Colorado food banks prepare for high demand ahead of SNAP pause

Sara Wilson

(Colorado Newsline) Food banks in Colorado are preparing to respond to a sudden increase in need this weekend as federal food benefits pause due to the government shutdown.

About 600,000 Coloradans receive money for groceries through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which amounts to about $120 million dollars in benefit money flowing through the state’s grocery stores and farmers markets each month. But the November payments will not come at their usual time — if at all — as the federal government shutdown approaches the one-month mark.

Food banks and their partners in Colorado are getting ready for an influx of people looking to their services instead.

“We know a tsunami is coming. We just don’t know how high the wave is, and so we’re trying to brace for whatever we can,” said Weston Edmunds, the director of marketing and communications at Weld Food Bank.

The organization put in a $250,000 order of meat products and pantry items, and Edmunds hopes the food arrives by the end of the week, despite a much shorter lead time than usual. On Tuesday afternoon, he showed volunteers how to cut about 5,000 pounds of donated mozzarella cheese from Leprino Foods Company — food he said will head out quickly to people who visit the food bank’s warehouse and community partners.

“We’ve tried to purchase more food to meet the immediate need,” he said. “We expect it to last us, hopefully, a couple of weeks, but we anticipate that if the government is still shut down into mid-November that we’ll need to spend another $500,000 to keep pushing through.”

Request for donations

There’s a similar rush in other parts of the state.

Community Food Share in Boulder County placed an order for over 165,000 pounds of food to prepare, CEO Kim Da Silva said. That should be enough for over 135,000 meals. At Food Bank For Larimer County, CEO Amy Pezzani said the organization sent $100,000 in emergency funding to its partners so they can directly purchase the food they need.

“At the end of the day, this is what we do every single day. As a food bank, we are responsible for ensuring that people in our community who need food have food. This is not different,” Pezzani said.

It is the first time, however, SNAP benefits will lapse. During a shutdown in 2019, the U.S. Department of Agriculture used a contingency fund to disperse benefits early. The Trump administration has said it will not use emergency money to pay for November SNAP benefits, though a coalition of states, including Colorado, sued over the issue Tuesday.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis will also ask the state Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee on Thursday to approve $10 million for Feeding Colorado, which oversees the state’s Feeding America food banks and over 1,300 community partners, to purchase food. Colorado already faces a severe budget shortfall.

Polis also appealed to Coloradans to donate money directly, since food banks have higher purchasing power with suppliers and can buy more food per dollar than the average person. Feeding Colorado Executive Director Mandy Nuku said that as of Tuesday the organization has received about $120,000 in donations. That is not inclusive of donations people have made to individual food banks through the Feeding Colorado website.

“This is a stopgap measure, and one that is not a solution. It will be largely inadequate” she said. “We can’t replace $120 million of SNAP benefits, but we do have the operational capacity and the logistical capacity to scale up to order food and direct it to communities.”

She said SNAP is by far more effective at reducing hunger than food banks. Food banks provide about one meal to every nine provided through SNAP, according to Feeding America.

Demand already high

Nuku said their focus has also been on the policy side, hosting members of Congress at local food banks to show them the real-life impact of benefit pauses. U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, a Lafayette Democrat, went to Community Food Share, while U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, a Fort Lupton Republican, visited Weld Food Bank.

“Hunger is not partisan,” she said. “It’s not a political issue. This impacts everybody in rural communities, conservative communities, Democratic ones, urban centers. There isn’t one county in Colorado that is not experiencing food insecurity as an issue.”

Food banks were already feeling a heightened demand in recent years after SNAP emergency allotments during the COVID-19 pandemic ended in 2023. Community Food Share is seeing an increase in enrollment for the first time, from about 25 applications per week to around 80. Weld Food Bank had between 500 to 600 visitors for its emergency food program on an average day two years ago, Edmunds said. Now, it’s closer to 1,700 people every day.

Edmunds said the post-pandemic surge after expanded benefits ended made clear that “SNAP was keeping a lot of people from needing to come to food banks.”

“For some people, $50 or $100 a month was the difference between if they needed to use the food bank or if they could supplement their income,” he said.

‘Plan for the worst’

Weld Food Bank will set up three temporary mobile sites to lessen the impact on its primary warehouse location, and is in conversation with its community partners to extend their operating hours.

At Community Food Share, the goal is to remain nimble about how to respond to more visitors as they come, whether that means staying open later or establishing mobile food pantries. Da Silva noted the dual crisis as the shutdown pauses paychecks to federal workers, who might turn to food banks to fill gaps.

“This is new terrain for all of us to navigate. Our plan is to plan for the worst, which is to get truckloads of food in here and be very flexible with how we react to community needs,” she said.

Food Bank for Larimer County typically signs up about 150 new families per month. Last week, it got 179 new family applications.

“These are real people that are scared and stressed because they don’t know how they’re going to put food on the table,” Pezzani said. “Our lawmakers need to do their job and open the government back up.”

Democrats and Republicans are at a stalemate over how to end the shutdown, which is in its fourth week. Democrats say they will not vote for a spending bill to reopen the government until Republicans negotiate expiring health insurance subsides, but Republicans say they will not negotiate that issue until the government reopens.

Republicans hold majorities in both chambers of Congress but under current rules need a handful of Senate Democrats to vote with them to pass any legislation.

Coloradans can find the food pantry closest to them at feedingcolorado.org/find-food.