SNAP is key to food security for millions of people, but its under attack from Republicans.

Will the Farm Bill’s Hunger Provisions Meet the Growing Need?

For the past month, food pantries in many parts of the country have been rushing to prepare for what they anticipate will be a surge in demand. After a dip in 2021, the number of families who reported “sometimes” or “often” not having enough to eat rose gradually throughout 2022. Now, pandemic-related bumps in SNAP benefits have officially ended, with food prices still much higher than normal.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Senator John Boozman (R-Arkansas), the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, began the first hearing on nutrition programs in the 2023 Farm Bill by chiding the USDA for its 2021 update to the Thrifty Food Plan, which increased benefits based on the rise in food prices over time. It’s the one recent increase that won’t expire, but Boozman said it brought SNAP spending up to “levels that are unsustainable.”

In the coming months, that tension between not enough and too much aid for hungry Americans will almost certainly resurface: Hunger groups will be fighting for expansions to SNAP that Democrats generally support, while many Republicans will sound alarms about the current cost and push for stricter eligibility requirements. Last week, House Republicans introduced their first bill which would make more SNAP recipients subject to work requirements.

SNAP is the largest program authorized by the farm bill, and it is expensive: In 2018, it accounted for 75 percent of the projected $428 billion in farm bill spending between 2019 and 2023, and the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated costs will rise 8.4 percent over the next 10 years. But SNAP’s proportion of the farm bill pie is so large because 40 million people participate annually.

By comparison, commodity programs receive 7 percent of funding, but over the past five years only served an average of 850,000 farmers each year. Average commodity payments are in the tens of thousands of dollars, and some farms get them continuously for decades. A recent EWG analysis found one subset of larger farms had each received tens of millions of dollars since 1985.

In the last few farm bill cycles, hunger groups focused on defending against cuts to SNAP, said Gina Plata-Nino, deputy director of SNAP at the Food Research Action Center (FRAC). This time around, especially since the pandemic exposed how close many people were living to the edge, she said, they want to do more. “This isn’t 2018. Our economy is not the same, and there are ways that people were impacted. We need to do better.”

At the end of February, a coalition of 500 hunger and nutrition groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and the American Heart Association, released its 2023 farm bill priorities. Its members say lawmakers should protect the Thrifty Food Plan update and expand eligibility for college students, veterans, and seniors.