Following Bridget Huber’s reporting for the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN) on the end of emergency SNAP benefits, food writer Corby Kummer joined Boston Public Radio to discuss an impending “hunger cliff” that could dramatically increase food insecurity in the U.S.

In the early days of the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) temporarily strengthened SNAP, with households under the program receiving at least $95 extra per month. But 12 Republican-led states that have ended their pandemic emergency declarations without placing “a narrower public health emergency declaration in place,” thereby ending additional SNAP benefits provided by the USDA.

The Biden administration recently extended the National Public Health Emergency, which was originally declared in March 2020, to mid-July — continuing emergency SNAP benefits for states that still have public health emergency declarations in place.

“People who have gotten used to the increased pandemic benefits on SNAP for food assistance are suddenly seeing the monthly bump in their SNAP benefits go — in the case of a woman in Des Moines, Iowa — from $250 a month to $20 a month,” Kummer said.

“The USDA, which runs SNAP, issued 4.1 billion in emergency allotments to more than 19 million households. This February, the most recent data available was $2.8 billion as opposed to $4.1 billion in emergency allotments. [That’s] 15 million households, not 19 million,” Kummer continued. “So you're already looking at billions cut: at least 4 million fewer households [are] getting it, and we can only imagine what that's going to be in the months to come.”

Kummer is the executive director of the Food and Society policy program at the Aspen Institute, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.