“I hope that is going to be sufficient,” stated the coordinator at Silver Lake Neighborhood Church meals pantry, wiping her brow as she chopped off dangerous ends of donated celery. Each Wednesday morning for the previous yr, I, together with a dozen or so different volunteers, type and pack donated meals for about 150 households.
However a number of months in the past, the meals pantry began ordering sufficient meals to feed 175 households per week. This week we ordered sufficient for 200 households. Greater numbers are our new regular. The individuals who come to us are going through challenges not simply from the federal shutdown but additionally from widespread layoffs.
Now, as SNAP benefits run out during the shutdown, we fear that there received’t be sufficient meals to feed everybody who traces up. And that ought to scare all of us.
Throughout the nation, 1 in 7 people — together with 1 in 5 youngsters — have been meals insecure in 2023. This implies they fearful about the place they might get meals and struggled to afford to place meals on the desk.
For many years, the U.S. authorities has responded to our relentless meals insecurity disaster by way of the Supplemental Vitamin Help Program, previously generally known as meals stamps — which in 2024 have been distributed to 1 in 8 people. On common, beneficiaries in California — the place this system is known as CalFresh — received about $189 a month. In L.A. County, greater than $300 million in SNAP advantages have been issued in June 2025 alone.
SNAP is an extremely efficient device to combat starvation. It reaches folks all around the nation, even in hard-to-reach rural areas, as a result of the advantages go on to folks’s wallets. This system lifted greater than 700,000 folks nationally above the poverty line in 2024.
However SNAP alone has not closed the meals insecurity hole. Its advantages solely cowl about 80% of the price of meals a household wants, and never everybody who qualifies participates in this system — neither is everybody who’s meals insecure eligible. It’s estimated that some 45% of meals pantry customers are already utilizing SNAP. Meals pantries and soup kitchens — just like the one the place I volunteer — fill the hole by distributing donated and bought meals to folks in want.
Nationwide, some 60,000 such organizations distributed greater than 4 billion kilos of meals to greater than 50 million folks in 2023. And even with the efforts of SNAP and charitable meals packages, greater than 40 million individuals are nonetheless meals insecure.
With the disruption to SNAP funds, meals pantries like my very own will bear the brunt of responding to really unprecedented want. Even because the state authorities deploys the National Guard to assist food-distributing organizations such because the Los Angeles Regional Meals Financial institution, my private expertise and analysis present that native organizations will battle to tackle the elevated demand. Many pantries don’t have area to retailer extra meals nor the volunteers to type and distribute extra meals. Most have been working at full capability for years.
What’s worse is that pantries could merely run out of meals. Meaning sending hungry folks residence empty-handed. To have to inform a neighbor you can not assist them is an expertise I want on nobody.
Nevertheless it isn’t solely food-insecure individuals who profit from SNAP. This system is a boon to native economies as a result of folks spend their SNAP {dollars} within the communities the place they dwell and work. Even in a weak financial system, the Agriculture Division estimates that $1 of SNAP generates greater than $1.50 in economic activity. Greater than 30,000 stores within the state of California settle for SNAP, which signifies that all communities profit when folks use meals stamps.
But regardless of the billions of {dollars} they depend on from buyers who use SNAP (many of whom are their own employees), giant retailers corresponding to Walmart and Amazon haven’t fought onerous to stop the present interruption to advantages. Retailers could also be extra involved with stopping hungry folks from shoplifting. The police division in Barstow posted on Oct. 28 that it will be stationing extra cops at grocery shops to discourage theft.
A deep and lasting interruption to SNAP will kill folks. And it’ll additionally damage us all. Maybe that’s the purpose. The Trump administration has been ordered to fund SNAP even throughout the federal government shutdown, however federal officers apparently see extra worth in wreaking havoc by issuing solely partial funds — and doing so in gradual movement. A folks that’s hungry doesn’t have the time or power to combat again or vote or name representatives when primary human functioning is on the road.
The answer, broadly, is to fund SNAP. Some on the left fault the Trump administration as attempting to “weaponize hunger,” within the phrases of the Home’s prime Democrat. Some on the proper search to blame Democrats for the shutdown. However no effort to attain political factors justifies making fellow Individuals go hungry. Our flesh pressers work for us. We ought to be calling our representatives and demanding that SNAP be taken off the bargaining desk and that funding be completely and absolutely reinstated.
The primary Trump administration used its authorized switch authority in the course of the last government shutdown to fund SNAP, and will achieve this once more. This administration purposefully chooses not to.
Within the meantime, these wanting to assist may give cash to native meals pantries and feeding organizations. Though donations of meals are well-intentioned and beneficial, cash stretches additional within the arms of neighborhood organizations, which know what is required — and it could be issues like plastic gloves and paper luggage required to soundly get meals into the arms of our neighbors. Organizations that sponsor vacation meals drives may take into account a fund drive as a substitute or as well as.
Donations to native teams may be solely a Band-Help, not a everlasting answer. Even SNAP, when absolutely funded, is just not sufficient to fulfill meals want within the U.S. — however it’s a patch that will get nearer than the rest ever has. When SNAP is underfunded and reduce, it isn’t simply the meals insecure who are suffering, however all of us.
Leah E. Gose is an assistant professor of sociology at USC.
