If the Farm Bill to be considered in the House Committee on Agriculture on May 23 becomes law, it will mean a cut of nearly $30 billion in future SNAP benefits over a decade.
Such cuts are unconscionable. For many children, they will make learning more difficult and lead to negative health outcomes. They will force families and older adults to choose between putting food on the table and paying for other expenses such as rent, utility bills, or prescription drugs. They will also harm our economy, removing the stimulative benefits of SNAP and even hurting farmers and ranchers along the way.
SNAP is the most effective anti-hunger program in the U.S. It reduces hunger by 30% and provides nutritious meals to one-quarter of America’s children.
The House bill makes these cuts by limiting the USDA’s ability to update the Thrifty Food Plan, which determines SNAP benefit levels, to reflect the real costs of a nutritious diet, based on science, along with reflecting food prices that remain stubbornly high. This will make it tougher for families experiencing food insecurity as well as the food banks that aid them. These would be the largest cuts to SNAP benefits in almost 30 years if enacted. In addition, these changes will trigger more than $500 million in cuts to Summer EBT, which provides grocery benefits to children in low-income families during the summer when schools are closed, along with $100 million in cuts to The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which provides food for food banks and food pantries to distribute to individuals and families.
The House bill also would allow states to let private corporations take over determining eligibility for SNAP. Where this has been tried, replacing merit-based staff resulted in corporate skimping on careful help to people applying for or renewing benefits in order to maximize profits. It would also reverse previously enacted steps to reduce agriculture-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
During this time when many families grapple with the cost of housing and food, Congress must do everything in its power to provide relief to those who need it most.
Click “Start Writing” to send a message to Congress urging them to reject any and all cuts to nutrition programs in the FY2025 Farm Bill.
In this multimedia brown bag session, independent DACA activist Allyson Duarte and Poets Against Walls co-founder Emmy Pérez will talk about recent activism in the Rio Grande Valley in support of borderland communities. They will share video footage of speech clips and poetry performances to introduce some of the intersectional work they are involved in. Poets Against Walls is a collective of poets with a DIY philosophy that aims to amplify and help document borderland poetry, testimonio, and the spoken word to help counter mainstream depictions of the borderlands. Allyson Duarte’s work and advocacy commitments emphasize the need to seek solutions beyond whatever policy measures can achieve through the limited scope of party politics, which is almost always defined by gridlock that is rooted in private interests.
Allyson Duarte is a DACA recipient and proud resident of the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas. She currently resides in DC and is pursuing graduate studies at American University. Her advocacy efforts revolve primarily around immigration in border communities, but she has also partaken in efforts related to education, LGBTQ+, and environmental issues. Allyson is emphatic about the need to supersede advocacy and organizing modes that find reliance on America’s two-party electoral system.
Emmy Pérez poetry collections include With the River on Our Face and Solstice. Her work also appears in anthologies such as Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, Other Musics: New Latina Poetry, and What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump. She is a past recipient of poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, CantoMundo, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as a member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop for socially engaged writers. She grew up in Santa Ana, California, where she recently received LibroMobile’s inaugural Modesta Avila Award, and for the past 18 years has lived in the Texas borderlands. Currently, she is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and serves as Associate Director for the Center for Mexican American Studies. She currently serves on the organizing committee for CantoMundo national literary organization and co-founded Poets Against Walls.
Co-Sponsored by Split This Rock and the Institute for Policy Studies, this event is presented as part of “What Is It, Then, Between Us?: Poetry & Democracy,” an annual programming initiative of the Poetry Coalition.