SNAP is back. Iowa’s ‘hunger crisis’ remains

HIAWATHA — When Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funds were delayed last month amid a record-long U.S. government shutdown, it put a searing spotlight on the crucial role those funds play in putting food on Iowans’ tables.

For two weeks, roughly 131,000 Iowa households — equaling more than 260,000 people — lost access to federal aid meant to help keep hunger at bay. As a result, requests for charitable assistance soared and Iowa food pantries saw record demand.

Simultaneously, service providers like Hawkeye Area Community Action Program’s regional food reservoir in Hiawatha saw an outpouring of support as public and private entities rushed to help fill the gap.

“The last few months, in a lot of ways, felt like what we went through at the beginning of the pandemic,” said Kim Guardado, HACAP’s food reservoir director. “We saw the increase in need, but also the increase in awareness and response.”

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Now that SNAP payments have resumed, Guardado is hopeful that awareness and support can continue as service providers carry on in their daily work of addressing food insecurity in Iowa communities.

Iowa’s ‘hunger crisis’ started began before SNAP delays

In its 2025 “Map the Meal Gap” report, Feeding America estimated that around 12 percent of Iowans experienced food insecurity in 2023 — the most recent data available — up from 10.8 percent the year before.

The nationwide, nonprofit food pantry network found that food insecurity had risen in each of the state’s 99 counties and that over half of all Iowans facing food insecurity were ineligible for SNAP benefits, which require recipients’ monthly income to fall below 160 percent of the federal poverty level.

“While the latest study is based on 2023 data, it confirms the record need for food access we’ve seen every day for the past three years,” Food Bank of Iowa CEO Tami Nielsen said in a press release upon the report’s publication. “We remain deeply concerned about rising costs and continued cuts to poverty relief, which only put more strain on our neighbors facing hunger.”

Southeast Linn Community Center Executive Director Nicole McAlexander echoed the sentiment, noting that data shows that the rising demand for food assistance started long before last month’s delay in SNAP disbursements.

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The community center, a rural human services nonprofit based in Lisbon, offers a variety of services — including a food bank — for residents in and around the Mount Vernon-Lisbon area. The pantry saw a significant increase in visitors during last month’s SNAP disruption, but McAlexander said the need has persisted even as those payments resumed.

“We continue to see new people every week who have never had to use a food pantry before, and we’re seeing people come more frequently and who take more food when they come,” she said. “It’s even more elevated than what we would typically expect this time of year.”

Guardado said many Iowa food pantries are reporting similar experiences. HACAP’s food reservoir distributes food to hundreds of food pantries across east-central Iowa, and across the board, she said demand remains roughly 33 percent higher now than it was before SNAP disruptions.

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There are a few possible reasons for the increase, Guardado said.

Some people might have visited a food pantry for the first time during the shutdown and realized they could benefit from continued use. Iowans also are seeing cost increases in things like utilities or rent, and the food pantry offers a way to offset those costs by lowering their grocery bill.

In other instances, people are still catching up from disruptions caused by the delay in SNAP payments.

“Even if it was just two weeks, we’ve had folks who told us that they had gone into debt using credit cards to buy groceries or that they delayed things like car loans or utility bills to buy groceries,” said Ryan Bobst, executive director at the North Liberty Community Pantry. “The ramifications will take a few months for some of those families to come back from.”

The North Liberty pantry set a record service total in November, breaking the pantry’s previous monthly record set one month earlier in October. If things continue as they have been, Bobst said he “strongly suspects” December will bring another record high.

But those increases aren’t necessarily unique, Bobst said. The food pantry has seen “extraordinary levels of growth” since 2020, which prompted the organization to open a new, expanded location earlier this year.

That need predated any potential SNAP disruptions, Bobst said, and it is expected to continue now that assistance payments have resumed — particularly given changes to SNAP eligibility included in this summer’s federal reconciliation bill.

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Disruption led to new programs, partnerships

The immediacy of the need created by the SNAP delays spurred many Iowans to action. Well over $1 million was donated to food banks statewide, residents helped stock neighborhood pantries and businesses across the state offered low- or no-cost offerings for those affected by SNAP disruptions.

In some instances, those efforts continue. Bread & Buttered Bakery in Cedar Rapids, for example, continues to provide essentials like eggs, milk and butter to families in need, and the bakery has opened a small open-access food pantry outside its stall at NewBo City Market.

Bakery co-owner Nikki Lynn said she and her wife, Amber, had always wanted to use their business to help the broader community. The delay of SNAP payments was “the push that got (them) started,” and the pair began offering free food and sack lunches to those in need.

“There was kind of this misconception when we first started that it was just for people with SNAP benefit issues, but we quickly got it out there that no, it’s literally anyone who’s hungry,” she said. “As long as the need is there, we’ll keep trying to do what we can to help.”

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Lynn said demand for those offerings has slowed considerably since SNAP payments resumed but that there are still between five and 10 families who visit the bakery regularly for free food. In addition to offering food, the bakery is also now running a holiday gift drive for those families’ children.

McAlexander said news of November’s SNAP delays generated similarly massive amounts of community interest and concern from those in Linn County and beyond. The Southeast Linn pantry, for its part, saw a significant increase in donations of both food and funds.

It also opened the door for the pantry to form new connections, such as its recent partnership with Together We Achieve. The two nonprofits partnered this year on a joint registration process for holiday food boxes, which McAlexander said allowed both groups to streamline communication with families in need and maximize impact.

Now, the focus turns on how to continue to foster that kind of community support and innovative partnerships without the added attention that SNAP delays brought to the issue.

“We’ve been in a hunger crisis in Iowa for years,” McAlexander said. “I do think the crisis of the moment with the SNAP cuts did bring a lot of attention to that need, but attention can ebb and flow. Now, we need to remind people that the need is still there.”

Guardado stressed the same, noting that addressing food insecurity in Iowa will require an “all hands on deck” approach from the public, private and nonprofit sectors, as well as innovative, solutions-oriented policy changes at the state and federal level.

“We need to make sure people have food,” she said, “but at the end of the day, we also need to change how our society looks at things like paying their staff and having more support available for families in need so that there just aren’t as many people desperately seeking food,” she said.

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