Nearly 90,000 of the current 700,000 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients in Wisconsin could lose their benefits, as President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act creates more demographic and work eligibility requirements for the program.
In addition to new requirements on recipients, the law leaves states responsible for 75% of the administrative SNAP costs. While proponents of the law say it will cut down on waste and fraud, experts say Wisconsin’s supply chain could face negative impacts if the state can’t afford the cost increase.
SNAP assists low-income families and individuals with their food and nutrition needs by helping with grocery costs. Many recipients have school-aged children who are then eligible for free school meal programs, but the new work requirements could remove children’s eligibility as well, and schools may not be able to make up the difference.
“We don't think of schools as having a lot of surplus resources that they could say, ‘hey, yeah, you don't qualify for SNAP, our school lunch will cover you,’” Chuck Nicholson, an associate professor of Animal and Dairy Sciences and Agricultural and Applied Economics, told The Daily Cardinal.
If schools are unable to serve kids, it could impact the dairy industry, as around 10% of milk from dairy farms goes to schools, Nicholson said. If children aren’t receiving free milk at school and the school can’t afford to provide it from their own budget, then less milk will be bought from dairy farms.
“If we have 10% of beverage milk going through school meal programs, and we make substantive cuts to those programs, that's a significant amount of less milk that is needed in schools,” Nicholson said. He projects these cuts to cause a 10-15% reduction in farm income in the next four years.
Iowa Food Hub General Manager Peter Kraus works extensively with Wisconsin farms and families, as the company operates within 150 miles of Decorah, Iowa. He told the Cardinal he understands the effect Wisconsin dairy farms have on the entire country and expects the industry to be severely impacted by SNAP cuts.
“It’s very destructive,” Kraus said in response to the law, adding he experienced “a lot of frustration” when it first passed. He largely works with Farm to School, a non-profit organization that provides healthy food and nutrition education to almost 75,000 schools, which also faces negative impact from the cuts to school meal programs.
Kraus said farms and agricultural companies require stability and long-term relationships for success. With less resources and money to change course, he said other food hubs who work with Farm to School are shrinking and cutting staff as a result, and he’s lucky his company hasn’t needed to do the same.
Kraus isn’t a stranger to politics affecting his work. He said climate change, tariffs, the war in Ukraine and the bird flu crisis have all had a negative impact on agriculture, and SNAP cuts are no different.
“These programs are really good for our local economies, for rural places,” Kraus said. “So if you really want to thrive the economy, support local food and agriculture.”
