CHICAGO—The Agriculture Department is providing up to $1.5 billion to help school meal programs weather the supply chain crunch, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Friday. Procuring large amounts of food has become difficult because of delays in shipments, a lack of certain products, high costs, and labor shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic. USDA is tapping the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) for funding, providing $1 billion for schools to purchase food for their meal programs and another $500 million for the purchase of local foods to be distributed to schools, Vilsack said. “This will result in a 5 percent increase in what school districts normally have available,” Vilsack said at Gourmet Gorilla, a food service company that prepares 40,000 meals daily for schools in the Chicago area. Shortages have made meal planning impossible, said Colletta Hines Newell, director of food services for Arlington Heights School District 25 outside Chicago during …