advocacy, on the menu
October 2025 Food Advocacy Update
By Rachel Lord, Advocacy and Policy Director, AFPC
That’s a wrap on October (Happy Halloween!), and there is no end in sight to the federal shutdown nor the USDA’s commitment to withholding SNAP benefits across the country. Frightening, indeed. Thousands of Alaskans are displaced from their homes in the Y-K Delta region after Typhoon Halong. It’s hard to look for bright spots within the dysfunction, uncertainty, and suffering. But Alaskans are working hard to show up for one another. The Native foods potlucks happening for Alaskans displaced from their homes and villages are amazing (ADN 10/26, At a Native foods potluck in Anchorage, a taste of home for storm evacuees), although the road ahead is indescribably hard (APRN, 10/23, Evacuees in Anchorage say they’re feeling a mix of gratitude and grief). Check out the Food Bank of Alaska’s page on finding food assistance in Alaska, and their list of partners across Alaska.
Across Alaska, Tribes and Tribal Health Organizations are working to develop plans to assist community members. In some communities, FDPIR – Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, is available and can be utilized on a month-by-month basis during the shutdown (and otherwise, if SNAP is not also being utilized). The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium manages FDPIR in Alaska, and you can find out more in this brochure or by calling 907-729-3634. AFN President Ben Mallott is quoted in a national article, speaking to the challenges ahead for rural Alaska – ‘Native communities scramble to provide food with SNAP, WIC cutoffs looming’ (Alaska Beacon, 10/31).
Financial donations are incredibly valuable, and can be made to your local food pantry, Food Banks, the Western Alaska Disaster Relief Fund, or other organizations providing direct services to communities across the state.
The awful unprecedented threat of a SNAP lapse is driving home the unacceptable amount of hunger in our country. You can read AFPC’s letter to our Congressional Delegation here, and read more about what’s going on as of today down below.
Upcoming Public Comment Opportunities
- USDA FNS Food Stocking Standards for SNAP Retailers proposed update – deadline November 24, 2025
- Our national partners at MAZON have a simple action for sending a message to our Members of Congress. Let all three of our Members of Congress know what you think about the SNAP lapse in November.
- Send in your grocery basket photos! Participate in a new advocacy effort to raise awareness of food prices in Alaska. Head to your local grocery store, and put in your cart the cheapest you can find of: 3 apples, 1 head of lettuce, 1 loaf of bread, 1 gallon of milk, appx. 1 lb of ground beef, a dozen eggs, and a tin of infant formula. Ring it up to see how much it would cost to buy – here’s my photo from Homer, with a total of $66.12. Email your photo, town, and final price and we’ll include it in our advocacy outreach with partners at 2026 Food Security Fly-in Week in Juneau!
State Happenings
Members of the Alaska Legislature, including leadership of both chambers, are considering options in the face of the SNAP funding lapse. In a statement from the Governor’s office, spokesperson Jeff Turner said, “The Dunleavy administration has looked for available funds that can be donated to food banks, but no funds have been identified.” (Alaska lawmakers consider steps to replace $25M in federal food assistance threatened by shutdown, ADN, 10/30)
Despite the ongoing government shutdown and economic uncertainty Americans are facing, the USDA continues to direct states to implement the changes in SNAP eligibility adopted under the One Big Beautiful Bill (HB1) earlier this year. The Alaska Division of Public Assistance has been updating their website with information on disaster response, as well as SNAP updates that we’re looking at both for the upcoming lapse of funding and the large eligibility reductions as a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill (HR1).
There was a legislative hearing on Wednesday, 10/29, with the House Health & Social Services Committee and the Department of Health providing an overview of changes to SNAP, as well as rural healthcare provision from HR1. The presentation is here, and you can watch the hearing here (note, the audio quality isn’t great).
Not statewide, but for those of you in Anchorage – On November 4, the Assembly will be considering changes to their cottage food laws. The proposed changes would eliminate Anchorage’s Cottage Food License and the Raw Shell Egg Vending Permit, and would utilize the new state laws passed under HB 251 last year to regulate homemade foods. The Anchorage Health Department has more information, including links to the proposed ordinance and accompanying memo, on the sidebar of their website here. For more information, check out our blog here and you can review the state’s laws and regulations at the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation’s Homemade Foods page. I highly recommend their “FAQs” page, with a lot of plain-language questions and answers!
While the Legislature is still fairly quiet, we’re getting closer to session and activity ramping back up. Over the next few months, AFPC will be releasing a series of ‘Food Advocacy 101’ blogs that dig into different topics to help strengthen advocacy efforts across the state. We’ve started with a couple, including ‘Making sense of statutes and regulations in Alaska’s food systems.’ We’ll dive into who does what at different state agencies, some ideas of how to move your ideas into action, what is (and isn’t) considered lobbying, and more. Do you have questions or ideas on what you would love to see covered? Send me an email and I’ll see what we can do!
We’re looking forward to the Alaska Farm Bureau’s Alaska Agriculture Conference and Grazing Lands Symposium in Anchorage in just a few short weeks! AFPC staff members will be there, and I’ll be participating in a few sessions around farm and food policy in Alaska.
Meanwhile, in D.C….
Federal Government Shut Down & SNAP Lapse – (see update below) We are in incredibly challenging and uncharted territory as a nation. There’s a strong divide between the Rs and the Ds in Congress, for the most part, and the stalemate continues. We are far from experts on what’s happening (or not) on Capitol Hill, but we’ve gathered a few overarching things, some of which are incredibly obvious:
- Congress is in a serious partisan stalemate. Anything could happen, but we’re on day 30. This article from Al Jazeera has some great graphics illustrating the impacts of the shutdown so far. Politico has this article from 10/30 outlining some of the basic sticking points and the talks starting to happen in the Senate.
- SNAP benefits have never lapsed before in history, and Members of Congress across the aisle are coming together to try and prevent the lapse from occurring. With the House just in continual recess, the Senate now recessed until next week, and the White House standing firm in the administration’s positioning, I’m not really sure how any of it helps. However – both of our Senators, Murkowski and Sullivan, have signed on to the “Keep SNAP Funded Act of 2025” – thank you to both of them! There is a similar bill in the Senate that also includes WIC funding – which is also set to lapse. There are also bills to just continue funding WIC. The House has similar bills, and we have not heard from Congressman Begich if he plans to join colleagues in co-sponsoring any of these.
- All of this feels increasingly maddening as Americans, including over 66,000 Alaskans, are facing increased hunger in an already shaky economy with ever increasing prices.
- At the same time – our federal employees are, largely, going without paychecks. The work of the federal government is not getting done, and the uncertainty and vulnerability for individuals and families is staggering.
- There’s continued tension in the agriculture sector, especially this month with the beef industry specifically. The American Farm Bureau released an article, ‘Economics of U.S. Beef and Cattle Market’, with concerns about market intervention strategies announced by the President. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association was more direct in their concerns.
- There are talks of up to $13 billion in farm aid getting released by the administration once the shutdown ends. It’s unclear how much of that might come to Alaskan farmers, but from previous actions we’re guessing the beneficiaries will likely be larger, commodity farmers in the Lower 48. But TBD!
**Update as of late morning, 10/31/2025
Two federal judges, one in Massachusetts and one Rhode Island, ruled almost simultaneously on Friday that the Trump administration must continue paying SNAP benefits during the ongoing government shutdown. They ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to use available contingency or emergency reserve funds to keep the program running, which serves about 1 in 8 Americans (and 1 in 7 Alaskans) and costs roughly $8 billion per month. The rulings temporarily prevent SNAP from being halted starting November 1, when payments were scheduled to stop due to lack of funding. Read more at the ADN here.
USDA Ending the National Household Food Security Survey – Earlier this month, AFPC wrote a blog providing a full background on this important dataset, and the importance of its continuation. You can read the blog here. The 2024 report is slated to be the last one under the administration’s plans, and it was supposed to be released this month. With the shutdown, we haven’t seen it but expect it to be released at some point in the future.
I know there’s more, but we’re going to call it good at that. I hope to see some of you in November at the Alaska Farm Bureau’s conference! And fingers crossed for positive movement in D.C.
Keep engaging and taking care of one another. ~ Rachel
