Arizona food bank leader says banks are already serving more people than ever as SNAP cuts loom

The ongoing federal government shutdown means around 900,000 Arizonans who rely on federal aid to buy food will not get that assistance starting on Saturday.

Gov. Katie Hobbs has sent a letter to the U.S. Agriculture Secretary urging her to use $6 billion in a contingency fund to pay for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, but the Trump administration has said it does not plan to do that.

This comes on top of reports of furloughed federal workers visiting food banks as they miss paychecks. And Consumer Price Index figures recently released show grocery prices in September were 0.3% higher than they were in August and more than 2.5% higher than in September of last year.

Terri Shoemaker, executive vice president of the Arizona Food Bank Network, joined The Show to talk about it.

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Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: So let's start with this pending SNAP funding situation. What is the current situation in which food banks around the state are finding themselves? How are they doing?

TERRI SHOEMAKER: Food banks around the state are coping as well as they can, I think, given what is around the corner for them — which is a massive increase in the people that they serve. We're going to see people who are used to getting SNAP benefits delivered between Nov. 1 and Nov. 13 coming to food banks instead.

BRODIE: And so is there a way to prepare for that?

SHOEMAKER: There are a lot of ways to prepare for that. And our food banks are doing a really remarkable job — kind of going into what I would qualify as a disaster relief mode. We're used to standing up operations in a vacuum. And this is kind of like a big disaster that's happening to everybody at the same time.

So it's something that food banks are well equipped to do, is stand up extra distribution, stand up more resources. But at some point, when one meal a food bank provides, it's compared to five that SNAP provides. So for every one meal you would get from a food bank, you'd get five from SNAP. It's a really big gap.

BRODIE: Well, and are food banks equipped to stand up to — you refer to it sort of disaster — a situation like this where, you know, 900,000 plus people, you know, in a week could be coming in and needing meals.

SHOEMAKER: Well, we call it emergency food network for a reason, as food banks are really, we see them as a place that you go to when you have no other options, because all of the federal supports aren't there for you or you don't qualify. So really it's kind of, you know, the place you go when you have no other place to go. And a lot more people are going to have no other place to go.

Now, having said that, some of that population that receives SNAP likely already visits food banks because SNAP is only intended to cover about 70% to 80% of your needs for the month. So, that means there's a gap anyway in what SNAP provides versus what you need. And so whether your income covers that — because most people who receive SNAP work if they're not children. And so your income doesn't cover that, SNAP doesn't cover that. What's going to?

BRODIE: What are you hearing from food banks in different parts of the state? Are some maybe more equipped to deal with what's coming than others?

SHOEMAKER: I think certainly the larger food banks, so regional food bank warehouses like Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona in Tucson, St. Mary's Food Bank here in Phoenix and United Food bank here in Phoenix. Those folks are more well prepared, I think, for this type of activity due to that kind of disaster response lens.

You get to a Yuma Community Food bank, which doesn't have as many resources locally, and things are going to be tougher to do more, because they're already doing an awful lot in the community.

BRODIE: What are you seeing in terms of donations and outreach to try to solicit additional donations?

SHOEMAKER: We need additional donations, especially large food donors and fund donors. It's really critical for food banks to get more support right now, because quadrupling your business in a week? I mean, most retailers that have all the resources in the world wouldn't be able to deal with a five-fold increase in the course of one week with one week's notice.

So, you know, retailers were approaching the holidays. They stand things up for the holidays over the summer, years before. They know what they're going to be doing. And so all of this really came to a head last week when the USDA released guidance that SNAP wouldn't be funded for November. And that's when food banks really started working the phones, getting together.

The good news is that food banks are very used to working together to find solutions to problems. And that's what we're seeing right now.

BRODIE: Well, you mentioned the holidays and obviously Thanksgiving is coming up in about a month or so. I wonder though if that's even something that food banks can look at right now. And typically that's a time of year when, you know, there are a lot of solicitations for Thanksgiving meals and extra food for, you know, to help people have a nice holiday.

Is that sort of too far in the distance for food banks to think about when they're facing something much bigger, much sooner.

SHOEMAKER: If SNAP doesn't get funded by Nov. 13, anyone in the state who receives SNAP will have been affected. So, that's far before Thanksgiving. And so while we're already prepping for holiday mode — because in food banks, holidays start in July. So you have to start getting ready over the summer, you know, Christmas in July.

But what they're doing is seeing Thanksgiving as — they'll do what they normally do at the Thanksgiving distributions, the turkey drives, all of that. You're seeing that around the community now. It's just the things that we're going to have to do before then are going to have to take priority.

BRODIE: Even if donations increase and food banks are able to acquire more food, how long can they meet this need? How long can food banks reasonably be expected to have several hundred thousand more customers?

SHOEMAKER: Can I give you a negative number as an answer? Because that's what we prefer. And that's the truly heartbreaking part. No one who works at a food bank wants to see more people needing a food bank. And for those of us who've worked in hunger relief for a while, this is unprecedented.

This is worse than it was after 9/11, worse than it was after Hurricane Katrina. This is worse than it was during the height of COVID. Food banks are seeing a higher number of people today than they saw during the height of COVID — more than ever before. And that's before the SNAP funding problem hits on Saturday.