Food Banks Brace for Flood of Former SNAP Recipients

July 16—As the federal government cuts $186 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over the next ten years, an estimated 7.4 million people will lose all or part of their food benefits this year. Free food banks are bracing for a flood of people who have few other alternatives. But food banks across the country are already stretched to the limit and lack resources to handle this influx of hungry people. And this year, the federal government will also reduce funding to food banks by hundreds of millions of dollars. The government has also cancelled direct shipments of hundreds of millions of pounds of food destined for local food banks as part of the emergency food-assistance program for low-income people. There is an additional cut of half a billion dollars of a program to encourage food banks to buy local beef, pork, chicken, produce, dairy, and other non-processed foods.

In New York, Paule Pachter, president and chief executive of Long Island Cares, said, “We’ve been through Superstorm Sandy and Covid, but this is a self-imposed crisis. This is the most challenging situation I’ve seen in 17 years here.” In 2019, this food bank recorded 59,000 visits from people needing food. In 2024, that number was more than 193,000. The food bank expects the traffic flow to only increase, as the SNAP cuts begin to take effect. In addition to this volume of demand, this facility was notified earlier in the year of the cancellation of the delivery of a quarter million pounds of food from the Federal emergency food program.

At the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank headquartered in Harrisburg, the number of people who use its pantries and were also enrolled in SNAP jumped by 64% between the end of 2022 and the end of 2024. This shows that even before benefit reductions, SNAP was still insufficient to feed people. The "{official" response fromthe Trump Admiistration is that all able-bodied recipients must work, but 82% of recipients are already currently employed, and often have two or three jobs. Since April, the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank has also had 23 truckloads of supplies from the Federal emergency food-assistance program canceled. This food bank also lost $173,000 per month from the U.S. Agriculture Department’s program to buy local products from farmers. The number of children served at these pantries has doubled in the last five years.

According to the most recent Federal figures, 47.4 million people were living in households experiencing food insecurity in 2023, an increase of 13.5 million compared to 2021. This figure includes 13.8 million children. Food insecurity will only grow with cuts to the Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and other cuts such as the $1 billion cut from school lunch programs and funding to food banks. Several pandemic-era programs have also been eliminated, such as the free Healthy School Meals for All plan. In New Mexico the Roadrunners Food Bank has already run out of food several times this year.