The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) costs the average taxpayer $36 a year, or $3 a month. Those funds are then used to give approximately 41.7 million people access to food. However, due to the most recent government shutdown, which began on Oct. 1, SNAP benefits were completely paused, leaving 12.3% of Americans without access to nutritious food. Many have heard about SNAP and its lapse in benefits, but less know that before it assumed its new title, it was a welfare initiative known as Food Stamps.
In the 1930s America was facing a paradox. While millions were starving due to the Great Depression, farmers were drowning in food. This contradiction would give birth to the Food Stamps initiative. In response to the excess food, the government made the controversial decision to pay farmers to destroy their crops and livestock. People were outraged by the unnecessary destruction of food, so the government scaled back. They realized destroying crops wasn’t the answer, and instead turned their attention to food redistribution. The Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation (FSCC), a New Deal agency created in 1933, aimed to buy up surplus food and distribute it to the needy. On May 16, 1939, Rochester, N.Y., became the testing ground for the first “Food Stamp” transaction. An unemployed man named Ralston Thayer handed in $4 of his relief money, and in return, he was given $4 in orange stamps plus $2 in blue stamps. The orange stamps could “purchase” any item and be used at participating grocery stores. The blue stamps were limited, they could only be used on surplus agricultural goods like beans, eggs, flour and butter. People and grocers alike loved the new system as customers could go and get the food they needed while grocers could cash in the vouchers at any FSCC location or local bank.
Over the next few decades, the Food Stamp initiatives went in and out of effect. The 40s and 50s saw the removal of the program as the economy was facing a war in the 40s and a huge economic boom in the 50s. 1964 saw the Food Stamp Act, which made Food Stamps an official government-funded program, requiring state and local governments create plans of action and eligibility requirements…