Under the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” new funding for SNAP-Ed will be officially snuffed out by Sept. 30, causing food banks with related programs to rethink how they talk to clients about nutrition.
As recently as 2022, the USDA had positioned the 33-year-old SNAP-Ed program as a key mechanism for helping Americans achieve nutrition security. Now food banks are contemplating the pivots they will have to make to overcome big hits to their nutrition education budgets.
Feeding Northeast Florida, for example, will lose $1.2 million in SNAP-Ed funding, while Hunger Task Force in Wisconsin will absorb a blow of $467,000. Food Bank for New York City is closing a program that taught 14,000 public school kids each year about nutrition, as well as its Just Say Yes classes aimed at low-income adults and seniors. Second Harvest of Silicon Valley does not receive any SNAP-Ed funding, but expects many of its agency partners to feel the impact.
Rather than shutter their nutrition programming, some food banks are trying to figure out how to deploy it in new ways. “In the midst of this time, we are being more creative and more innovative because we know the value of providing these resources for our community members,” said Alejandra Navarro, Director of Community Nutrition at Second Harvest of Silicon Valley.
It was easy to overlook the demise of SNAP-Ed at first because it occurred at the same time that massive cuts to the overall SNAP program were also passed (see more on the impact of the “Big Beautiful Bill” on food banks here). With a budget of $536 million in fiscal year 2025, SNAP-Ed’s elimination is expected to cut about $5 billion from the federal budget through 2034, while the changes to SNAP are expected to cut about $186 billion over about the same time.
When it comes to the SNAP-Ed cuts, food banks are trying to be resilient. At Feeding Northeast Florida, which employed seven nutrition educators, two registered dieticians and two chefs, changes to SNAP-Ed are being viewed as an opportunity to shift into more impactful programming.
Under SNAP-Ed, Feeding Northeast Florida’s nutrition educators traveled throughout its territory of 8,300 square miles to conduct in-person nutrition classes. “The model is really predicated on that face-to-face typical learning environment,” which presented complications in terms of requiring educators to travel long distances and file lots of in-depth reports, said Susan King, President and CEO.
SNAP-Ed also did not allow for disease treatment, only education about disease prevention, which kept it from being used in clinical settings. That was a limitation for Feeding Northeast Florida, which works closely with a number of free clinics and federally qualified health centers to distribute food at their sites and also run a networked referral system. “In our clinical settings, they can take a group of diabetics and actually work on disease treatment, not just generally talk about how to prevent diabetes,” King noted.
In a post SNAP-Ed world, Feeding Northeast Florida will be bringing nutrition education into more settings, such as clinics where it can do prescriptive nutrition, and even car lines. Recently, the food bank tested a short-range FM radio channel as a way of disseminating nutrition information while clients are sitting in their cars during drive-through food distributions.
And while the food bank will be terminating its SNAP-Ed staff as of September 30th, it will be hiring some staffers back, including to work in a large new production kitchen it expects to open in October. “We’re looking at this as an opportunity,” King said of SNAP-Ed’s demise. “We’re going to refocus all our nutrition efforts into things that really align more with the way we feel we would be most successful.”
Second Harvest Silicon Valley is also planning to be much more intentional about how it supports its community through nutrition education, Navarro said. Going forward, the four members of its nutrition team will bring classes to a wider variety of community organizations beyond its agency partners, such as libraries, senior centers and even farms. “Where are the high need communities?” Navarro said. “Where are the spaces that are familiar, that are safe, where are these gathering spaces that our community attends?”
The food bank has worked for the past few years to transform its “cookie-cutter” nutrition programming into a more dynamic offering. The program seeks to build trust by incorporating cultural foods and traditions into the classes, and also acknowledges that traumatic experiences and even daily stressors can prevent people from having a healthy relationship with food. The food bank also recently opened an online nutrition center that features recipes submitted by food bank clients, volunteers and team members, which gets about 4,000 visitors a month. “We want to ensure that everyone who needs nutrition education services can have it,” Navarro said. “It should be a right for all.”
Hunger Task Force is working on securing funding so it can continue to offer its nutrition programming, which is supported by three full-time staffers and one half-time staff member. Its current programming includes doing nutrition education at pantries and senior centers, and even taking people to grocery stores to learn how to shop on a budget. It hopes to expand more broadly into school systems by offering classes to students, as well as organizing to promote school meals. “We will really look to build upon the relationships and connections that we’ve made through nutrition education to expand access to school meals,” said Matt King, CEO.
Organizations more strictly focused on nutrition education may have a harder time than food banks when it comes to pivoting away from the SNAP-Ed funding. California-based Leah’s Pantry, which specializes in trauma-informed nutrition security initiatives, for example, is reeling from a 90% cut to its funding caused by SNAP-Ed’s elimination.
“It’s dreadful. The impact is dreadful,” said Adrienne Markworth, Executive Director.
Leah’s Pantry is looking at undergoing a complete restructuring along with a transition period that includes keeping many of its services available for free, and plenty of “train the trainer” initiatives to get more community members tapped into the benefits of nutrition. Said Markworth, “Long term, we’ll have to make lots of structural decisions about how we deliver our programs, but for now, it feels right to just connect.” – Chris Costanzo
CAPTION, TOP: Second Harvest of Silicon Valley hosted a nutrition education class and meal for farmworkers at the farm.
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