State Food Service Providers Bracing for Spike in Usage with Possible Pause in Food Assistance Coming

Thursday, October 30th, 2025 -- 8:00 AM

(Anya Van Wagtendonk, Wisconsin Public Radio) Four times a month, the Feed My People food bank hosts a distribution night in Eau Claire, handing out food to anyone in need.

According to Anya Van Wagtendonk with Wisconsin Public Radio, on a typical night, about 300 people pass through, according to the group’s executive director, Padraig Gallagher. This past Monday night, 464 people showed up, a more than 50 percent increase.

Food service providers across Wisconsin say they’ve felt a squeeze in recent months, as household costs have increased and federal programs for the needy have been canceled. Now, with the prospect of a pause in federal food assistance looming, they’re bracing for an acute spike in need.

“A good number of them are folks that our volunteers and staff hadn’t seen before,” Gallagher said of the people who picked up food on Monday. “A lot of them had a lot of questions and a lot of concern.”

That confusion from Gallagher’s clients comes a week after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it would not be issuing benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, beginning on Nov. 1.

In Wisconsin, that means some 700,000 people will not receive SNAP benefits, in the form of money added to their FoodShare debit cards, for the month of November.

Many of them will turn to places like food banks to supplement the groceries they would otherwise be buying with federal food assistance. Food banks say they exist to fill the gaps in people’s pantries, but not to fully cover an open-ended emergency.

“The scale of the problem is way beyond what we would be able to accomplish for any significant amount of time,” said Gallagher, whose organization operates a range of hunger relief programs across 14 counties in western and central Wisconsin.

In response to last week’s announcement that SNAP funding would run out, Gov. Tony Evers issued a letter to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins urging the current administration to use discretionary funds to keep SNAP operational.

“Empty cupboards and stomachs are not abstract outcomes. They are the very real and near consequences of the dysfunction in Washington. These are also consequences you can prevent today,” Evers wrote. “USDA must use all available legal authorities, and there is simply no justification for failing to use these same authorities to protect SNAP recipients.”

On Tuesday, Wisconsin joined 25 states and the District of Columbia to file a lawsuit in a Massachusetts U.S. district court arguing that withholding SNAP benefits is illegal, and demanding that the federal government use contingency funds to keep the program running.

While SNAP is administered jointly by the federal, state and local governments, its benefits are entirely federally funded. Right now, there are no indications that the state would backfill that funding should the shutdown continue. Amid that political back-and-forth, food service providers say they’re just trying to serve those in need.

“Food security is not political,” said Gallagher. “We’re not trying to say, ‘This person’s to blame, vote for that person, this is the legislation that’s the answer.’ We are very much ringing the bell and saying, ‘Come look at the problem.’”

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