Giving Compass' Take:

• The New Food Economy analyzes data on SNAP recipients and found that thousands of people who work in the fast-food and retail industries lack money for groceries.

• Beyond the policy-making issues brought up by SNAP, it's worth looking into how nonprofits can address the basic needs of people who are underemployed. Three areas identified in this piece: better access to transportation, childcare, and stable housing.

• How does SNAP remove people from poverty? Read this to find out.

As debates swirl in Congress over tightening work requirements in the next farm bill, it’s worth considering the group of people who already have jobs and still need food stamps to feed their families. They make up nearly half of the people who use the SNAP program in a given month. Why aren’t they earning enough money to meet this most basic need?

The New Food Economy recently obtained data on SNAP employers from six states via public records requests. We found that thousands of people who work in fast-food and retail jobs don’t make enough money to buy groceries.

We published the most striking results — that Amazon’s employees are heavily reliant on food stamps even though they’re working in jobs that typically pay family-supporting wages — in partnership with The Intercept. But we were also struck by what hasn’t changed since a spate of stories looking at the same questions were published a decade ago, when Amazon still seemed content with upending the book industry. Walmart and McDonald’s rank first and second for number of employees on food stamps in five states out of six, and other fast-food companies rank high on the lists of employers with the most workers using SNAP benefits.

We received data from Arizona, Kansas, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Washington. Ohio’s data was already publicly available. In five states out of six, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Subway, McDonald’s, and Walmart all appeared among the top 50 employers of people using food stamps. Other companies in the food industry including grocery stores, institutional foodservice providers, and meatpackers were also represented.

Read the full article about the food industry's food stamp problem by H. Claire Brown at The New Food Economy