temporarily take hay from, or have livestock graze on, land that is usually restricted.

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We found similar news stories in July and August 2023 for federal "grazing and haying" declarations in Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. A news story said Maine made a similar declaration because of excessive rain.

The additional grazing or haying is allowed when there is at least 40% loss in production of forage, such as hay, according to the Agriculture Department. Forage is a plant, such as hay, eaten by livestock. 

Humphrey has made similar claims that PolitiFact has debunked, including one about "massive explosions" and one about a poison emergency.  

There was no federal declaration of a food shortage emergency. We rate the Facebook post False.

PolitiFact staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.