Food Banks Brace for Overwhelming Demand as SNAP Cutoff Looms
Growing need and decreased resources are squeezing the charitable food system beyond its capacity, leaders say.
nytimes.com
Food banks across the United States were stretched thin even before the federal government shut down. Rising food prices had driven a growing number of people to their doors. Cuts to federal programs had left them with less to give.
Now, that system — a last resort for tens of millions of hungry Americans — is anticipating an even greater surge in demand.
With no end in sight to the nearly monthlong federal government shutdown, funding for the nation’s largest food assistance program, known as SNAP, will disappear at the start of November, according to the Department of Agriculture. On Friday, the Trump administration said in a memo that it would not tap into contingency funds to keep payments flowing to states.
That means that the roughly 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — may soon have to find other ways to feed themselves and their families.
Many of them will turn to local food pantries. Anti-hunger organizations and food banks say the surging demand will almost certainly exceed their capacity to respond. And the impact could resonate well beyond the shutdown.
“When that social safety net breaks above us, we will be there to do as much as we can,” said Andrea Williams, president of the Oregon Food Bank, which helps supply food to roughly 1,200 pantries and meal sites across Oregon and southwest Washington. “And it will not be enough.”
There are more than 47 million Americans who, at some point during the year, face food insecurity — meaning they do not have enough to eat and do not know where their next meal will come from — according to the Agriculture Department’s latest report. There are millions more who don’t fully fit that definition but nonetheless turn to charitable food programs for support, according to Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks, food pantries and local meal programs.
Since the pandemic, a steady drumbeat of inflation has substantially increased prices at the grocery store, driving more people of limited means to food banks.
Visits to Ms. Williams’ network of food pantries in Oregon are up 50 percent over the last two years alone, she said. Radha Muthiah, the head of Capital Area Food Bank, which serves Washington D.C. and surrounding counties in Virginia and Maryland, said visits to pantries in her service area have doubled since before the pandemic.
But earlier this year, the Trump administration cut nearly $1 billion in federal aid for anti-hunger programs, including one that supplies food directly to food banks. At distribution sites in New Orleans and Detroit on Saturday, volunteers described the situation in simple terms.
“Demand is up, food is down,” said John Sillars, who helps run the Second Harvest Food Bank, a regional agency that supplies food pantries across southern Louisiana.
</snip> Read the rest here: nytimes.com |
