If there was one thing I took from years of interviewing and listening to Kansas State University’s Barry Flinchbaugh speak about agriculture and food policy, it was that decoupling farm programs from nutrition programs was a good way to kill the farm bill. And if you kill the farm bill, he would say, there goes the safety net that keeps farmers growing the food, fiber and fuel that is a direct tie to our national security.
It was a matter of numbers, Flinchbaugh used to explain. In the U.S. House of Representatives, 218 votes are needed to pass a bill. Now, it used to be that those folks we sent to D.C. had ties to agriculture in some fashion. But as we know, our population is three, sometimes four generations removed from the act of putting seed in the ground or raising livestock. Well, that means that a large number of congressional districts don’t really have a “rural” or “agricultural” population.
Not everyone may raise food, but everyone needs to eat. And the quickest way to build a coalition of votes to get a bipartisan bill over the finish line has been to make sure that there’s something in it for every district. Even if, according to Congressional Quarterly, as in 2024 we have just 23 U.S. representatives who identify as farmers, ranchers or cattlemen. We couple the nutrition programs with the farm and conservation programs to get the whole thing passed for all Americans.
The other takeaway Flinchbaugh passed along years ago is that the farm bill isn’t making anyone whole. It’s a safety net for both farmers and consumers.
At least that’s what he taught me.
By the numbers
Recently, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act updated the major farm safety-net programs like crop insurance, disaster assistance and commodity programs. So, we are about to see if Flinchbaugh’s adage rings true.
Nutrition programs like SNAP have been part of the federal government shutdown debate. On Oct. 21, an email was sent by the Kansas Department for Children and Families explaining that the USDA Food and Nutrition Service warned states that if the lapse in funding because of the shutdown continued, there would not be enough money to pay full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits on Nov. 1.
For the state of Kansas, that means more than 93,000 households, accounting for about 188,000 Kansans, would not receive the $34.4 million in federal SNAP dollars for the month of November. That sounds like an astronomical number, doesn’t it? But simple math means that’s an average of $183 per Kansas recipient, give or take, for one month. Or $45.74 on average per recipient per week, which is about $2.17 per meal.
By the way, just to be transparent, the average government payment received by Kansas Farm Management Association farms in 2024 was $67,136, or about $1,291 per week, according to KFMA’s own figures.
Now, we know that those dollars — both SNAP and farm payments — have multiplying economic effects beyond just the producer or the consumer’s safety net. For example, farmers use farm program payments to cover some of their input costs, and those dollars circulate in the businesses of the community and support the tax base. It doesn’t make them whole, and there’s still a large gap to cover, but it’s a safety net.
Well, SNAP recipients take their benefits and spend them in their communities, often shopping around for the biggest bang for their bucks. Sometimes that’s the Dollar General, sometimes it’s Walmart, and sometimes — if they’re in a food desert — it’s a convenience store.
USDA-ERS in 2019 reported that for every $1 in SNAP benefits, $1.54 is generated in economic activity. The same government report also shows that every $20,000 of SNAP redemptions in what you and I call rural counties supports about one agricultural job.
USDA-ERS reports, too, that farmers received about 24.3 cents for every $1 spent on food at home in 2023 — and that included SNAP purchases.
On the other hand, for every $1 lost in SNAP benefits, recipients tend to reduce their food purchases by 50 cents. See, it’s because SNAP benefits are a safety net. They fill in the gap in the wages of these employed recipients, or from military pay, or they feed foster children in foster homes, to name just a few examples.
The bigger picture
A Government Accountability Office study analyzed data from nine states and found that among the top 25 employers in those states, more than 1.3 million workers were enrolled in SNAP, Medicaid or both. In some of those states, workers in the top 25 companies accounted for almost 20% of total SNAP enrollments. Walmart, for example, captures 18% of all SNAP spending nationwide while also employing thousands of recipients.
Friends, just like a change in the farm safety net is felt in our communities, a change in SNAP is felt all through the food chain. The ripples don’t stop at the farmer or the SNAP recipient — they affect small-town grocery and convenience stores, the Dollar General that just opened in your small town, the truckers who deliver to them, the wholesalers that move the product, the manufacturers that turn commodities into food, and on and on until it hits the farmer.
Is there abuse in the programs? C’mon, friends, you and I aren’t that naïve. But at the end of the day, slashing and burning something without a viable alternative is a good way to hurt us all. And while farmers are still looking for a skinny farm bill, this SNAP funding situation has the potential to blow up that coalition that Flinchbaugh warned us we needed to get a farm bill over the finish line.
So, as we continue to argue about who is eligible for what dollars and we judge what those dollars are spent on, maybe we should reframe the conversation. Farm and nutrition spending is an investment in our neighbors that has a multiplying effect on the communities in which we all live. It keeps businesses that we all use open. Oh, and it keeps people fed.