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Farmers and conservation programs aren’t the only ones again facing uncertainty as the latest extension of the 2018 Farm Bill expired on Sept. 30. Residents, including young people, who depend on food benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, have serious concerns as well.
Congress has yet to reach a reconciled, long-term farm bill, despite the House passing a Republican-led Farm Bill in April and the Senate Agriculture Committee advancing its own version in September.
The Farm Bill is comprehensive federal legislation that governs agricultural, food, nutrition and conservation policy. Congress updates it every five years, with the last Farm Bill adopted in 2018. After initially expiring in 2023, Congress has repeatedly extended the 2018 bill, but it has yet to be fully reinstated.
The stalled Farm Bill has intensified food insecurity pressures and threatened farmers across Pennsylvania. Food assistance programs warn that further delays will put young people experiencing food insecurity at severe risk. But young SNAP recipients and farmers don’t want any Farm Bill; they want one that restores their benefits and reverses funding cuts to secure their future.
For Jasper Redrow and their family, the past few months have been excruciating. Jasper, 24, has a 1-year-old daughter and has been on SNAP benefits for four years. Redrow’s account, where they can manage their SNAP eligibility, was recently suspended without notice, and they were unable to access their benefits for almost a month. During this time, their fiance lost his job.
Redrow said they were given conflicting explanations and details about the suspension but that there was no “organization or … any real cognition to the way that they were handling cases even though these are people’s lives and livelihood.”
Partisan gridlock over SNAP funding and fallout from the passing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act have been the primary roadblocks stalling the Farm Bill in the Senate. About 234,000 Pennsylvanians have lost SNAP benefits since the sweeping federal cuts were enacted. Though Redrow did not lose their benefits, they said communication and administrative delays have resulted in significant obstacles for them and their family.
“I immediately saw the difference in the communication methods and the fact that I stopped getting notices at all about anything. I had to call each time and yet again each time I was told different information,” they said.
For Redrow, the partisan disputes that have delayed a deal are due to “a clear class difference in the people that are talking about these issues versus the people that are actually receiving these benefits.”
In an attempt to lower federal spending, the White House and congressional Republicans aim to shift financial and administrative burdens to state budgets. Redrow said they hope that Democrats are able to enact a two-year delay or reversal of the cost shift. For them, the biggest issue is the “cognitive dissonance” among politicians regarding money.
“They’re not looking at the fact that [SNAP recipients] are living, breathing people that have families and have worries. They have debts. They lose jobs. [Politicians] eliminate the humanity. They take out the part that makes people people because they’re too worried about money,” Redrow said.
As the Farm Bill remains unresolved, families like Redrows are among those worried about potential funding cuts. Redrow said they are “fearful” of how existing cuts and future proposals could threaten their food security.
A major change under the OBBBA that took effect Oct. 1 requires states to pay 75% of SNAP’s administrative expenses, while federal reimbursement drops from 50% to 25%. In Oct. 2027, states with a SNAP payment error rate above 6% will be required to pay 5% to 15% of total benefit costs, a cost previously fully covered by the federal government. Lawmakers are currently debating the cost shift, with the current Republican-led Farm Bill proposing a one-year shift delay, while Democrats demand a two-year delay.
Sarah Weill-Jones, a member of Advocacy Corps by the Friends Committee on National Legislation, said that states are rapidly trying to decrease error rates to reduce their benefit costs. “In that process, they’re just kicking people off SNAP to reduce the error rate,” they said.
Republican lawmakers have said that high error rates indicate eligibility fraud, although Weill-Jones said that rates are due to clerical errors or miscalculations.
“These are people that are working hard like everyone else and SNAP is just supplemental to help them get by. It’s people that are disabled or older adults that are no longer able to work. It’s children that are exempt from the work requirement and are now losing their benefits [because of] representatives that are not protecting them,” Weill-Jones said.
Walker said young people and “anybody that is potentially able, where their labor can be capitalized” are most likely to be cut from assistance programming. Weill-Jones also said that the changes in eligibility “have gotten down to a science.”
“Young people may technically be kind of functioning well enough and working and going to school and living independently but still not having enough money for food and groceries,” they said.
