Live and Learn Americans who get up every day, go to work, and do their part. The
resentment lingers and trust erodes. Programs like SNAP are construed
as rotten to the core, benefiting no one, including those most in need.
Cutting funding and limiting benefits and eligibility become humane
ways for moving forward. As the programs are starved into elimination,
so the assumptions go, volunteers, churches, and nonprofit agencies will
magnanimously take over.
Yet neither empathy, indignation, nor financial motives address the
question once posed by food historian Janet Poppendieck: “If virtu-
ally nobody wants hunger in our affluent society, and nearly everybody
supports some approach to its elimination, and there is plenty of food,
why can’t we get rid of it?”
Food aid has become too important a source for political capital
and business profits. From 0 0 through 0 7 , more than a half-trillion
SNAP dollars were spent in some 0,000 retail outlets. Providing
food assistance has become an essential revenue stream within the mod-
ern food system.
Walmart takes in close to one in five dollars of SNAP program
benefits. Amazon, whose valuation by Wall Street is already greater
than rivals Walmart, Costco, Target, Macy’s, and Kohl’s combined, is
scheduled to accept SNAP grocery orders. Brushed aside is the fact that
Amazon’s median annual salary is only $8,4—well below the poverty
line for a family of four. And the fact that one-third of its employees
depend on SNAP for food. SNAP is the latest subsidy Amazon will
receive on top of other tax breaks, infrastructure improvements, and
financial incentives—all paid for by taxpayers. Expect food manufac-
turers and retailers to spend heavily lobbying Congress for food aid
continuation.
And therein lies one of the most pernicious consequences of the
grand food bargain—availability of food is not the same as access to
food. The mindless drive for more food made food more abundant or
readily available. No other country can turn out a greater volume of food
at lower prices than can the United States. Yet those who go hungry
are not beleaguered by whether or not food is available, but rather by
whether they have access to it.