Snap cuts will hurt rural dispropotionately

The House Agriculture Committee’s version of the farm bill would strip billions in nutrition benefits from American families, rural residents are more likely than metropolitan ones to be participating in the program. Conventional Beltway wisdom is that farm bills pass Congress with relative ease from a rare bipartisan coalition of rural legislators delivering farm programs for their constituencies while urban legislators gain nutrition assistance and food aid in the cities. But House Republican moves to slash nutrition assistance for low-income people might hit rural communities the hardest while derailing passage of the legislation that expires Sept. 30.   “The cuts should be a concern for people that live in rural communities, and for people interested in the viability of rural grocers and whether or not they can continue to make it,” Vollinger said. “Many rural grocers have a very high percentage of their sales coming through SNAP.”  From 2012–2016, about 15 percent of rural households (defined as nonmetropolitan couties) participated in SNAP. That’s at least 2 percentage points higher than the rate for metropolitan residents. Nearly 90% of counties with a SNAP usage rate of 30% or greater are rural.