Latest / REAP/SOW / The federal government shutdown and the SNAP default
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- This transcript was exported on 10/28/2025 - view latest version here Theodore Ross: Welcome to Forked: Food politics in the MAHA age. I'm Theodore Ross, Editor-in-Chief of the Food and Environment Reporting Network. I'm joined by my co-host, Helena Bottemiller Evich from Food Fix. On this episode, the headline is Trump to Beef Ranchers, "Drop Dead." Also, the shutdown is pushing SNAP towards collapse. Will anyone come to its rescue? Finally, it's a great time to come together as a country and as a people and have a PB&J. Helena, how are you? Welcome back to Forked. Helena Bottemiller Evich: I'm doing well. How are you? Theodore: I am good. I'm so pleased to be back with you here talking about the food, talking about the politics, and sometimes about the food politics. Before we get into it, I want to talk about a cool thing that we're doing, and that is our first-ever live taping. What do you think about that, Helena? How's that going to be? Helena: I'm really looking forward to it. People seem really excited. Theodore: I think they are excited. It's going to be on November 11th, 6:00 PM at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC. We're going to do all the normal Forked stuff just in front of people. We'll maybe have a special guest or maybe two. Now, the exciting part, at least for me and maybe for Helena too, is that it's already sold out. What do you think about that? Helena: I think people are ready to hang. Theodore: They need their Forked. Helena: They're ready to hang out with us. Theodore: They need their Forked, yes. However, for all those of you out there in Forked land, you can keep an eye on FERN's social media channels in case we're able to add more people, which may be the case. If you want to join our waitlist, which is the place to be, send us an email at info@thefern.org, and we'll see what we can do. Let's jump in. Are you ready to go, Helena? Helena: Let's do it. Theodore: All right. We like to start every episode of Forked with the double take. That is something that is happening in the food and politics world that just makes you do a double take. It's usually bad. In this case, it has to do with Donald Trump, shocking, and his plan to lower beef prices by telling cattlemen in the United States to just cut the prices while he is also simultaneously quadrupling imports of beef from Argentina. What the heck is going on here, Helena? Helena: This is one of the wilder things I have watched unfold in agriculture. I think probably listeners of this podcast know that the agriculture community has generally been very supportive of President Trump. Theodore: That's putting it mildly, yes. Helena: Vast majority support. The anger I saw responding to this, I guess we should say rant that President Trump or not-- Theodore: Let's start with how it worked. You were talking about you came across his, it's not a tweet, it was on Truth Social. What happened? Helena: It's a Truth Social post. He wrote, "The cattle ranchers, who I love, don't understand that the only reason they are doing so well for the first time in decades is because I put tariffs on cattle coming into the US. If it weren't for me, they would be doing just as they've done for the past 20 years. Terrible. It would be nice if they would understand that, but they also have to get their prices down because the consumer is a very big factor in my thinking also." I skipped over just a tiny bit, but you get the flavor. This is straight up. Theodore: You didn't say in all caps, though. I think you need to go back and do it all over. Helena: It wasn't in all caps. This really angered cattle ranchers for so many reasons. I think the first is this idea that they need to get their prices down. Most people in agriculture are price takers. The market sets the prices that they take. This is not something they don't come up with a magical price that they want, or they would always set the prices so that they would be profitable. The cattle market in the US is very cyclical. The herd gets bigger, prices go down, it causes more sell-off, smaller herds like the cow-- We've seen these cycles go up and down. Right now, we have the smallest herd we've had since the '50s. It is a really, really small herd, and prices are really high because demand is really strong. Part of that, I think, is also Omaha, by the way. There's been a lot more conversation promoting red meat, telling people they don't need to worry about saturated fat. There is a lot of that going on. Strong demand, small herd, what do you get? High prices. Theodore: Let's talk about those prices first. [crosstalk] Helena: They were like, "Are you kidding me? I'm finally doing okay, and you're telling me to get prices down?" The anger I saw from ranchers on this was, they were pissed. Theodore: Let's talk about the prices for a second. I agree that they are pissed. They probably have a good reason to be pissed. Beef prices are up 15% over the past year, according to federal inflation data. Rising beef prices are major part of the overall increase in food prices that we've seen in the country. One of the reasons that this is so angering I would imagine for the cattlemen is that, in truth, they are not to blame. This is a subject that at FERN, this is a big part of our reporting, we have a story. It's coming in. It's not out yet. I can't talk too much about it, but just hyping it here a little bit on the cost of beef and why it is so high, and how the real area to look at in this case it is not the ranchers, it's the meat processors. I think as you look at this issue, and you hear him talking to the cattlemen, and how angry they are, it's because they're aware of one, what I think is pretty salient fact, which is, "Who is the largest donor to Trump's inauguration this time around?" It wasn't Facebook. It wasn't anybody in the tech world although they certainly gave their money. It was JBS, the largest meat processor in the world, which wanted to go public in the United States, and Trump made that a little bit easier. Also, maybe they might have something, and you'll have to read our upcoming story on it to do with the price of beef in this country. If you're a cattleman, and you're a Trump voter, because those are usually the two great tastes that go great together, you don't like this. You have been blamed for something that is not your fault. Helena: Also, I think the response is like, "If we want to talk policy, why don't we talk about taking on consolidation and meat packing? Why don't we do labeling so that consumers actually know where their beef is from?" A lot of the way labeling works now, you can't tell where if you're getting imported meat. There's just a lot of fury around this. I think really it's like being gaslit to say like, "You're the reason prices are high." It's like, "These are market forces." Not to mention we had a drought a few years ago that made feeding cattle really expensive and in some ways untenable. A lot of that was a natural cycle that happens, and so yes, they were real, real, real mad. Theodore: I think it is. I just want to read a headlight because I just thought this was pretty good. I think this was in The Hill. Trump defies ‘America First’ agenda with Argentina beef plan. That's part of where this is coming from because he's trying to offset the prices by importing beef from Argentina's part of a bailout of that country. It's a pretty strange thing when you think about it. He's talking about all he's done for farmers and ranchers with tariffs, but he hasn't really done much for them in this case, because if you look at the numbers, the Argentina has shipped beef over the last five years valued at more than $800 million the United States. This is from the CEO of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, which is not somebody that I necessarily typically go to for information, but there he is. They've only purchased from the United States $7 million worth of American beef. Now, if you look at the beef that Trump has with our trading partners, it is about that sort of trade imbalance. This is specifically why he is saying, among other reasons that he's imposing tariffs on countries like Mexico and Canada and Japan and Korea and India and all the arrests. It's that they are not buying as much from us as we are buying from them. That is not the case in Argentina. He is now bringing in more of their beef. Not only does it go against his voting base, it defies the logic of the Trump administration itself, which I guess is nothing new, right? Helena: Even beyond that, it's my understanding that this isn't going to bring down prices there. This isn't enough volume. You've angered this constituency, this very American pillar of the Ag community. You've enraged them, and probably consumer prices will not come down, because even if you quadruple Argentina and it imports, it's not really enough to move the prices meaningfully. I think Trump really walked into it with this. He's gotten a lot of blow back. Theodore: It's an itchy truth social finger. He can't stop himself. He's just going like this, or maybe it would I guess be like this. Helena: I do think there is a balance here between keeping a constituency happy and then also considering consumers. There are many, many, many, many, many more consumers who are struggling with high food prices. The high cost of ground beef, that is a real concern that is squeezing consumers. I get why politically you want to be focused on reducing prices. The concern the cattle ranchers have is that if you lean on imports when prices are high too much, you will not rebuild the US cattle herd. You won't have that. There's some really long-term choices that we're going to be making here. Theodore: I don't think it's a shock to find Donald Trump using a scapegoat for a political problem, but I want to end on this segment because we should move on, but there's a great quote. I just wanted to read it because it's in The New York Times. They found a cattleman, and they called him up, and they talked to him. He said, so it's Kyle Hemmert, a 61-year-old cattle rancher. Hi, Kyle, in Western Kansas. He said recently, "It's really a kick in the nuts. Come on, President Trump, this is America's first policy? No." I think when we talk about the cattlemen-- Helena: I'm impressed that their style guide-- Theodore: Let him do that? Helena: Yes. [chuckles] Theodore: I'm impressed that Kyle just spoke directly to the issue, man. He just knew what he wanted to say, and he was ready to go. Helena: That's one of the best things about farmers and ranchers, honestly, is if you really get them to speak their mind, they know what's up. They do. Theodore: All right. Let's move on to our next segment, which is forks and knives, the main meal, the thing that we think is important and that is happening in the food system right now. I just want to warn our listeners, as I have to do every once in a while, we are taping this. It is Monday, October 7th, and this will be-- Helena: 27th. Theodore: 27th, excuse me. Helena: What is that? Theodore: We're not taping it that far in advance. It will be out on Tuesday, November 4th. We always do it a week in advance. Take it a little bit with a grain of salt as we get into the SNAP cliff that we're headed towards with the shutdown. Helena, what the heck? What's going on? Helena: Oh my gosh. I just have to say I truly hope that this has been figured out. I hope this is a historical segment where people are looking back going, "Wouldn't that have been crazy to go over the SNAP cliff? Now we're into November, and we're not going to do that." I am worried that we are going to go over the cliff. Essentially, there isn't enough money to pay out November SNAP benefits. It's about $8 billion to pay out all of November SNAP benefits, and that comes from the federal government. The federal government is closed. There is no appropriations bill that we've had. This is a real issue. Right now, we're seeing this wonky fight play out because USDA does have a contingency fund. It's not enough to cover all $8 billion, but it's maybe somewhere between $5 and $6 billion and Congressional-- Theodore: What is the contingency fund supposed to be for? What's that for? Helena: It's for contingencies. There is some debate about what all is included in this. It has been used in the past in shutdowns. USDA has said that it is not legally available now, in part because they consider contingencies to be natural disasters. We do have a hurricane barreling at the southeast as well. There is going to be a lot of debate about whether or not the Trump administration is correct. I think it's possible there's litigation if this does not get resolved very soon, so courts will weigh in on this. Their determination is that this is not a contingency. They are not going to use this money because they could have taken, let's say it's $5.5 billion, and they could have paid out the first two weeks of SNAP benefits, and the state had to scramble to do this logistically. This is completely uncharted territory. This has never been done doing prorated benefits or anything like it. It is logistically very, very complicated. With a lot of these things, usually if there's a will, there's a way. I think right now there is the possibility that this SNAP cliff applies enough pressure that it could maybe end the shutdown or really force enough broads pain that this changes the dynamic. We'll see. We are talking about more than 41 million Americans. This is one in eight households. Theodore: The grocers too. Helena: There is the potential. The grocers-- Theodore: There's the grocers as well. Helena: Yes, the grocers are going to face less business. SNAP is something like 12% of the US grocery market. This is huge. I cannot emphasize enough how huge this potential impact is. This is the elderly. This is people with disabilities, households with children. I personally know households with several children, with families with low-age workers. This is so stressful for them. This is so, so stressful and it's a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. Theodore: Helena, do you want to-- Helena: The worst possible time. Theodore: Normally, we talk about your newsletter at the end of the show, but do you want to talk about your policy regarding people on food assistance programs and Food Fix? I noticed that on your newsletter. I thought maybe you'd like to tell people about it. Helena: Yes. Ever since I launched Food Fix three years ago, and a lot of people don't know this, but I've always had a policy that anyone participating in a federal nutrition program, so SNAP, WIC, Free School Meals, any of those programs, qualifies for a free paid subscription to Food Fix. Just email info@foodfix.co. Just email info@foodfix.co. Get on the list. I think it's really important for people who participate in these programs to be able to follow what's going on and track the policy debates around them. I have a good number of folks on the list that participate in these programs. I get really good feedback from them. Again, cannot emphasize enough how much of a disaster it would be if we go over this cliff. I really hope we don't, but it is October 27th and there is no sign that this is going to be resolved. It seems like we are going to go over the cliff. Theodore: Talk about the cliff. Helena: The US government has never defaulted on-- Theodore: Defaulted on SNAP before. First of all, I just want to say, that is a great policy. All of you who listen to Forked should be subscribing to Food Fix anyway, but if that doesn't put you over the edge, I don't know what's going to do it. That's a good thing. Good for you. Let that cliff. All right, so there's the cliff, and that is a disaster, and that is an apocalypse that we all seem to be on the precipice of during the Trump administration. Is it not also connected to the circumstances of the Big Beautiful Bill? The cutting of federal money to the states is what the Big Beautiful Bill is doing, and it is exactly the very thing that the White House and the GOP is saying is not a cut to SNAP. Helena: This really is actually different. What the Big Beautiful Bill did was shift more of the administrative costs and also some of the benefit costs onto the states. For the most part, those changes have not kicked in yet. The states are going to be under a lot of duress when they do because they don't have a lot of extra money to deal with this, so that is major. Also, changing the work requirements, that limits people's eligibility. That is a real issue and we are staring that down. This is like pulling the rug out of everyone. This is not just the folks who are targeted by increased work requirements, this is like there are going to be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of families that show up to a grocery store, and maybe were not informed, maybe didn't get the message, and they are going to fill up their cart, like normal, thinking that there is some help on their EBT card, and that EBT card is not going to work. There are some states who have not even really been communicating with their participants because they don't want to cause panic, and so there are some people who don't know. It's really, really bleak. Theodore: Obviously, that's bad. Let's talk about the political reaction to it a little bit. I'm assuming, and I could be wrong, that you've been following the differences between the two parties on what they're saying about what this is. Walk me through, what are they doing? What are they doing? I don't mean what they're doing in terms of negotiation, what are they doing in terms of messaging? Helena: They're not negotiating. I said this in the newsletter, I think both sides do not understand the full implications here for SNAP, specifically. I really don't think they understand how much they're playing with fire. If you go to fns.usda.gov right now, there is actually a message on the top of the website that some are saying may violate the Hatch Act, which is basically the law we have that tries to keep campaigning and politics separate from federal agencies. Theodore: Yes, this is crazy. Should we read it? Let's read it. I'll read some of it. Helena: Oh, yes, okay. Theodore: "Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this point, there will be no benefits issued November 1st. We are approaching the inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance." Before we talk about the meaning of all that, look at where we are in this country with messaging. This is the USDA website. Helena: This is FNS. This is the Food and Nutrition Service, which is a sub-agency within USDA that usually does not get much attention, implements many federal nutrition programs, including school meals. This is usually a quiet, sleepy part of the internet, wonky. People are coming here for SNAP statistics. I don't even know the word for it. It is shocking to see this kind of language on that website. You usually don't see political stuff. Theodore: Brutal partisan rhetoric, like partisan ranting, but in an ugly, in terms of words, not Ds, but a violent language, right? Helena: Yes. Theodore: That's not-- Helena: Oh. Theodore: Go ahead. Helena: If you go to USDA.gov, it's the whole page. I didn't realize that. Oh my gosh, it's really big. It's- Theodore: Oh, yes, it is. Helena: -the whole page. Theodore: That's right. It's too bad. It's too bad we don't have a screenshot. Helena: A screenshot. Oh my gosh. Theodore: FNS is just the banner. USDA.gov is the whole enchilada at USDA. Helena: Not to go through it every point, but what they're saying here is that Senate Democrats have voted against a clean CR because they're trying to force negotiations on healthcare subsidies. We're not going to get into all the details there. Bottom line, the well has run dry is both true and untrue. There is some contingency funding. They do have ability to move some money around, so we'll see. Someone is going to have to blink here. I wrote last week, "This is like watching the worst game of chicken ever." It's awful. Whoever's fault, whoever ends up getting blamed here, this is going to hurt a lot of people if we actually go over this cliff. I hope cooler heads prevail, but again, it doesn't look like right now that they will. Theodore: I think we should move on. Maybe more than ever, we need our last segment, which is a good vibe. We call it the good vibe. It's something in the food system that we find a little ray of hope. I think this one is pretty interesting. I don't know if you know this song. This will be my introduction to it. It's a video. I don't know when it's from, but it's Peanut Butter Jelly Time. Peanut butter, jelly, peanut butter, jelly, peanut butter, jelly with a baseball bat. What am I talking about, Helena? Do you know? Helena: Yes. There was a study that just came out. I was trying to remember what journal. Oh. Theodore: Pediatrics. Helena: The Journal of Pediatrics that found that these doctors changing the advice and telling parents to do early allergen introduction prevented 40,000 cases of peanut allergies, which is incredible. Basically, we realized we got it wrong by telling people to avoid allergens, to try to avoid peanut allergies. They reversed course and really dramatic results. This is very cool too. I'm the mom of young kids. We actually did get the advice to do allergen introduction really early. You're supposed to do all the allergens right off the bat, between four and six months or something. It's pretty early. This is incredible. This is great news that public health, that our research was correct, was messaged, implemented, and then resulted in fewer allergies. That's really great. It also is a good reminder of why this kind of research really matters. Theodore: Absolutely. I also want to walk through some of the details of it. The basis of this, as I understand it, is that there was a study in 2015 that found that it would be better to introduce potential allergens to kids at a very young age, things like peanuts, and expose them as early as four months. The thing that came out of this, and yes, they were able to prevent this many, I think the study said 60,000 actually children from getting food allergies. The thing that they found by 2017 was that most doctors and most nutritionists, and I think that even still extends to today, were not following this guidance. Here we have this potential, not a cure exactly, but a way to avoid this significant problem. Either the messaging isn't getting done, or the lack of trust, or maybe people are too hyped up about it. I can say for this is nearly 20 years ago now when I was still a fact checker at a magazine. I fact checked an article about peanut allergies being essentially overly hyped. Not that they don't exist, of course, but that the panic, the moral panic almost, in our society about peanuts was not merited by the facts. This is a longstanding problem. It's not fixed yet. It is nice that there is something out there that could work. That's a good thing. Helena: Yes. Although I will say my kid's school is still peanut-free, which is the default. I had in-laws here, you can't accidentally send a peanut. There are kids that have really severe allergies still. Theodore: Absolutely. Helena: It's definitely not solved. Thankfully, this seems to be a sign we're going in the right direction. We don't have a lot of those stories right now. It's great. Theodore: There are not a lot of good things going on there. I think it's just worth pointing out that it's not easily fixed, and that the distrust that we bump into, or maybe the misinformation that we bump into as we come here every two weeks and talk about these things, it ain't going to be easy to root it out, even with this. In the meantime, we're going to finish this taping and I'm going to go have a PB&J. All right. Helena, I know we already talked about your newsletter, but here we are coming to an end. Tell us about your newsletter. It's pretty fantastic. Helena: If you're into food policy, which you probably are if you've listened to this podcast, you can get on the list. Go to foodfix.co, drop your email in. You can get it for free every Friday. If you want to upgrade because you work in food, you can get it twice a week. Yes, we'd love to have you there. Thanks for listening. I have gotten a lot more people coming up to me in person saying, "Love the podcast, regular listener, and it's been really fun." Thanks to the audience for being here. Theodore: I too have run into people who have heard the podcast. You know what they say to me? "I really like Helena." That's what they say. [laughter] Theodore: I guess I got to work on my delivery. In any case, Helena, thank you as always. It was a great conversation. I will look forward to talking to you in a couple of weeks. That's all I got for today. Helena: Yes. Get on the wait list if you want to come see our live taping. Theodore: All right. Thanks very much. Helena: All right. Thanks. Bye. Theodore: Forked is a production of the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Our executive producers are Theodore Ross and Tom Laskawy. Our sound engineer is Lauren Newson. Our producers and video producers are Maya Okindo and Katie Gardner. Our hosts are Helena Bottemiller Evich, and me, Theodore Ross. To find out more about FERN and donate to support our independent nonprofit reporting, go to www.thefern.org. [00:26:44] [END OF AUDIO] Forked ep.10 11.4.25_mixdown.mp3 (Completed: 10/28/2025) Transcript by GoTranscript.com