Counties are concerned farm bill doesn’t address SNAP cuts, cost shifts

Key Takeaways

As the farm bill moves to the House floor, county officials in the 10 states that administer the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are expressing concern over the legislation not addressing H.R.1’s cuts and cost-shifts to the nation’s largest food safety net program. 

The goal of a farm bill is to support rural communities, and give them the resources they need to thrive, said Stearns County, Minn. Commissioner Tarryl Clark. Without addressing H.R.1’s changes to SNAP and Medicaid, that can’t be fulfilled, she noted. 

“Whether it is food and nutrition and being able to have a community that is able to keep a grocery store or to have those kinds of resources going back to the community, being able to have a doctor or telemedicine,” Clark said, adding “if we don’t have those components, it is very difficult to see how many of our communities can afford to survive, let alone thrive.”

Stearns County has roughly 717,000 acres of farmland, which makes up around 73% of its total land area. It’s the top milk-producing county in Minnesota, and is home to over 500 dairy farms. Moving a farm bill is “critically important” to the county, Clark said, but she’s “very concerned” about the effect of cuts to food assistance on her constituents, as well as to the local economy. 

“For rural communities — our grocery stores, our egg producers, our seniors, our kids, our veterans, our families — there’s a lot of impact,” Clark said. “And I think that’s part of the unintended consequence, because people in Congress, and I’m sure in the administration, aren’t wanting to negatively impact folks in that way. 

“But with inflation right now, with rising grocery prices, it’s not translated into more money for our farmers, it’s translated into more costs for the people who really need SNAP, and that means it’s also translated into bigger problems for our grocery stores.” 

If the federal government is going to mandate changes, states and counties should be equipped with the resources to comply with them, she said. 

“These extra costs in our state, right now it’s looking like it could be an increase in county property taxes, just to comply with what the federal law is,” Clark said. “And that shouldn’t happen.” 

In accordance with H.R.1, the federal government will reduce its share of SNAP administrative costs to 25% from 50% — shifting the remaining costs to states and counties — on Oct. 1. 

Ohio, another state in which counties administer SNAP, is set to face a $70 million budget shortfall from the administrative cost shift alone — $51 million of which will be shifted to the state’s 88 counties. Montgomery County’s portion of the cost is estimated at over $3.2 million, according to Michelle Niedermier, director of the Montgomery County Department of Job and Family Services. 

“SNAP is one of the most critical programs,” Niedermier said. “We can’t retroactively feed people, so we need to get it right, right out of the gate.”

Montgomery County is discussing increasing staffing positions to accommodate both the added administrative burden SNAP workforce requirements will create and the increase in people receiving the food assistance benefits since the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of Montgomery County residents receiving SNAP increased by more than 14,000 between 2019 and 2025. 

“I’m very fortunate to have county commissioners and county administration who understand that if we just instinctively match the cuts with staffing reductions, the [SNAP payment] error rate would be astronomical,” Niedermier said. “… I will say this is a conversation that has been in motion because our numbers did not go back to pre-pandemic levels after unwinding, so our caseloads have already been incredibly large, and I think we’ve reached that tipping point of trying to do more with less.”

Under H.R.1, states with SNAP payment error rates exceeding 6% will be required to cover between 5% and 15% of benefit cost errors. Clark said she doesn’t think it’s realistic for Stearns County to get its error rate below 6% by Oct. 1, 2027, and is hoping to see the implementation deadline extended, as well as federal funding to update the technology Minnesota counties use to administer SNAP, which dates to the 1980s.   

“We work hard on trying to keep this down, but there are still some real error rates, and some of them are from the people who are applying, and some of it is staff errors because of old technology,” Clark said. “… Particularly for states in which counties administer these programs, delaying the [implementation] dates would really make a difference in working with the state, as well as our counties, to get the error rate where it needs to be.”

Although nothing has been established, Niedermier said she’s heard “rumblings” in peer groups and associations, such as the National Association of County Human Services, about the possibility of Ohio having to end the program due to cost shifts the state and local governments can’t sustain. 

“That 10% [benefit cost error coverage] would be devastating,” Niedermier said. “I truly don’t know how we would make that up in the state of Ohio … We know that that would just be devastating to the population and the vulnerable individuals and families who rely on those funds to help stretch their food budget.”

House Republicans are looking to bring the farm bill for a floor vote the last week of April, Politico reported on April 14. As the legislation moves along, Clark said she wants to see some tweaks “at minimum” that would help counties implement the mandates in more effective and efficient ways, such as changing how the SNAP payment error rate is calculated and devoting more resources to updating systems. 

“Nothing’s done until it’s done,” Clark said. “… With this bill, particularly with food assistance being such a big part of it, it’s important that members of Congress can step back and really think about, ‘What are they hearing from their communities? What are their communities saying about what they are able to do on their own?’ Because it is critical.”