With SNAP in crisis, America’s epic food waste problem has become a lifeline
The government shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history, is making it much less likely that many Americans will have enough food to eat this month.
Last week, before the funds for federal grocery benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, ran out due to the shutdown, District Judge John McConnell ordered the Trump administration to use contingency funding to keep SNAP flowing for the month of November. The administration responded on Monday by saying it would restore only about half the total amount, and warned that it could take months for recipients to receive the payments.
On Thursday, McConnell issued a subsequent ruling, ordering that the USDA must fund full SNAP benefits for November and immediately distribute that funding to states, enacting an end of day Friday deadline. “This should never happen in America,” said McConnell during Thursday’s hearing. The administration has already appealed the decision and filed an emergency motion Friday morning that asks an appeals court to pause the order on the basis that the judge overstepped his authority.
“Senate Democrats have voted 14 times against reopening the government. This compromises not only SNAP, but farm programs, food inspection, animal and plant disease protection, rural development, and protecting federal lands,” a USDA spokesperson told Grist following McConnell’s second ruling. Later on Friday, USDA officials sent a memo to states stating that the agency is preparing to “complete the processes necessary to make funds available” to provide full monthly SNAP benefits. (The memo, the New York Times reported, did not mention the pending appeal.) Friday evening, after the appeals court declined to put the payments on hold while it reviewed the case, Trump escalated the issue, asking the Supreme Court in an emergency request to block the lower court ruling.
As millions of Americans that rely on SNAP dollars wait to see whether the administration will comply with the latest court order, payment delays are all but certain at this point. Some states have warned that once they receive the funds from the USDA, the distribution of those payments for the month of November could take several weeks longer to get to all recipients because of how the federal government has instructed states to distribute them. Earlier this week, Pennsylvania state officials sent a letter to the agency which noted that the USDA is “directing states to use the most complex and labor-intensive approach possible” in issuing the benefits. Other states, including California, Michigan, Oregon, and Wisconsin, have said they have already begun processing the full monthly benefit, despite the ongoing legal developments.
Across the country, local organizations are scrambling to close the gaps left by the increasingly unreliable government aid. Food banks, community organizations, even celebrity talk show hosts are launching food drives and raising donations for the nearly 42 million SNAP recipients affected by the shutdown. And soon, the number of people in need will only grow: New work requirements for SNAP, included in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” just went into effect, and are expected to lead to further benefit cuts for many Americans, while pushing others out of the program entirely.
Among these efforts is a cohort of organizations that were founded to support the slow-burn climate solution of reducing food waste and are now joining the all-hands-on-deck emergency response to the imminent hunger crisis.
Come Monday, Kashi Sehgal and her team at Retaaza will begin driving a gutted Sprinter van loaded with locally grown produce, grains, lentils, grits, peanut butter, and more throughout DeKalb County, Georgia. Twice a week, they’ll distribute their wares in neighborhoods where fresh, whole food is scarce. Community members using SNAP and EBT cards will be able to get half off of already heavily marked down fresh fruits and vegetables supplied by farms nearby.
“It’s like an ice cream truck, but for veggies and produce,” said Sehgal. “Food access doesn’t have to be undignified. You can make it a positive experience for people to want to come.”
Sehgal founded Retaaza in 2020 as a way to buy surplus produce from farmers in the area — food that would otherwise have ended up in the compost pile or landfill — and sell it to nearby businesses and individuals. Retaaza’s focus is to reduce food waste before it enters the supply chain, which helps drastically shrink its emissions footprint. Roughly 17 percent of food grown on farms every year nationwide is lost or wasted. That takes place because of issues like overproduction, cosmetic standards, low market prices and high harvesting costs. In Georgia, one of the country’s agricultural powerhouses, enormous amounts of food produced annually end up in landfills.
The planetary impact of that is nothing to scoff at: If the state keeps wasting food at its current rate, some estimates project carbon emissions to climb from 8.3 megatonnes of CO2 per year to 9.3 megatonnes by 2030. Nationally, Americans wasted roughly $382 billion worth of food in 2023, which produces planet-warming emissions equivalent to some 54 million passenger vehicles. Most of that uneaten food ends up rotting in landfills, where organic matter accounts for roughly 17.4 percent of methane emissions nationwide. But if Georgia were to go in the opposite direction, and instead reduce its food waste by 12 percent, that figure could fall to 7.5 megatonnes of CO2 by the end of the decade. (Just one megatonne of CO2 is equal to the annual emissions from about 233,255 gas-guzzling cars.) Since it started operations, Retaaza has redirected roughly 1.1 million pounds of surplus food from Georgia farms.
Over the past month, Sehgal watched on as the Trump administration attempted to halt, severely delay, and then restrict SNAP benefits — prompting Sehgal to try to figure out how her company could step in and help meet the moment. More than 127,000 residents of DeKalb County, or 16.7 percent of the population, receive SNAP benefits. “In this day and age, no food should be thrown out,” said Sehgal. “So why not donate that excess food in the first place and actually feed somebody that needs help? That’s keeping food out of a landfill, and that is directly tied to greenhouse gas emissions.”
While the shutdown and America’s ensuing food affordability crisis have propelled groups like Retaaza into new directions, the government’s gridlock is also threatening its core business. That’s because food retailers who accept SNAP benefits are among those that risk losing revenue when payments are delayed or cut. The money from the USDA program supports around 388,000 retail jobs and results in over $4.5 billion in state and federal tax revenue nationwide. Last week, as businesses across the country raced to help their food-insecure SNAP customers, the USDA issued a notice reminding retailers that offering SNAP-specific discounts without a waiver is considered a program violation.
Trump has repeatedly refused to meet with Democrats to negotiate on the big issue that initiated the shutdown — expiring health insurance subsidies that Democrats want to extend and that Republicans want to stop paying for. In the meantime, federal food aid and many other government services, including those for farmers, continue to be severely interrupted across the country.
“By threatening to withhold SNAP benefits during the shutdown, Trump is acting less like a president and more like a king — using low-income individuals as pawns in his political game,” said Mitch Jones, managing director of policy and litigation at the nonprofit Food & Water Watch. “Trump’s USDA, too, is defying the law to weaponize hunger. By withholding court-ordered benefits, USDA is leaving families desperate, forced to choose between meals and medicine, food and rent.”
Angel Veza, director of innovation initiatives at the national nonprofit ReFED, said that Retaaza is one of many food-recovery organizations being called to the frontlines of food insecurity because of the shutdown. “Many are just scaling their operations and continuing to push forward with existing surplus produce and other types of food,” said Veza, “while some of them are also pivoting, optimizing their logistics routes so that they can reach more people without having to bring on more trucks, more drivers, and working with what they have, and others are mobilizing quickly to form new partnerships and quickly stand up brand new models to respond.”
In Des Moines, Iowa, one such initiative is helping to keep Matt Chapman, a disabled 62-year-old, and his elderly sister from going hungry.
By the end of every month, Chapman said they almost always “end up broke,” which is where SNAP dollars help make sure they have enough to eat. But even that money only stretches so far, so Chapman often relies on a local food-rescue organization where he gets free, recently expired, surplus food. Last month, Chapman lucked out and got two racks of ribs, a pre-packed bag of mixed produce, canned fruit and vegetables, and some eggs, butter, and milk.
This month, however, he and his sister are facing even more uncertainty than usual as the shutdown drags on, and public safety nets like SNAP are being swept up in Washington’s power struggles. Some expenses are nonnegotiable: “The rent eats first. Housing eats first. And then what’s your next thing? Medicine,” Chapman said. “But I only have enough to either get my medicine or get my food. And so, what are we going to do?”
This story has been updated to reflect ongoing developments in the administration’s legal battle over food stamp funding.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline With SNAP in crisis, America’s epic food waste problem has become a lifeline on Nov 7, 2025.