SNAP cuts strain food pantries

On October 1, 2025, the government shut off the lights for 43 days in the longest government shutdown in American history. Although necessary programs including emergency rooms, air traffic control, law enforcement, and border security were left operational, those programs began to be compromised as the shutdown continued.

Food stamps, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) are necessary programs that had started to wane following the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s loss of funding from the shutdown. SNAP benefits—which provide assistance for low-income families to buy necessary groceries—were temporarily paused. Another food aid program, WIC, which supplies food for families with children up to five years old, was also on the verge of being cut entirely. According to CBS News, around 42 million Americans rely on SNAP, including 8.7 percent of New Jersey residents. That’s 826,575 people living in New Jersey whose livelihoods were threatened by this cut in funding.

In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, having adequate food is considered a fundamental right. As students at PHS, we are taught to be empathetic and improve the communities around us. We cannot be bystanders to the institutions meant to protect our most vulnerable while facing this challenging time in our nation.

Although state governments are starting to reinstate benefits after the shutdown’s end, the situation highlights the increasing importance of community-based pantries in the face of government instability. SNAP relies on local grocery stores as the backbone of their program. They provide families with supplemental funds, and participating grocery stores—which are already equipped with sufficient stock, storage, refrigeration, staff, and trucks—handle the consumer side of the process. When SNAP is cut, families are forced to turn to food banks. Unlike grocery stores, pantries are unable to rely on corporate establishments, and thus scaling up supply to meet rising demand is incredibly challenging. At Mercer County Arm in Arm, there has already been a 20 percent increase in demand for food services in the last year, and their burden only increased under the shutdown. Arm in Arm explained in their newsletter that the SNAP crisis prompted “[serving] 250 additional families weekly by extending pantry hours at two sites and bolstering our food resources which requires more funding and more volunteers. To do this for just one month will cost close to $50,000.” Food banks are running out of food, finding that they are understaffed to serve the influx of people coming in, and above all, running out of cash.

By donating their time and effort, PHS students can help alleviate the hardships of Arm in Arm and other vital community resources. Many offer weekly volunteer opportunities, and the club PHS Food Aid hosts monthly drives at local farmer’s markets. From collecting money or packaged goods, to working on educating the people around you, there are an infinite number of possibilities when it comes to fighting food insecurity in Princeton.