As the government shutdown disrupts SNAP (the primary food assistance program in the United States) and the availability of SNAP benefits for recipients to purchase food, we are witnessing in real time how this program and the food it provides are being used as a political leverage point, and one with tangible impacts on many families and individuals throughout the United States. 

There are many layers to this conversation, and many wise folks have already weighed in with insightful perspectives and ways of taking action in response to the very real acute needs of those who were counting on receiving SNAP benefits to feed themselves and their families this month. 

And, there are some additional pieces of the puzzle to take a look at in understanding more of the full picture. 

I’m coming at this from the perspective that we’re all here together on an abundant Earth. When we experience scarcity in any shape or form, there’s an impetus to examine and understand the individual AND collective aspects of how that experience of scarcity is being structured. It’s about asking, “What are the drivers underlying what we’re witnessing now, and how do they operate to create the outcome we’re seeing?” 

SNAP as a lever

One of those drivers is that SNAP is being used as a tool for political advantage. That’s not new, nor particularly surprising, because going back to its early history, SNAP (previously known as the Food Stamp Program) was called a weapon even by its supporters. In signing the Food Stamp Act of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson remarked, “As a permanent program, the food stamp plan will be one of our most valuable weapons for the war on poverty.”

The posturing and leveraging related to SNAP and its predecessor program have run through the program’s marriage, albeit often a tumultuous marriage, via the Farm Bill with federal agricultural policies and programs since the 1970s. 

SNAP’s predecessor program began in 1939 in response to simultaneous Depression-era challenges of widespread poverty and agricultural surplus. Revived in the 1960’s, the updated stated intent of the program was around improving the agricultural economy, increasing the consumption of perishable agricultural products, and improving nutrition among low-income U.S. households. 

And using food as a tool of leverage is not unique to SNAP. Many times throughout human history and ongoing in global conflicts today, food has been used as a lever. In the most severe cases, food has been used as a weapon of mass victimization, a weapon of mass submission, and a weapon of mass disembodiment. 

Because those who are hungry face real constraints to their physical energy and wellbeing, and are unlikely to want to be experiencing all of the sensations of hunger in their body. 

Hunger leaves a deep mark, and it ripples throughout a person’s relationships, work, health, and through to all the ecosystems they’re a part of. 

SNAP disruption is highlighting deeper issues

• Our collective classism problem is on full display. There is deeply embedded ideology that goes back many generations: That those who “have” physical resources have earned their “having” primarily or even solely through hard work. 

• That those who “have” physical resources are somehow better that those who “do not have” those resources. 

• Basic physical resources (food, shelter, water) are not considered a basic right, nor a basic responsibility of collective structures. 

  
  

Something else is in the room: A visceral, sometimes unconscious, sense carried by many that the socioeconomic system that amplifies these “haves” and “have nots” can also turn on them at any moment. It highlights the notion that wealth and power need to be hoarded and safeguarded so vigorously because in the event that one does not have wealth and power, current socioeconomic structures do not adequately offer support nor an opportunity to come back into balance. 

Hard work culture relies on the illusion that we are the ones “doing”. But in many spiritual traditions, we as an individual human are not the one “doing”; rather, the Source of life is doing through each of us. And as such, the doing or having aren’t a sole function of me or you as an individual, nor do they define anyone’s worthiness. 

The application of this notion carries through most directly into the work requirements of SNAP, but also is a thread weaving through the discourse about who should or shouldn’t have access to benefits, and what we should or shouldn’t do when the recipients of those benefits might not have food on the table due to broader political circumstances. 

We have problems that this moment and dialogue are highlighting on many different levels, both acute and chronic, and both physical and metaphysical. So we have people who need support with food in bellies, a problem that needs a food in bellies solution. Under that, we also culturally have a wholeness problem of dividing people into categories based on “goodness” or “badness”, so for that we need a wholeness solution. 

More on SNAP itself

But taking a step back, what else can we say about SNAP? Notably, since around the financial crisis of 2008, over 10% of the U.S. population has been receiving SNAP benefits. Of the households who receive SNAP, 79% include at least one child, elderly adult, or a person with a disability (FY23). 

Using a pass-through view of the chain of SNAP beneficiaries, would be looking at the authorized retailers who are the businesses who receive dollars, as opposed to the SNAP participants who receive Electronic Benefit Transfers (EBT), which have a set dollar value but are restricted funds that can only be used in specific ways (namely, foods intended for home preparation and consumption) at approved retailers. 

The chart highlights that of the $96 billion in SNAP redemptions in Fiscal Year 2024, about half went to super store retailers. 

SNAP authorized retailers are players in a much larger food web of food distributors, food manufacturers, food wholesalers, and food producers. In that way, where SNAP dollars ultimately flow depends on which food items SNAP recipients purchase. 

USDA analysis of food typically purchased by SNAP households found much similarity in the items purchases of SNAP households and non-SNAP households. A USDA analysis shows: 

• 40% of spending on basics (meat, fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs, and bread)

• 20% on sweets and snacks

• 40% on a variety of items (cereal, prepared food, other dairy, rice, beans, other cooking ingredients)

  
  

Again, this is a space where the same judgements of goodness or badness can come in as undertones in the dialogue about SNAP, of what foods SNAP benefits should be used by SNAP participants to buy. 

Deepening the dialogue, deepening the action

Whether you’re a SNAP beneficiary or not, it’s likely that something I’ve said or something else you’ve seen have amplified some emotions and energies within you, related perhaps specifically to SNAP, and if not, more broadly to security and scarcity and safety. It certainly has for me. 

Some of those internal questions for folks who are not directly experiencing food insecurity might be: 

• Am I feeling internal discomfort facing  the direct fact that not everyone has enough to eat and/or around what you have or haven’t done to respond to that?

• Beyond that, can you be with the instinctive tendency to withdraw yourself from the bodily experience that knowledge brings up? Withdrawing from that reality (or any reality, really) is a way of disconnecting from the possibilities to transform the thing you dislike. 

• And if you’re still here, still in your body, can you stay present with what is coming up, discomfort or otherwise, long enough and with enough compassion, for a new possibility to emerge? 

  
  

Beyond introspection (necessary, but very often insufficient, action), a few ways of responding directly to the physical needs of accessing food with alternatives, and organizations offering them: 

• Direct cash and food donations

• Volunteering your time or skills to support organizations distributing food

• Increasing access to garden Seeds, Space, Supplies

• Community gardens and other collaborative action

• Building resilient local food systems

• Donations throughout the food web by

  • Producers

  • Distributors

  • Delivery

  • Retailers/ Restaurants

    
    

Examples of experts and resources about the broader context of this to consider learning from: 

• The Earth and Nature

• Your own direct experience… via planting a garden and cultivating a full relationship with food and your local food community

• USDA SNAP history, data, and analysis

• Congressional Research Service reports

• Maryam Hasnaa on Earth Stewardship (and more!)

• Charles Eisenstein on Sacred Economics (and more!)

• Tressie McMillan Cottom on Class (and more!)

• Simone Grace Seoul on Wealth (and more!)

• Soul Fire Farm on Food Sovereignty (and more!)

Regardless of what the status of the back and forth is when you’re reading this, in thinking about going forward from here, there’s a question of orienting towards saving a cracked system or orienting towards what can replace it. Maybe both are needed for a time, as we’re in a period of transition. 

In any version of a better future, we each have an opportunity towards contributing to something better than what we have. Because as Milo Perkins, the first administrator of food stamps pointed out, between the abundance of food and poorly nourished folks here, there is a gorge, and there is a need for “a practical way to build a bridge across that chasm.” And after all, you can still buy seeds with SNAP. 

--11/7/25