Trump's Proposed Budget Floats MAHA Food Box Program to Replace Critical Emergency Food Assistance.
During Trump's first term, his Administration moved billions of federal nutrition assistance dollars to a food box program. It was a disaster--the very definition of waste, fraud, and abuse.
President Donald Trump’s budget proposal released Friday, May 2, 2025, includes many cuts to critical programs that support rural people and rural communities. Among the laundry list is a proposed $425 million cut to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP).
CSFP seeks to improve the health of persons with low-income, at least 60 years of age, by supplementing their diets with nutritious foods. According to USDA, the agency distributes both food and administrative funds to participating states and Indian Tribal Organizations to operate CSFP. Food packages include a variety of foods, such as milk, cheese, juice, farina, oats, ready-to-eat cereal, rice, pasta, peanut butter, dry beans, canned meat, poultry, or fish, and canned fruits and vegetables.
Trump’s budget proposal suggests replacing CSFP with “MAHA Food Boxes,” part of their Make America Healthy Again Initiative. The budget proposal states: “This approach of boxing commodities was highly successful at the end of the first Trump administration as a COVID pandemic response.”
Like in other cases, the Trump Administration is trying to re-write history with this claim. His first-term Farmers to Families Food Box Program was a complete disaster. The Trump USDA raided billions of dollars from the SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps) for the experiment. The anti-hunger community is concerned about Trump bringing back this failed approach during the second term.
In a 2021 Congressional Report detailing the failures of the misguided Farmers to Families Food Box Program adventure, Representative James Clyburn (D-SC, 6th) wrote:
“The significant mismanagement of the Food Box Program illuminated by this report is yet another example of the previous Administration's failure to meet the needs of the American people as the coronavirus spread across the country. The Program was marred by a structure that prioritized industry over families, by contracting practices that prioritized cutting corners over competence, and by decisions that prioritized politics over the public good. As we work to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic and prepare for future emergencies, we must heed this report's lessons to prevent more instances of fraud and abuse and ensure that future relief efforts are more effective, efficient, and equitable."
Many places in rural America were neglected by the food box program. USDA’s Economic Research Service recently released a map of the numerous places where the food boxes didn’t fill the hunger gap, most notably broad rural areas of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions.
Attacks on SNAP and other nutrition programs are expected to continue during the Trump Administration and Republican-controlled Congress. While they keep alleging that SNAP is full of “waste, fraud, and abuse,” they could potentially attempt to replace the nation’s front line of defense against hunger (that’s SNAP) with food boxes beyond CSFP that are much less effective at feeding people. That’s a huge risk as the Trump economy struggles and demand is increasing for food assistance nationwide.
The potential corruption, rather than meeting the needs of poor and working class people, seems to be the point.
The Cocklebur covers rural policy and politics from a progressive point-of-view. Our work focuses on a tangled rural political reality of dishonest debate, economic and racial disparities, corporate power over our democracy, and disinformation peddled by conservative media outlets. We aim to use facts, data, and science to inform our point-of-view. We wear our complicated love/WTF relationship with rural America on our sleeve.