Currently browsing posts about: Food-assistance

The USDA has announced that retailers who serve SNAP recipients will now have to carry more real food.  As of fall 2026,

Retailers authorized to accept SNAP benefits must now carry seven varieties of items across four categories of staple foods: protein, grains, dairy, and fruits and vegetables. This change more than doubles the requirement of available foods, emphasizes more whole foods, increases the perishable food requirements, and eliminates loopholes that for too long have allowed retailers to count certain snack foods toward their staple food requirements.

The stocking standards final rule and Federal Register notice spell out the details.  Retailers who accept SNAP EBT cards will have to offer at least 7—instead of the former 3—varieties of dairy, vegetables or fruits, grains, and protein.  Some foods that used to count as varieties no longer will: butter, jerky, cheese dip, snack bars, fruit spreads even though they can still be purchased from SNAP benefits.

Comment

As with everything else this administration does, this action requires translation.  At first glance, it looks terrific.  SNAP recipients, especially those without access to supermarkets, will have greater access to fruits and vegetables and other healthy foods.

Access, of course, is only the first step in eating healthier foods.  Affordability and cultural preferences matter even more.

And here’s a clue to what this is really about:

Since the beginning of the Trump Administration, the Food and Nutrition Service has taken action on nearly 3,200 retailers regarding current stocking standards, either for failing to meet them upon application or failing to maintain them once authorized. The latter results in disqualification from accepting SNAP benefits.

As explained by the Food Research & Action Center, the USDA stocking rules will make it difficult for small groceries to meet the requirements, continue to accept SNAP benefits, and stay in business.

Furthermore, according to an analysis by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the new rules have nothing to do with helping SNAP recipients eat more healthfully.  This is because there are no nutrition standards for the varieties: “The irony is not lost on us that the Trump Administration says “eat real food” but won’t require stores to stock it.”

Bottom line: Alas, this looks like yet another mechanism for making SNAP harder to use and reducing the number of participants.

Addition, May 20

Jerry Mande reminds me that there are already lots of stores taking SNAP benefits, and that an increasing proportion of them are convenience stores not exactly famous for carrying healthy foods.  The old (before it had to move to Kansas) Economic Research Service did the store count.

Last week, I wrote about what I consider to be a national tragedy: the splitting up and relocation of crucial USDA units.

The latest is USDA’s renaming, splitting up, and relocating the Food and Nutrition Service, the agency responsible for running SNAP and other food assistance programs.

USDA’s actions:

I.  Rename the Food and Nutrition Service; it is now to be The Food and Nutrition Administration

Translation: Serving low-income Americans is no longer part of USDA’s mission; management is.

II.  Split the FNA into multiple units.

Translation: Make sure food assistance is splintered and uncoordinated.

III.  Relocate the units into widely separated areas.  Child nutrition programs go to Dallas, TX; SNAP and safety go to Kansas City, MO; research goes to Raleigh, NC; emergency management goes to Denver, Co; retailer compliance goes to four cities–Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, and New York.

Translation: Get rid of experts on food assistance who actually know how to make these programs work and who care about ending hunger in America, especially among women and young children.

IV.  Keep the overall FNA administrator in Washington, DC.

Translation: Give the appearance of oversight, now impossible given the geographical dispersion.

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins posted this announcement on X (formerly Twitter).  Note her Trump-capitalized explanation:

We’re moving the NEW Food and Nutrition Administration out of DC and into the heartland where it belongs. Shifting staff CLOSER to those they support, makes us MORE efficient and responsive to the millions of families touched by USDA nutrition programs. Delivering faster, better service for families who need nutrition assistance and stronger support for American farmers who grow the food on their tables. We are laser focused on serving the American people with greater efficiency. And this reorganization will do just that.

Yeah, right.

My translation: USDAis systematically doing everything it can get away with to destroy SNAP, decrease participation, and make it impossibly difficult for eligible low-income Americans to enroll in food assistance.

You don’t agree?  Watch what happens to SNAP enrollments.

Decreases are already happening, as shown by ProPublica’s data from Arizona.

If USDA doesn’t have staff who know how to do things, people will not be able to enroll.  And that’s the whole point of the renaming, reorganization, and relocation.

Additional thoughts

• Former USDA official Jerry Mande wrote in a post on X, “during Trump’s 1st term USDA spent about $18m to move FNS to Braddock Pl. USDA signed a 15 yr lease in 2020. Those $$ are being squandered.”  His post also includes GAO data on the loss of experienced staff at USDA.
• GAO report on the effects of moving USDA on staff expertise in the Economic Research Service.

• An earlier 2022 GAO report on why relocating USDA units was not a good idea
• Congressional Research Service report (2026) on authority for USDA’s reorganization

When President Trump was elected, he promised to downsize government.  He is doing that, for better or worse.  The latest move affects the USDA: GSA and USDA Unlock $1.6 Billion in Savings for Americans with Ag South Disposition.

Translation: The USDA is getting rid of the enormous, aging building it occupies across the street from its headquarters near the National Mall.

I love the positive spin: “The Ag South disposition will deliver significant value to taxpayers while advancing the Trump Administration’s objectives to reinvigorate, consolidate, and better utilize the federal real estate portfolio.”

Another account of this action reveals that two properties are involved, one of them currently housing the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), the agency that runs food assistance programs.

The USDA announced this plant last summer as part of the department’s major reorganization plan.  Its point: to relocate staff to new USDA hubs.

As explained in yet another account, this is about relocating staff:

Thousands of USDA employees have taken buyouts and left the department over the past year amid Republican U.S. President Donald Trump‘s effort to reshape and reduce the size and footprint of the federal government. The USDA has said it is planning to relocate much of its remaining staff in the U.S. capital to hubs in North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, Colorado and Utah.

From Government Executive, we learn:

The department announced the disposal of the South Building, which Rollins and other officials repeatedly described as dilapidated and mostly empty, last year as part of a larger reorganization that will push 2,600 employees out of the national capital region…USDA currently has 4,600 employees in the Washington area and is looking to shrink that number to 2,000…The department has already shed more than 15,000 employees from its initiative that allowed employees to sit on paid leave for several months before resigning.

Government Executive explains why this concerns me so much:

During Trump’s first term in 2019, the department relocated its Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Kansas City, over the objections of employees and some lawmakers. Following the move, both agencies lost more than half of their staff, leading to a significant loss of productivity from which it took the agencies years to recover. Under President Joe Biden, both agencies moved their headquarters back to Washington while maintaining their Kansas City offices.

…USDA solicited feedback on its reorganization plan last year, leading to 14,000 unique responses. Of those, 82% expressed negativity toward the plan, while 5% took a positive tone. Employees, lawmakers and stakeholders submitting the comments warned of a significant brain drain and disruptions to key farmer-support programs if the changes were implemented.

Oh no, not again.

I long considered the Economic Research Service to be the best kept secret in Washington, DC.  It produced reliable, credible analyses of food issues.  I considered it a national treasure and was devastated by its destruction (I wrote about this often on this site).  In my view, the agency has never recovered from its loss of national experts.  USDA says the FNS will remain in the DC area.

It’s hard not to see this as yet another attempt to undermine food assistance programs and make it harder for people to enroll in them.

I’ve been collecting graphs on the likely effects of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (shades of Orwell’s 1984) on income distribution in the United States.  Here are two examples to ponder.

From the Congressional Budget Office:

From The Budget Lab at Yale and Paul Krugman’s Substack

From Tax Policy Center and Penn-Wharton Budget Model (also via Paul Krugman)

These make the effects of the bill crystal clear.  The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

The losers?  Everyone else, but especially those at the very bottom of the income distribution.

This is what Americans voted for?

And at a time when the bill cuts funding for federal food assistance programs like SNAP?

Will this Make Americans Healthy Again?

I don’t think so.

I made a mistake and did not get this one scheduled correctly.  I’m trying again to get it posted (sigh, my error).

The USDA’s Economic Research Service (what’s left of it) has released its annual report on food assistance, which cost $142 billion in 2024 for all of the 16 programs.

This is a decrease from the $168 billion spent in 2023.

Food assistance accounts for two-thirds of USDA’s budget.

SNAP accounts for 70% of USDA’s food assistance budget.  Its 14% (inflation-adjusted) decline from 2023 “was larger than for any other year on record.”  And that’s before this year’s proposed cuts.

SNAP participation and costs track closely with poverty and food insecurity; when they go up, SNAP goes up.

Comment: The best way to cut SNAP?  Cut poverty.

__________

Forthcoming November 11, 2025: What To Eat Now

The effects of all the proposed budget cuts, clearly aimed at cutting taxes for the rich at the expense of the poor, will be painful, but two are especially ironic given the Making America Healthy Again effort.

The first were the farm-to-school programs “in alignment with President Donald Trump’s executive order ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government and DEI Programs and Preferencing.’” These cuts were especially stupid because the programs did not cost much but were a demonstrably a win/win.  Schools got fresh produce, and small farmers got paid.

Now we have a second tiny program to lose funding, SNAP-ED, more formally the USDA’s National Education and Obesity Prevention Grant Program.

Here’s what AI says about this program (not a bad summary, actually).

SNAP-Ed stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education. It is a federally funded, public health program designed to help low-income individuals and families make healthy food choices and adopt active lifestyles within their budget. SNAP-Ed provides nutrition education and promotes healthy food choices, while also supporting physical activity.

Goal: SNAP-Ed aims to improve the likelihood that people eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will make healthy choices within a limited budget and adopt physically active lifestyles.

Evidence-Based: The program uses evidence-based nutrition education and obesity prevention strategies.

Federally Funded: It is a grant program funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

State and Local Partnerships: SNAP-Ed works with state and local organizations to deliver its services.

Focus Areas: SNAP-Ed initiatives include nutrition education (Classes on healthy eating, budgeting, meal planning, basic cooking, and food safety), social marketing campaigns (Community-based campaigns to promote healthy eating and physical activity), and efforts to improve community policies and environments.

Although AI didn’t mention it, SNAP-ED works.  See: SNAP-Ed: The Transition of the Nation’s Largest Nutrition Education Program Into a Pillar of the Public Health Infrastructure

The SNAP-Ed program has demonstrated that its comprehensive approaches are primed to address public health crises along with its ongoing role of helping to eliminate nutrition-related health disparities. Despite the program’s public health focus, community-wide scope, and capacity for sector-level change, SNAP-Ed funding has been static for more than decade, even as its audience and mission have doubled. Funding for SNAP-Ed was only 0.4% of the total 2021 SNAP budget, or $5.15 annually for each of the nearly 90 million people in its audience—roughly the cost of a bag of oranges or potatoes.

The cost of this program is roughly half a billion dollars a year, not even a rounding error in the federal budget.  Cutting it does no good for anyone, undercuts the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) agenda, and is thoughtless and unnecessary.

Resources

• House Agriculture Committee — Reconciliation bill FY 2025
• Section-By-Section (See: 10011)
• One-Page Overview: Restoring Accountability & Prioritizing Work
• One-Page Summary: Renewing the American Dream: Prioritizing Work in SNAP
• SNAP Integrity and Farm Security Full Committee Markup (livestream link)

The USDA has released its annual report on Household Food Security in the United States in 2023.

The news is not good.

What’s especially tragic is the reversal of the pandemic decline in food insecurity.

Pandemic income support and higher SNAP benefits did exactly what they were supposed to.  They reduced poverty.

Congress, in its infinite wisdom, stopped those benefits.

The results are entirely predictable.

These, alas, are political choices.

There’s an election coming up soon…

Resources

• Food Security in the U.S.  Food security means access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.
• Food Security in the United States
• Household Food Security in the United States in 2023: An estimated 13.5 percent of households (18.0 million) were food insecure in 2023, meaning they had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members because of a lack of resources.
• Statistical Supplement to Household Food Security in the United States in 2023: Statistics presented in the supplement are based on data collected in the Current Population Survey (CPS) Food Security Supplement conducted in December 2023.

The USDA has just summarized its accomplishments with respect to food and nutrition assisttance since the pandemic.  It’s an impressive list.

The report has loads of enlightening charts.  This one shows the substantial increase in spending on food assistance over the years, and recently.

This report has the advantage of putting everything in one place.

This report uses preliminary data from USDA, Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) to examine program trends and policy changes in USDA’s largest domestic food and nutrition assistance programs through FY 2023. It also summarizes two 2023 USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) reports including one that examines the prevalence of household food insecurity in the United States in 2022 and another that documents the share of households with school-aged children reporting difficulty paying for expenses after pandemic waivers allowing schools to serve free meals expired in 2022.

If you want to understand why food assistance is anything but a bipartisan issue, the facts and figures here tell the story.  I’m glad to have this one.