The percentage of the population with income below 130% of the federal poverty line—the income limit for SNAP eligibility—increased substantially during the period of the Great Recession, from 54 million in 2007 to 60 million in 2009, and 64 million in 2011. During this period, the rate of SNAP participation rose among eligible households from 65% in 2007 to 75% in 2010, up to 83% in 2012, with the program expanding at a record pace of 20,000 people per day. By the end of 2014, more than 46 million people, over 14% of all Americans, were using SNAP. SNAP eligibility and use, however, varies significantly by race/ethnicity, with communities of color experiencing the highest rates of eligibility for, and use of, SNAP, particularly during economic downturns. For example, by end of 2009, SNAP was used by 12% of the US population , 28% of all Blacks and 15% of Latinos/as nationwide were using SNAP. On the other hand, only 8% of whites were using SNAP, substantially below the national average. Such trends follow racial/ethnic and economic geographies as well, with SNAP use greatest where poverty and racial/ethnic stratification runs deep. Across the ten core counties of the Mississippi Delta, for example, 45% of Black residents receive SNAP support, while in larger cities such as St. Louis, with a population of 353,064, the percentage of Black residents receiving SNAP support rises to 60%. Even in the largest cities, those with over 500,000 people, such trends re-main: white SNAP use peaks at 16% in the Bronx, New York for example, cannabis racks while Black SNAP use peaks at 54% in Kent, Michigan. Significantly, there are 20 counties across the United States where Blacks are at least 10 times as likely as whites to be SNAP beneficiaries, and 26 counties in the United States where over 80% of Blacks were SNAP recipients.
Conversely, there are only 5 counties with more than 39% of white receiving SNAP benefits. The growth of SNAP use amidst the Great Recession has been especially rapid in locations worst hit by the housing bubble burst, and particularly in suburbs across the United States where SNAP use has grown by half or more in dozens of counties. Furthermore, this is the first recession in which a majority of low-income communities and communities of color in metropolitan areas live in the suburbs, giving SNAP and other federal aid new prominence there. The increase in SNAP eligibility and use thus mirrors the impacts of the crisis in housing and employment, and the racialized distribution of impacts of such crises. Specifically, SNAP use was found to have increased by the greatest amount in places characterized by increased poverty, increased unemployment, more home foreclosures, and increased Latino/a populations. A 2012 Congressional Budget Office report confirmed such findings and estimated that although 20% of the growth in SNAP spending was caused by policy changes, including the temporarily higher benefit amounts enacted in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 , the housing crisis and weak economy were responsible for about 65% of the growth in spending on benefits between 2007 and 2011, with the remainder caused by other factors, including higher food prices and lower incomes among beneficiaries. Such has been the case historically: when unemployment rose, SNAP use always did too, signaling how SNAP use has long played a role in alleviating periods of economic distress. As such, SNAP is heavily focused on the poor. According to a 2015 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report, about 92% of SNAP benefits go to households with incomes below the poverty line, and 57% go to households below half of the poverty line . Because families with the greatest need receive the largest benefits, and because households in the lowest income bracket use twice the proportion of their total expenditures on food than do those households in the highest income bracket, SNAP is a powerful anti-poverty tool.
SNAP, when measured as income, kept 4.8 million people out of poverty in 2013, including 2.1 million children, and lifted 1.3 million children above half of the poverty line in 2013. Furthermore, SNAP is also effective in reducing extreme poverty. A 2011 National Poverty Center study found that SNAP, when measured as income, nearly halved the number of extremely poor families with children in 2011 by 48% and cut the number of children in extreme poverty by more than half . That the increase in SNAP eligibility and use during the start of the Great Recession mirrored larger trends in the economy—and was patterned after long-standing racial and economic inequality—signals the need to again assert that the experience of food insecurity is one part of a larger structure that continues to affect the most historically marginalized populations. A 2010 Census Bureau report found that the recession not only grew the wealth gap between rich and poor; it also exacerbated the gap between different racial/ethnic groups. Between 2007 and 2009, the wealth gap between whites and Blacks nearly doubled, with whites having 22 times as much household wealth as Blacks and 15 times as much as Latinos/as. By 2010, the median household net worth for whites was $110,729 while for Blacks it was $4,995 and for Latinos/as it was of $7,424. Between 2005 and 2010, furthermore, median household net worth for Blacks, Latinos/as, and Asian Americans fell by roughly 60%, while the median net worth for white households fell by only 23%. Many people of color were pushed into bad mortgages by the nation’s biggest banks, while the loss of 600,000 public sector jobs during the recession also had a significant impact on communities of color, as Black and Latino/a workers are more likely to hold government jobs than their white counterparts. Although the current slow economic recovery is not unusual, the cumulative and sustained impacts of unemployment, income loss, and housing loss disproportionately experienced by low-income communities and communities of color signal the value of a safety net that protects such marginalized communities from sustained poverty and food insecurity. Two major parts of the recessionary safety net are the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Unemployment Insurance program of the US Department of Labor, which provides financial support to workers who become unemployed through no fault of their own. As with SNAP, pipp drying racks expenditures for UI generally expand during economic downturns and shrink during times of economic growth, primarily because economic downturns result in wider eligibility and participation. Significantly, households that participate jointly in both SNAP and UI can improve their ability to sustain food expenditures, nutrition, and overall standard of living during times of economic challenge and are an indicator of the strength of the recessionary safety net itself.
Toward this end, a 2010 USDA study found that the recession not only increased the number of SNAP households but also increased the extent of joint SNAP or UI households: an estimated 14.4% of SNAP households also received UI at some point in 2009—nearly double that of 7.8% in 2005. Moreover, an estimated 13.4% of UI households also received SNAP at some point in 2009, an increase of about one-fifth over the estimate of 11.1% from 2005. Significantly, people of color, hardest hit during the economic downturn, benefitted the most from the safety net. In 2009, the estimated joint SNAP and UI use for Blacks and for Latinos/as exceeded joint use by whites by about 16.6 and 9.8%, respectively. Together, SNAP and UI help sustain aggregate household spending and national production in economic downturns, making the impact of such downturns less severe than they would be in the absence of the programs. Such benefits are particularly pronounced for communities of color who not only experience relatively greater degrees of poverty, but also are hardest hit during economic downturns.In April 2012, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that temporarily higher benefit amounts enacted in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 accounted for about 20% of the growth in SNAP spending during the Great Recession. New legislation can thus affect safety net programs such as SNAP or UI and provide additional support for household spending and national production. Historically, there has been some form of federally financed SNAP and UI benefit extensions during recessions that build upon the benefits they already provide. In 2008, for example, national legislation provided a temporary increase in SNAP benefits for all SNAP participants and expanded eligibility for jobless adults without children. Similarly, UI benefits were extended by the Emergency Unemployment Compensation 2008 program. Together, such efforts highlight the potential benefit of strategic program extensions, particularly during pronounced times of need for communities that are already marginalized. Along with the federally financed temporary benefit extensions, these programs have the potential to have a substantial impact in cushioning the negative effects of recessions on the US population and economy. Ultimately, however, such program expansions are neither a long term nor a structural solution. While SNAP and other federal safety net programs are useful during times of economic hardship and pronounced food insecurity, or as potential anti-poverty tools, such programs only superficially act as efficient and effective forms of local economic stimulus. According to the USDA, for example, SNAP spending yields a substantial local multiplier effect, with every $1 of SNAP benefits spent in a community generating an additional $1.80 in local spending. Yet because many larger grocery retailers have non-local corporate headquarters, sales revenue is transferred outside the community, a phenomenon called “leakage.” For example, in 2008, the City of Oakland, CA estimated that approximately $230 million in grocery store spending is leaving the city. Thus, although it has the potential to help millions of Americans feed their families during economic crises and keep many out of extreme poverty, investing in SNAP is a questionable long term economic stimulus policy and social and economic equity tool because of the benefits accrued by corporations, and the injustices such corporations perpetuate with regard to the exploitation of their employees. Despite these limitations, however, both SNAP and UI have indeed had positive effects on both Gross Domestic Product and on job growth, as well as long term effects on beneficiaries. Research has shown, for example, that access to SNAP in childhood leads to a significant reduction in the incidence of obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes, and, for women, on the other hand, an increase in economic self-sufficiency. Thus, such costs and benefits ultimately beg the question of whether SNAP, and the Farm Bill more broadly, are the best long term approach to challenging structural poverty, particularly as it is perpetuated by corporate control itself.THE STRUCTURE OF US AGRICULTURE determines and reflects the challenges faced by US farmers and rural communities. This includes farm size, type, cropping patterns, and ownership. Moreover, the federal food and agricultural policies, including the Farm Bill, affect the structure of US farmland through multiple forces and drivers, including taxes, lending programs, environmental and safety regulation, rural development programs, research and development funding, and commodity programs. In this light, Part III examines how such programs have shaped the structure of US farmland and, in turn, how they have affected the socio-economic well-being of low-income farmers and communities, as well as farmers and communities of color. It does so, first, by providing a snapshot of the structure of US farmland, including the outcomes of structural racialization with regard to farmland ownership and government payments . It then outlines the historical significance of change in the structure of US agriculture over the 20th century, and examines three federal rural and agricultural support programs in particular: Farm Service Agency lending programs, Farm Bill commodity programs, and Farm Bill Rural Development programs. Ultimately, Part III argues that such programs have historically undergirded white farmland ownership at the expense of farmland ownership by people of color. Significantly, these programs also highlight how white agricultural land ownership was held up amidst, and by way of, increasing consolidation and specialization, with farmers of color on the losing side of such shifts in the structure of US farmland. In the push for the dismantlement of corporate control and structural racialization, such trends thus require greater attention with regard to their role in intensifying marginality that low-income communities and communities of color face in terms of wealth, access to program benefits, and land access.