A strong early candidate for 2025’s word of the year is uncertainty. At VAFS, we get it and we work on and around it, on your behalf, every day.  While uncertainty is nothing new in hunger relief, we’re now in a period of extreme volatility on par with the lead up to COVID, but driven by a tangle of tariffs, federal cuts, and rising demand. Federal funding cuts to programs have started, but we cannot predict holistically the depth, duration, or net impact. The confirmed $1B cuts from Local Food for Schools and Local Food Purchase Assistance programs may be tip of the iceberg, or not. The global and domestic fallout from tariffs and trade wars, at a minimum, risks short-term price increases and long-term increases in food and packaging costs and availability for both imported and domestically produced commodities. Macroeconomic risk of recession and the knock-on effects on employment, wages, and food insecurity is increasing while Q1 US GDP growth was negative. We are halfway to a qualified recession. Hunger relief organizations need to do even more with less while dealing with invisible supply chain delays that compound core mission risk.  Planning depends on assumptions that we can no