Benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ran out for more than 40 million Americans — including hundreds of thousands of Arizonans — over the weekend as the federal government shutdown dragged on.
A judge stepped in late last week and ordered the Trump administration to use contingency funds to keep paying food stamp benefits, but it was unclear if families would get their full benefits in November. The administration needed to tell two judges if it planned to comply with court orders, and faced a deadline to do so: Monday, Nov. 3.
Now, families across the state and country are figuring out how they’re going to put food on the table. Food banks are seeing unprecedented demand, and restaurants, food trucks and politicians are stepping up to help across the state.
The impact of any delay in SNAP benefits could be felt even more acutely in rural parts of Arizona where poverty levels are higher and more people rely on these benefits for help.
Andrea McAdow, owner of Rosebird Farms in Kingman and owner and logistics manager of the Flagstaff Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA), joined The Show to talk more about what people are facing in rural parts of Northern Arizona.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: So you run a farm in northern Arizona. You’ve been instrumental in helping kind of bridge the gap it sounds like for SNAP recipients there in Mojave County. First of all, just tell us what you’re doing up there.
ANDREA McADOW: Yeah, so we have our small farm, but we also are an aggregator and distributor of local food products for other farmers. And we connect to our consumers through retail, home delivery, and we work a lot with our food banks and food access points in our community.
GILGER: OK, so you’re talking to people receiving SNAP benefits in that part of the state. What is your advice? What can you do?
McADOW: Yeah, so right now, I would say if you do have existing SNAP benefits that were left over from the past month, you are still able to use those at any SNAP retailers. With the Double Up Food Bucks program, if you have outstanding benefits through those, you are able to use those as well.
And then there are Double Up Food Bucks vouchers, available at the retailers around the state, which in rural Arizona it’s much more limited. In Phoenix, there’s quite a bit more locations that you can shop with, but we have a very limited number of vouchers that people can come in, pick up and use to shop.
GILGER: So as I mentioned, you also help organize the Flagstaff CSA, where folks can kind of contribute to local farms and get locally grown food in exchange. You’re kind of part of this local food network in that part of the state. Talk a little bit about what the community response has looked like up there from various farmers like yourself.
McADOW: Yeah, so we have seen our local community really pull together. There are tons of farmers offering discounts on their products. We are starting a mutual aid fund, so people can donate and purchase food for people that need it. We’ve seen our farmers markets step up in big ways. A lot of our local small businesses as well are putting together funds to donate to the local food banks. So it’s really the small local businesses that are banding together to figure out ways to help feed people.
GILGER: Yeah, so back up for a moment then and tell us a little bit, Andrea, about what the need looks like up there in northern Arizona and rural parts of the state. We know that the need is often higher. There are higher levels of poverty. What are you seeing?
McADOW: Yeah, so we have, I believe in Mojave County, about 15% to 19% of our population uses SNAP benefits. And there are, besides food banks, very few places for people to access food. We are seeing other nonprofits tell people to come to us, and we are a very small, small shop and outfit. So we’re doing what we can. I’ve gotten so many emails and calls from people that are looking for food that have young children to feed and aren’t sure where their next meal is gonna come from.
GILGER: What are you growing up there? Like, are you out of supply at this point?
McADOW: Luckily, we work with a statewide system of food co-ops and local farmers, so we are able to source quite a bit now from people in Phoenix that are producing. They’re coming into their season. So we work together to move food north to south, in this kind of efficient pipeline.
So we are able to source, even if we’re running low on our product here in Mojave County. We’ve come a long way since COVID, and that has been a happy conclusion from that, at least.
GILGER: Well, let’s talk about what happened during COVID as well. It seems like it says to me a lot about the power of the local food community up there, the local food network up there. You said this has happened before during COVID, where you were sort of the last line of defense for a lot of people.
McADOW: Yeah, our shelves. I mean we went to a grocery store, and I’m sure this happened in a lot of places, but our systems broke down. We had no produce on our shelves. So we had a line out the door for the first time, and our business was very new at that point.
But yeah, our local food systems were the ones who showed up for their community, who were offering discounts to people in need and who were there. And that’s really what shows the need to support our local food systems because we are the ones that are gonna be here, in our communities when, you know, the corporations don’t have to look their neighbors in the face and see people hungry.
GILGER: I mean, I wonder though, how far you can take that. Local farms, I’m sure, are operating on tough, tight margins. How much can you give?
McADOW: Yeah, thankfully we have had our community step up and offer a lot of donations to help cover those costs. I’ve been able to offer some discounts where we will cover some of our operating costs on some things. But we can’t give away everything. We still need to be able to continue to operate too. So yeah, we obviously can’t take this forever.
GILGER: Let me ask you lastly, Andrea, in the last minute or so here. I mean, just how you feel about all this, like this is happening because of an ongoing government shutdown and sort of a fight at the federal level about how and where we’re going to fund benefits like food stamps for folks. What do you think?
McADOW: Yeah, it is extremely frustrating. I mean, we have the money. It’s a matter of us prioritizing it in our culture, and this is a program that is extremely economically efficient. It produces $1.50 to $1.80 per $1 spent on SNAP benefits in local economic activity.
And especially for rural communities where there are more low-income people, that’s a huge amount of money spent at our level. So, yeah, we need to have failsafes for people who can’t help themselves, like children and elderly and disabled, which make up about 70% of the population on SNAP.
It’s extremely frustrating and disappointing that this benefit is going away so suddenly for people who really, really do need it.
GILGER: Yeah, and lots to watch for what happens next on that front.
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