“With many families hurting due to high food and housing costs, the Farm Bill is a key opportunity to strengthen one of our most powerful tools to fight hunger,” said Gromley.
Contact: Ryan Flaherty, rflaherty@strength.org
5/1/24, WASHINGTON, DC — Today, the Chairs of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees each released their high-level proposals for the next Farm Bill. This legislation, which is passed approximately once every 5 years, includes authorization for SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The following is a statement from Jason Gromley, Senior Director for Share Our Strength and its No Kid Hungry campaign:
“SNAP grocery benefits enable over 40 million Americans to stretch their budgets each month to help ensure they have enough food to feed their families. The vast majority who receive benefits are children, seniors, veterans and people with disabilities. With many families hurting due to high food and housing costs, the Farm Bill is a key opportunity to strengthen one of our most powerful tools to fight hunger.
“While full details of their proposals are not yet available, it is encouraging to see apparent agreement from both Chairwoman Stabenow and Chairman Thompson on the importance of making further investments in SNAP that would allow more eligible families to participate, support education and nutrition incentive programs and protect participants from benefit theft and fraud.
“However, we’re disappointed with the House Republicans’ proposal to limit future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan–which helps SNAP benefit levels keep pace with the cost of food and how families live and eat. USDA’s 2021 updates to the Thrifty Food Plan were based on data-driven criteria using current food prices and modern dietary guidelines. Those changes better reflect the way families live today while increasing SNAP benefits by $1.40 per-person, per-day to just over $6 a day for the average SNAP recipient. While modest, these updates have raised 1 million kids out of poverty.
“Rather than attempting to further dilute SNAP benefits that are already insufficient for people living in most counties in the United States, Congress should focus on improvements that will help families access the food they need.
“Families and communities across the nation benefit from the Farm Bill's vital investments in nutrition, agriculture and rural areas. Reauthorization requires bipartisan support, and we urge the leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees to come together and advance a Farm Bill that continues investing in strong families and communities by strengthening and protecting SNAP.”
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About No Kid Hungry
No child should go hungry in America. But millions of kids in the United States live with hunger. No Kid Hungry is working to end childhood hunger by helping launch and improve programs that give all kids the healthy food they need to thrive. This is a problem we know how to solve. No Kid Hungry is a campaign of Share Our Strength, an organization committed to ending hunger and poverty.