Before the federal government shutdown, before November’s delayed benefits, the charitable food system has been holding its threads from snapping – sustained by dedicated staff, volunteer boards, generous donors, farmers, ranchers and volunteers working exhausting hours.
During COVID-19, we saw the lines wrap around buildings and down streets. The threads stretched, but have held.
The volunteers kept showing up through the pandemic and have never stopped. The pantry directors working 60-hour weeks on shoestring budgets kept going. The threads kept holding.
The irony is stark: SNAP – the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – supports over 600,000 Coloradans. And just as winter arrives with its holiday celebrations, those benefits are frozen in political gridlock. Families hoping for retroactive payments once the shutdown ends shouldn’t count on it. There’s no guarantee.
But now those same fraying threads are being asked to do the impossible: absorb a $120 million monthly SNAP gap while food costs rise, while pantries close, while the people doing the work are running on fumes.
Here in Colorado Springs, the Solid Food Rock Community Development Corporation serves 700 families a week, Crossfire Ministries is serving 450-500 households per day, Food to Power served over 35,000 people last year, and Care & Share distributes 25 million pounds of food across Southern Colorado annually. Not to mention every other little food distribution center in between, from churches to school parking lots. These numbers are from before changes to H.R.1 (the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”) and November’s hold on benefits.
Working families, children impacted
It’s easy to characterize folks who need food into categories of no ‘job’ or those experiencing houselessness, because they are the most visible. But, it’s not just the ‘usual’ faces. Locally based government employees are showing up for the first time. Working families who’ve never needed help are registering. As one food pantry director put it plainly during a call hosted by the Provecho Collective in which the Colorado Department of Human Services was present: “Our existing charitable system doesn’t have the capacity. Our people are tired. Our staff are tired. Our volunteers are tired.”
Food banks across Colorado are operating at double their COVID-era capacity with a fraction of the resources.
But this isn’t just about satiating hunger. When SNAP benefits disappear, the entire foundation of the family’s financial stability crumbles.
Imagine being put in the position to choose between rent or food? Gas to get to work or groceries? Medications or meals? As Gina Plata-Nino of the Food Research & Action Center warns, “Folks [will face] really difficult choices between what they’re able to afford.” These choices don’t feel like choices when you’re physiologically bound to eating!
Children’s school performance declines when they’re hungry. Health conditions worsen. Small convenience stores – the ones that actually serve food-insecure neighborhoods – operate on such thin margins that losing half their customer base for even a week could force them to close, or stop accepting benefits, which is a problem both ways when there is not another food market in the neighborhood within relative distance. Under these circumstances, proximity is exponentially important. When you’re walking, when you don’t have a car, when bus fare competes with food money – proximity matters. And we’re losing neighborhood-level access right when demand is exploding.
And for the food banks themselves? They’re “supposed to help with emergencies,” says Plata-Nino. “They’re not supposed to constantly step up when the federal government refuses to act.” When you are always focused on emergency assistance, it is crippling to work towards systems change.
In rural Colorado the crisis hits even harder in places like Montezuma County, where one-fifth of the population relies on SNAP. In these areas, food pantries span thousands of square miles and may have only ONE paid staff person between them. The rest? Volunteers, often retired individuals, mobilize private citizens with trucks and trailers to distribute food.
USDA funds could offset SNAP crisis – but won’t be used
To be clear: This is what TIME Magazine called “a man-made disaster.” This isn’t a natural disaster. This isn’t an unavoidable crisis. The USDA has contingency funds. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has the authority to act. As Plata-Nino notes, “They know how much money they have in the bank … It’s a matter of choice.”
The holidays – when food banks are already stretched thinnest – are here. And as one food bank director put it: “As a human and as a father, I’m very concerned for the parents that have to tell their kids that they didn’t get their SNAP.”
Act now
So what should we do? Immediately, we can donate to your local food pantries. Churches can mobilize their congregations to act NOW, if not already doing so! Businesses can match employee donations or allow the work of food pantries to get in front of your customers, as a part of your holiday giving campaigns. Individuals can consider spending less on takeout for a week. The math is simple: if each of the 636,000 Springs’ residents who don’t rely on SNAP gave $5 that’s $3.1 million in food purchasing that can help pantries shore up some of those gaps.
We also need more from our elected officials. Governor Polis’s request for $10 million in emergency food bank support is a critical first step, and we’re grateful for his leadership in recognizing the crisis. But Colorado needs to match the scale of response we’re seeing in other states. California allocated $80 million and deployed the National Guard. Virginia’s Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin declared a state of emergency on Oct. 23.
Colorado can – and must – do more. We need an emergency declaration to mobilize additional resources. We need Congress to reopen the government and restore benefits. And ultimately, we need to fundamentally rethink a system that places the burden of feeding hungry neighbors on exhausted volunteers and underfunded nonprofits.
There is a person behind every statistic. A senior bound to their house. A grandmother who is wondering how to make holiday dinners. A parent saying no to food or snacks, because there are no SNAP benefits this month. A volunteer showing up for their 100th week in a row, tired but refusing to let their neighbors go hungry.
The threads of our food system have been SNAPping. The question is: will we let them break completely, or will we show up for our neighbors the way those exhausted volunteers have shown up, week after week, year after year?
We have enough. We’ve always had enough. What we lack isn’t food or money – it’s the collective will to ensure no one goes hungry while others have plenty.
The charitable food system can’t save us from this man-made disaster. But we can work to be in solidarity with each other. We just have to choose to.
Patience Kabwasa is the executive director of Food to Power.
