The Implications of The Proposed Changes To SNAP
The Council on Food, Agricultural, and Resource Economics (C-FARE) hosted a free webinar on Friday, February 26th, to discuss The Implications of The Proposed Changes to SNAP. This panel served as a follow-up to our August Webinar on SNAP. Our panel of speakers consisted of three scholars in food and nutrition policy.
Panelists Shewana McSwain (North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University), Parke Wilde (Tufts University), and George C. Davis (Virginia Tech University) discussed their on-going research in the field of food policy and experience working on the educational side of food programs.
Shewana McSwain started the panel by providing the audience a baseline of SNAP-ED knowledge, which is a program that acts as the “educational outreach arm” of SNAP. She used the Tennessee State University SNAP-ED Program as an example of a successful SNAP-ED endeavor. This program focused on developing webinars for on essential shopping, cooking, and eating skills necessary to feed a family within the SNAP budget.
McSwain presented the audience with another successful SNAP-ED program at North Carolina State. North Carolina State partnered with 64 emergency food distribution sites to deliver nutrition card decks to place into boxes and food bags for people in need. The card decks contained 12 recipes to help families prepare healthy meals from the foods they received. The PDF of these card decks can be seen here.
Another excellent example of SNAP-ED’s work is the University of Illinois’ Snap-Ed Program, which launched a community food map in early August that allows individuals to search by Illinois zip code for all food resources in that area. Shewana wrapped up her presentation by highlighting some of the paper resources that SNAP-ED uses to provide educational resources about SNAP to those without access to a consistent internet connection.
Parke Wilde of Tufts University started his presentation by explaining the recent changes made to SNAP, including a 15% increase in maximum benefits and an extension of Pandemic EBT. Wilde also stated that there is a revision of the Thrifty Food Plan scheduled for 2022 that George Davis will go further in-depth on.
Wilde believes that there are three significant ways to increase SNAP Benefits potentially. The first suggestion is to accomplish that goal by increasing the maximum benefit that SNAP recipients get. The second suggestion to improve maximum SNAP benefit is to reduce the benefit reduction rate, so individuals on SNAP see less reduction in their SNAP benefits. The last way to increase SNAP Benefits that Wilde provides is to change the deductions allowed in computing net income. He followed up by providing the audience with a SNAP Food Plan Calculator. He stated that “This calculator is a tool for learning about tradeoffs between the nutrition quality and costs of foods available in the United States.” He then provided the link to the calculator and invited the audience to try it themselves. https://nutrition.tufts.edu/research/projects-initiatives/thrifty-food-calculator
During George Davis’ presentation, he pointed out that the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) is based upon average food prices and food consumption data from 2001. While the TFP is tied to inflation to ensure its value does not decrease yearly, that does not account for the changing prices of goods such as produce between now and 2001. This issue, coupled with changing consumer purchasing habits that are not taken into account, shows a need for an update to TFP. Davis displayed language from the 2018 Farm Bill that will allow TFP to have its value updated based upon “current food prices, food composition data, consumption patterns, and dietary guidance” and will take effect in 2022.
Davis stated that “Recent research indicates that labor cost in-home food production is between 40%-60% of the full cost, depending on the household composition.” This statement led to a question being asked by an audience member on how the cost of labor related to SNAP benefits could be computed. Davis responded with, “There are essentially two ways for estimating the labor value in the home in food production. One is the opportunity cost approach, and one is the market substitute approach. The opportunity cost approach uses statistical modeling procedures to essentially determine how much the household values its time in food production. Alternatively, the simpler market substitute approach uses available market prices for household labor service related to food.” Davis sees importance in calculating the cost of home production of food in the valuation of SNAP benefits.
During the panel, McSwain gave the audience links to another project taken on by the Michigan Snap-Ed program. They partnered with a local food pantry to provide refrigeration to increase fruit and vegetable consumption and placed MyPlate signage in the pantry. Watch a video on it here:
This program is supported in part by the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, and the National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Those who register but cannot attend our webinar can always view a recording of it later at the council’s YouTube channel.