The Trump administration said it wanted to transform the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) as part of a proposed budget for 2019 by committing half of a recipient’s benefits to what it describes as pre-packed “harvest boxes,” filled with non-perishable staples.

The department says buying wholesale, rather than giving SNAP recipients the full value of their benefits on an electronic benefits (EBT) card, would save taxpayers $129.2 billion over ten years.

When Secretary Perdue says, “States can distribute these boxes through existing infrastructure, partnerships, and/or directly to residences through commercial and/or retail delivery services,” it seems pretty unlikely that existing infrastructure is going to cover it.

Any savings the government would enjoy by converting part of SNAP to a wholesale purchasing and shipping system would be offset by the insane costs of setting up a distribution network solely to service food stamp users.

All told, Maciuba thinks 20 percent of the money set aside for the “harvest box” system would go straight to logistics.

“Right now, none of [SNAP] is going towards logistics, because it’s a money transfer,” says Maciuba, referring to the funds transferred to recipients via a magnetically encoded payment card.

Read the full article on harvest boxes by Sam Bloch at The New Food Economy