The National Women’s Law Center, MomsRising, and Food Research & Action Center led more than 250 state and national groups in urging Congressional leaders to strengthen and expand the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in the Farm Bill. The groups also called for Congress to use the Farm Bill to improve access to child care and public health, particularly for rural families.
SNAP is our nation’s bedrock nutrition and anti-hunger program, helping millions of women, LGBTQI+ people, and their families around the country to put food on the table and promoting health by supporting families in affording a nutritious diet. Recent data on participation show that women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities were more likely to participate in SNAP:
- From October 2019 to February 2020, women were more than six in 10 (63 percent) of adult SNAP recipients.
- About one in three (33.0 percent) non-elderly adult SNAP recipients was a woman of color in 2020.
- From June 2020 through September 2020, over six in 10 (64 percent) of SNAP households with children were headed by a single adult, 92 percent of which were headed by women.
- In 2020, 29 percent of LGBTQ women and 28 percent of nonbinary/genderqueer individuals reported that they, their partner, or their children received SNAP benefits in the past year.
- In 2015, SNAP served over 11 million people with disabilities.
And yet, existing restrictions, like time limits, prevent too many people from accessing SNAP’s life-saving benefits. Congress must rollback existing time limits and, at a minimum, reject any attempt to expand these already harmful restrictions.
In addition to protecting and strengthening SNAP, the Farm Bill represents an opportunity to advance family economic security through improving access to child care and public health.
Read the groups’ letter to Congress here.