When you think of the farm bill and rural communities, you think about the price supports and the crop insurance and the various other programs it contains for farmers, all of which help rural communities economically. What you often don't think about is how much those same rural communities benefit from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program—or food stamps—side of it. But food assistance groups, like the West Texas Food Bank, are well aware, and are very worried with what House Republicans want to do.
Libby Campbell hates to see people in West Texas go hungry, but that's exactly what could happen if Congressional Republicans follow through with their plan to cut off food aid to those who miss one month of work. Campbell is the executive director of the West Texas Food Bank, which serves 19 mostly rural counties surrounding Odessa. She said some of the region's 56,000 adults and children enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) could be left in the lurch by lawmakers' get-tough-on-freeloaders rhetoric."It's a vast rural community we service," Campbell said. "They are located in food deserts. … SNAP gives people access to food they wouldn't normally have access to."
In order to get benefits currently, Texans ages 18 to 59 who aren't disabled or pregnant must work part-time or agree to take a job if offered. The proposed rules would require those individuals to work at least 20 hours per week regularly within a month of joining the program, or risk being booted from SNAP for 12 months. Though parents of children younger than 6 would be exempt, anti-hunger advocates say the tighter restrictions would waylay working-class families, especially in small-town Texas, where a country-to-city exodus has caused some rural economies to flounder.
In Texas, SNAP participation is slightly higher in less populated areas than in big cities, a trend attributed to rural poverty.