Roughly 70,000 Oregonians have already dropped off the SNAP program since 2025, because of the Trump administration enacting the biggest cuts in the history of SNAP, our nation’s main line of defense against hunger.

At the same time, the Trump Administration also clawed back federal funding to food pantries around the country, including the Oregon Food Bank. Combined, these attacks on our state safety net are causing havoc for families struggling to put food on the table as the price of groceries soars. We interview Matt Newell-Ching, the public policy manager at the Oregon Food Bank. And we tell the story of single parent Gerty Ferguson in Eugene, who uses SNAP for her and her two young girls.

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Transcript

[We make this transcript available for your convenience and to increase the accessibility of our content. The transcript was generated by software and was slightly edited for clarity. If you are able to, we encourage you to listen to the recording.]

Jeslyn Lemke: Last year, the Trump administration made the biggest cuts in the history of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, our nation’s main line of defense against hunger.

In the few months since April 2025, roughly 70,000 Oregonians have already dropped off the SNAP program. This will be devastating for the families already struggling financially in our communities.

At the same time, the federal government also clawed back federal funding to food pantries around the country, including the Oregon Food Bank. Combined, these attacks on our state safety net are causing havoc for families struggling to put food on the table as the price of groceries soars, according to Matt Newell-Ching. Matt is the public policy manager at the Oregon Food Bank. As he explains in this episode, food pantries in Oregon have seen a huge increase in demand in recent months, leaving pantry shelves bare as more and more Oregonians lose their SNAP benefits.

We also interview single parent Gerty in Eugene, who uses SNAP for her and her two young girls. Gerty shares just how hard it is to stretch 400 SNAP dollars at the grocery store these days with the skyrocketing cost of food.

Okay, with that, we begin with Gerty and her girls at the Albertsons in Eugene.

Gerty: This is $13 for cheese. It’s not gonna work. We can’t pay $13 for cheese. But we can pay $3.99. That’s like the bacon that we like to buy, is that thick cut applewood smoked bacon. But, like, we’ve got a bunch of kids and that $17, $19 block of bacon will last for, like, one day.

Jeslyn: Ferguson is a single mom to two little girls, ages three and nine. Gerty lives in Eugene, Oregon and has worked for eight years at a crisis hotline in town.

Gerty: So I answer a crisis hotline. We also take some in person interventions. So my job is, depending on my role that day, is to be the first person that answers a call that somebody speaks with when they’re in crisis

Jeslyn: Recently, Gerty herself has faced a crisis; how to feed her family while paying for rent and all other essentials. Gerty was laid off in 2025 as part of major budget cuts, but then rehired back part time.

Gerty: So my take home pay per month is about $1,200.

Jeslyn: To help put food on the table. Gerty relies on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program known as SNAP, our nation’s first line of defense against hunger. Gerty receives about $400 in SNAP benefits. 

Gerty: Yeah. To go to the grocery store right now with 400 and some dollars a months, it’s challenging. You know, I don’t really bring the kids anymore. It just feels really bad when they want something to be like, that’s not in our budget.

Gerty’s child: “Balloons!”

Gerty: “Oh, yeah. So cute.”

Gerty’s child: “ I want to get one.”

Gerty:  We’ll see. I’m not sure. Gotta get the rest of the stuff we need, and then we’ll see if we can get something extra.

Gerty’s child: Okay. I want to get that!

Gerty: I was like, oh my gosh, no, we do not need to get that.I tend to go alone. I tend to, you know, try to go to the cheaper places. 

Jeslyn: But the rising cost of living has only made things harder.

Gerty: Oh my gosh, when I go to buy food and I look at the prices of just the essentials, eggs, milk, butter, cheese, the things that are staples for our family. It’s astounding to see how high the prices are. I can’t go to the grocery store and buy six items of anything and leave without spending, like $100.

Outside of SNAP, I probably spend about $400 to $500 of my own money per month. Yeah. That’s what I spend on groceries outside of SNAP.  And so, yeah,  it’s challenging. Thankfully, they both like ramen noodles, so. Which is terrible. But, you know, we jazz it up. We have some vegetables. But it’s, you know, it’s not what I would choose.

Jeslyn: At a time when Gerty and millions of other families across the nation are struggling to put food on the table, the Trump administration and the Republican majority in Congress have chosen to make things even harder for them. Last July, Congress enacted a massive tax and budget bill, i.e. HRI, that, among other things, made deep cuts to the SNAP program. One of the ways Congress has squeezed SNAP is by instituting more paperwork and bureaucratic requirements that make it harder for families to stay enrolled in the program.

Gerty: As a single mom who doesn’t have a lot of extra time to have to be tracking more of what I’m spending, clipping coupons, doing that labor. It’s, you know, it’s stressful. It’s like another thing on my plate that I have to think about. And even though maybe it sounds small to some people, it’s a lot, when you’re doing everything alone.

They do a reevaluation every six months or so. So it got lost in the mail. We get hundreds of mailers, literally per year. Yeah, this is a SNAP mailer. Many pages, many, many pages of SNAP mailers. There’s the green piece of paper that’s in a lot of different languages. So I get a lot of those.

Jeslyn: Without a significant change in policy from Washington, D.C., hardworking families like Gerty’s are unlikely to gain a solid footing anytime soon.

Gerty: And so I feel angry, that at this point the government, the state are so unable to take care of us, unable to take care of our needs. I just, I want SNAP to be protected. I want people to feel held when they have major life events that shake them or they’re just struggling in general.

Jeslyn: Gerty is far from alone in struggling to feed her family and having to deal with increased red tape when it comes to accessing SNAP. As Matt Newell-Ching, public policy manager at the Oregon Food Bank explains, tens of thousands of Oregonians have lost access to SNAP since Congress slashed support for the nation’s most important nutrition program.

Just a quick note on the conversation you are about to hear. I spoke with Matt back in May 2026, so the figures you will hear us discuss here are a bit out of date and have in fact risen. Recently, we learned that between April 2025 and April 2026, more than 70,000 Oregonians lost their food assistance, a figure which will continue to grow as the result of last year’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill. So just know as you listen, our story remains the same, but some of the numbers will have changed. Matt, how are you doing today?

Matt: Hey. Pretty good. Jeslyn, how are you doing?

Jeslyn: I’m well. Tell me a little about what you do at OFB. 

Matt: Sure. So, Oregon Food Bank. Our mission is to end hunger and its root causes. And I think a lot of people, when you first say Oregon Food Bank, you think, you know, our big warehouses of food, the trucks going around the state of Oregon, which services 19 regional food banks, which in turn serve over 1200 partner agencies. So these are your local food banks, food pantries, meal sites for folks.

And that’s really critical to help fill the gaps we have in our safety net. Sometimes we actually call ourselves the safety net below the safety net.

Jeslyn: So briefly, what made you want to work on issues of food security? Why is this work important to you?

Matt: Yeah. So for me, this is personal in a lot of ways. So my mom and my dad, you know, when they were first starting out, my mom was the primary breadwinner of the family. My dad was in school, and she got in a car accident and couldn’t work for six months. And they didn’t have family they could turn to at the time.

So they turned to public assistance and they applied for SNAP. And that got them through a really tough time. Right. And you know, some for some folks who turn to public assistance, it’s temporary for others, you know, for folks who have disabilities or for, you know, a lot of low wage workers, it’s a regular part of life.

Jeslyn: Can you tell me about the range and the scope of the Oregon Food Bank? Like, where do you guys operate throughout the state? Where do people see Oregon Food Bank operating? Like, is it every local pantry that you guys touch? Like, how does that work?

Matt: Yeah. So our network is pretty incredible because there are over 1200 partner agencies. And these are independent agencies across the state. Right. So you know, a lot of people think, okay, my local food pantry, that’s Oregon Food Bank. And so like usually Oregon Food Bank helps to provide food to these 1200 agencies. If you want to see a list and the one that’s nearest you, please go to WW Food Finder to see where your nearest partner agency is.

We’re in all corners of the states, and it’s really a partnership between communities that have seen like, hey, we recognize a need and we need to make sure that we’re providing the opportunity for our neighbors to receive food and have access points. Right. So, you know, we as Oregon Food Bank, we receive a lot of the big donations from the federal government, from major corporate donors.

So we receive, if a farmer is like, hey, I’ve got a truckload of potatoes, like, we have the ability to process those tomatoes, potatoes because a lot of the smaller, you know, it’s harder to do in like a local food pantry. And then we can in turn, you know, distribute that out to the rest of the state.

Jeslyn: How would you describe the current state of hunger or food insecurity in Oregon right now?

Matt: It’s really rough. And Oregon’s not unique. I think we’ve got a confluence of things happening at once. You’ve got persistently high inflation. So since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve seen, you know, food, the price of food at home increase by well over 30% for, for households. So that’s one big factor. Currently, everybody knows the price of gas has skyrocketed over the past several months, which means there’s less money for things like housing and food, especially if you’re driving to work or if you rely on work for a small business.

And then on top of that, we’ve got the cuts that were made to SNAP in H.R.1, the big awful bill that Congress passed last July. And so far, because of that bill, over 47,000 Oregonians have lost SNAP. And to put that in perspective, you know, about a year ago, there were about 760,000 people who received SNAP. And so it’s a fairly you know, it’s a pretty sizable, you know, percentage. And again, none of these conditions are unique to Oregon. We have seen some initial data that because Oregon is implementing the changes to H.R.1 in a more humane way than some other states are doing, that the percentage decrease of people on SNAP is a little bit lower than the national average of states. So, I mean, another way to say that, is like we’re not a situation where you can take H.R.1 and make things better, but you can limit the damage. You can limit the harm. Right.

Jeslyn: So you’re saying that you guys are seeing a huge surge in visits. Can you talk about the rising numbers that you’re seeing and how that’s affecting your supply of food?

Matt: I believe at the end of the last quarter, there were 2.9 million visits to the 1200 agencies out across the state. You know, that’s again, we are at record highs right now,

But we are now seeing just things steadily rising. To be clear, it was rising steadily before, but it really spiked up after the passage of H.R.1.

Jeslyn: I want to circle back. You said that you saw 2.9 million food pantry visits in the last quarter of 2025. What do you have to compare that to? How many visits did you see in the quarter prior to this?

Matt: The increase that we’re seeing most recently compared to just a year ago, that’s a 15% increase compared to two years ago. It’s over a 50% increase. Right. So there’s a trend. It was trending upward beforehand. Again for you know, reasons like inflation. And it’s sort of been supercharged we think because of the H.R.1 cuts.

Jeslyn: What are you seeing on the ground right now?

Matt: We’re seeing more families with kids. We’re seeing more seniors. We’re seeing people who are coming on behalf of other people. You know, it’s also a trend of who we’re not seeing. We are, you know, we’ve had a lot of reports that people with various immigration status is, you know, including a lot of people who are documented that don’t want to show up because of the risk that there might be, you know, ICE presence. 

Jeslyn: So you said that Oregon is doing some things to kind of like lessen the harm of the cuts that the H.R. 1 bill did to SNAP at the state level. What are some things that are happening in Oregon to help to stop this?

Matt: You know, what they did was they said, okay, we’re going we really want states to lower their error rates. An error rate is basically the rate at which SNAP payments or benefits are calculated incorrectly.

So, H.R. 1 said, you’ve got to get that error rate down extremely low.Otherwise states have to face these massive penalties and have to pay increased amounts just to keep the SNAP program. Oregon and most other states have to get their error rates down in order to avoid these really big penalties. Right. And so states can basically, there are basically two ways you can get your error rate down. One is to be very punitive and to err on the side of kicking more people off of SNAP, even if people are eligible.

Because, you know, I mean, when a lot of times you get these scenarios where there’s a close determination and, you know, you know, somebody might actually, you know, be eligible for SNAP, but a state might put in policies that are going to kick off more people who really ought to have, you know, benefits. Oregon has basically said, like, hey, we don’t want to do that.

We want to make sure that everybody who is eligible can receive SNAP. And to do that, it takes improvements in technology, it takes improvements in caseworkers. So this past legislative session, there was about a little over $100 million put toward the SNAP program to hire more caseworkers to improve our our data systems and to make sure that that people who are participating in SNAP have the opportunity to to make their case right, and so that as few people as possible will be unfairly cut off of SNAP.

Jeslyn:  We take a break to say thank you for listening to Policy for the People. We appreciate you tuning in. We also want to ask for a quick favor. Please share this episode with your friends and family and give us a five star review on your podcast app. It helps others discover the show. Also, please consider supporting the show by making a tax deductible contribution to the Oregon Center for Public Policy.

The support of people like you makes all our work to advance economic justice in Oregon possible. Go to ocpp.org/donate and make a contribution today. Again that’s ocpp.org/donate. Thanks. And now back to the show.

Jeslyn: How have the cuts to SNAP affected the ability of Oregon families to put food on the table?

Matt: Yeah. It’s been really, really hard. Right. You know, when 47,000 people lose the ability to receive assistance through SNAP, it forces some incredibly difficult choices, especially as the cost of food goes up. Right. So one of the main things that people do is turn to community agencies like food pantries. And I mean, that’s where we come in.

And we’re also seeing and hearing, you know, every day that, you know, food pantries, the shelves are getting more bare and more bare because we’ve got more people coming in requesting food, and we cannot wave a magic wand and create more food in our system. We wish we could. The Trump administration in January of 2025, decided that they were no longer going to provide, it ended up netting about 90 truckloads of food to Oregon. They cut this program nationally, right. The impact to Oregon specifically, their impacts, it wasn’t, they weren’t targeting Oregon. They were just targeting this entire program. Right. But USDA had this program and effectively Oregon last year, we were going to receive 90 truckloads of food. That’s 3 million meals that was going to be provided by the federal government.  All of a sudden, gone. And so we could no longer count on those. So at the same time, more people are requesting food and needing food because of these SNAP cuts, our network is essentially receiving less food. Right. And so it’s so so these community agencies have to make really, really hard choices, right. Do we serve fewer people and give out the same amount of food, or do we try to serve everyone and provide less and less food?

And so it’s really tragic what’s happening right now. And it’s totally preventable. And I think that’s one of the things that is just so irking about this is that, like, these are choices made by human beings, right? I mean, these are policy choices. And I mean, they could have gone the other way. They could have said, actually, this is a time where we want to increase the support to food banks and to communities because, you know, they need it and they didn’t.

We often say hunger is a policy choice, right? It is a policy choice to cut SNAP. It is a policy choice to cut food to food banks. It’s a policy choice to take measures worldwide that are going to result in higher gasoline costs for everyday people. Right. And it’s a policy choice to not put in supports to remedy that. And yet here we are.

Jeslyn: I want to make sure I really heard something you said a second ago,  Matt. You said that at the same time that we’ve seen the biggest cuts to SNAP history,  are you saying that the federal government is also providing less food to food pantries at the same time? So both of these shortages are going on at the same time?

Matt: Yeah that’s right. And again these are a series of decisions that have been made over the last two years. But yeah in January 2025, this is when the USDA decided to cut, it was a program from the Commodity Credit Corporation within USDA.

This one just, I mean, nine days into the administration decided that’s not happening

Jeslyn :I want to talk now about the farm bill. So there’s a farm bill going through the federal government right now. And the farm bill contains the funding for SNAP. And it decides the future of SNAP. Right now, Congress is working to reauthorize the farm bill, which governs agriculture and policy. And it’s typically where Congress makes policy regarding SNAP.

What can you tell us about what’s in the proposed farm bill as it concerns SNAP and other nutrition services?

Matt: Historically, the farm bill has been, you know, a fairly bipartisan piece of legislation. There’s like 12 titles. It contains a lot of things. Right. It contains SNAP, farm subsidies, environmental conservation programs, even international food aid. What this Congress has chosen to do is basically say, we’re not going to deal with SNAP in the farm bill. We’re going to deal with SNAP in budget reconciliation, right?

I mean, budget reconciliation, which is the procedure which only requires 50 votes from usually the majority party. And that’s how they push through. That’s what H.R.1 was. Right.

Jeslyn: Do you know what the future for SNAP holds in budget reconciliation or the proposed farm bill?

Matt: So far, the next round of budget reconciliation we’ve heard of is, I mean, it’s moving through Congress right now. It doesn’t touch SNAP currently. And so there’s no effort. There’s been a push from states, for example, to delay the implementation of the penalties for the error rates right now, because it’s a kind of a ridiculous timeline for states to try to make the remedies that Congress, even if you believe in these remedies, like the timeline by which they’re asking for that we think is very aggressive and just untenable.

Jeslyn: So one of the changes that H.R.1 made was to put in place work requirements for people to receive SNAP, and some of those have rolled out this year. What are those work requirements and how have they impacted Oregonians?

Matt: They were made much more punitive in H.R.1. So it really looked at the definitions of people with disabilities and people experiencing homelessness.

And it basically said there’s fewer exemptions for people who, you know, must meet these requirements. So whereas Oregon, before H.R.1, said, look, if you’re experiencing chronic homelessness, that’s a barrier to work. And so, you know, the state could provide exemptions for people, said you don’t have to meet these work requirements.

So essentially, if you are eligible for these work requirements, you have to be working at least 20 hours a week, or you are essentially kicked off of SNAP after three months, right? Three months out of every three years. And so if you use up those three months, then you have to meet the new requirements or you don’t receive food assistance.

Jeslyn: How many of the 47,000 Oregonians that got kicked off of SNAP,  how much of that was because of these changes to work requirements?

Matt: That’s a really good question. We’ve asked ODHS (Oregon Department of Human Services) that information, and they have promised to answer that, though they have not as of this time. So we will keep asking that because we not only want to know how many it is because of work requirements, but also, how many families with kids or who aren’t in the work requirements are just getting cut off because of these new paperwork requirements.

It’s creating a lot of new bureaucracy for families and for the state agency right now. For all the talk about trying to, like, make government more efficient, this is making government a lot more inefficient. This is requiring much more data, much more frequently from people. That requires people who are participating in SNAP to take time out of their day to help verify this information.

It’s requiring new requirements from caseworkers to try to verify this information. So it’s creating a lot of work and red tape on all sides of things.  We do know that 3,200 people who are immigrants and refugees lost food assistance starting November 1st, just blanket. Refugees and humanitarian immigrants, this includes people who experienced domestic violence abroad, had approved asylum claims, not just like people who were in the process of seeking asylum, but people whose asylum claims got approved were kicked off the SNAP rolls.

Jeslyn: So my last question here for Oregonians who wish to get involved with this unfolding crisis at the food pantries right now and the cuts to SNAP, what can people do?

Matt:  Thank you so much for asking, Jeslyn. Please visit Oregon Food Bank. We’ve got a long list of things that people can do from volunteering. You can use the Oregon Food Finder tool to volunteer at. If you’re not close to one of our four branches, which are in Portland, Beaverton, Tillamook, the Dalles, Ontario, that’s actually five. But if you’re not close to one of those, there’s 1200 food pantries out across the state that folks can volunteer at. And also we have a section to advocate. You can go on our advocate page right now. There’s an action alert about the farm bill to ask our congressional delegation to not pass a farm bill that doesn’t rubber stamp the changes in H.R.1. 

So lots of things that folks can do. And no matter what you are able to help out with, we are very grateful. So yeah, thank you so much. Thanks so much for the time, Jess. Great speaking with you.

Jeslyn: You’re welcome. Well, that’s it for today’s show. Thanks for listening and we will see you next time.