BY TIM SHEEHAN

CV Journalism Collaborative

Hundreds of thousands of low-income households in the San Joaquin Valley are likely to face a reduction in benefits aimed at helping them feed their families – benefits that already fall short of covering the cost of a healthy meal.

About 482,000 households amounting to more than 950,000 people across Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Tulare counties receive assistance through CalFresh, as the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is known in California. 

That means more than one out of every five Valley residents, or 22% of the region’s population, utilizes the program formerly known as food stamps.

Of more than 5.6 million CalFresh recipients in the state, almost 17% – or almost one out of every six – live in the San Joaquin Valley. 

Individual counties manage CalFresh benefits, which are provided on an electronic benefit card that a recipient can use to buy food at participating grocers, farmers markets and other food outlets as customers would use a credit or debit card. Benefits are electronically uploaded to the card each month.

The average SNAP benefit for Valley families is about $365 per month, or about $185 per person, according data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the SNAP program.

Those amounts, which cover about one-third of the USDA’s estimated cost of a low-end nutritious diet for a family of four, are likely to shrink once provisions kick in from H.R. 1, also dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill,” a Republican-backed budget package signed into law by President Donald Trump last month.

In addition to more than $1 trillion in cuts by 2034 to Medicaid, the federal government’s health coverage program for low-income residents, the bill also slices about $287 billion in SNAP spending over the same 10-year period. The weight of those cuts are likely to be felt most deeply by households with the lowest incomes, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“Most of the reduction in SNAP benefits affects the disposable income of households with lower income,” the CBO estimated in a June 2025 analysis. “Specifically, 85% of the reduction affects the income of the bottom 30% of the distribution over the 10-year period.”

Millions of Californians under “immediate threat”

The head of California’s Health and Human Services Agency, Kim Johnson, decried the SNAP cuts just days before the Senate and House adopted the final version of the federal bill.

“We’re talking about 5.5 million low-income individuals in California, 3.3 million households accessing food they need to thrive,” Johnson told reporters in a virtual press conference. “The proposals result in a loss of that access, benefit levels that will not keep up with the ever-increasing cost of food, (and) will limit access to nutrition education services that support healthier food choices.”

“These are not abstract. These are immediate threats to the well-being of millions of Californians and will impact all of us,” Johnson added.

“This legislation breaks with decades of federal commitment by shifting billions in costs to states, reducing food assistance for millions of families,” and cutting support for other food safety-net programs, the California Association of Food Banks said in a statement on the Congressional votes.

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“These cuts will take food off the table of working parents, grandparents raising children, and veterans—at a time when many families are struggling to afford groceries and are already struggling to make ends meet,” the organization’s statement added.

What’s changing for recipients?

Earlier this year, the House of Representatives approved an early version of the legislation that called for stripping about $230 billion from federal SNAP spending through 2034. The U.S. Senate version that ultimately became law trimmed an additional $57 billion.

Among key provisions of the law:

• Expanding work requirements for SNAP recipients. Under current law, able-bodied adults under age 55 and who don’t have dependents must work 80 hours per month to qualify for benefits. The new standard extends the work requirement to people ages 55 through 64. Those who do not meet the work requirements are limited to three months of benefits over a three-year period.

• Lowering the age threshold for children whose parents must meet work requirements. Previously, parents whose children were under the age of 18 were exempt from the work requirement. The new law calls for parents and household members to meet the work requirement if a child is age 14 and older.

• Limiting the ability of a state to suspend the three-month limit on benefits in areas of high unemployment or where there are enough jobs.

• Veterans, homeless adults and people age 24 or younger who were in foster care when they turned 18 will also be subject to the work requirements. Those people were previously exempted.

• Restricting eligibility for SNAP benefits to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. Eligibility is being eliminated for some people who are legally in the country, including those granted conditional entry to the U.S. under asylum or refugee laws or for humanitarian grounds such as survivors of domestic abuse or human trafficking.

• Prohibiting the USDA from increasing the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan formula that determines maximum monthly SNAP benefits based on re-evaluating the collection of food products included in the plan. The TFP was created by USDA to represent the cost of buying food for a nutritionally adequate low-cost diet.

• Establishing requirements for states to match a share of the federal SNAP allotments starting in 2028, ranging from 0% to 15% depending on payment error rates.
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Some will completely lose benefits

From those and other changes, the Washington, D.C.-based research nonprofit Urban Institute estimated that more than 22 million families nationwide will lose some or all of their SNAP benefits, including more than 3.1 million in California. The Urban Institute analysis projects that about 909,000 California families would see their benefits reduced by at least $25 per month, with an average loss of benefits of $190 per month.

Food banks throughout the state provide emergency food each month for more than 6 million people. “California food banks are already stretched thin …. There is no way that food banks can make up for the amount of food households would lose as a result of these cuts to SNAP,” said California Association of Food Banks CEO Stacia Levenfeld in a statement prior to the Senate vote. “For every meal a food bank provides, SNAP delivers nine.”

But counties are not yet certain just how these new provisions of law will affect their programs.

“Changes to CalFresh eligibility and benefits as a result of (the bill) are still pending guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to the California Department of Social Services, and then to counties,” Gavin Harrinson, senior staff analyst with the Fresno County Department of Social Services, told CVJC in an email.

Until new regulations and processes are set, “benefits will continue as is until such guidance is provided,” he added.

“One of the major drivers of the loss of benefits is the proposed implementation of work requirements for individuals participating in both CalFresh and Medi-Cal,” said Johnson, the state’s Health and Human Services secretary. “This isn’t about the value of work. These are proposals that are intentional sets of requirements aimed to increase the burden of those accessing health care and food and nutrition support so that they no longer have this access.”

“We believe in the value of work and community engagement and in fact have a successful employment and training program embedded into our CalFresh program today which includes strategies that address the barriers individuals experiencing poverty may be facing in engaging in work,” she added.

In Fresno County, extending the age for work requirements from 55 up to 64 could potentially affect 19,000 CalFresh recipients, Harrison said. Another 5,400 households could feel the pinch from lowering the age of children in families receiving the work requirement exemption from 17 to 14 unless they qualify for some other exemption.

How much are the benefits in the Valley?

Under current CalFresh eligibility limits, a family of four can receive benefits if they have a monthly household income of $3,380 after expenses such as childcare, rent or mortgage and utility and phone expenses. The maximum allowable benefit at that family size is $975 per month. Smaller families receive less assistance, while larger households receive more help.

Many households, however, receive much less than that maximum CalFresh allotment. In Fresno County, for example, Harrison said there are about 52,000 households that receive the maximum CalFresh allotment to which they are eligible. That’s out of more than 122,000 total Fresno County households receiving benefits.

The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service reports that in July 2024, $171.6 million in SNAP benefits were distributed to about 468,000 households representing more than 922,300 people across the central San Joaquin Valley.

• Fresno County: $45.4 million to 122,492 households totaling 244,878 people.
• Kern County: $39.1 million to 104,051 households totaling 210,888 people.
• Kings County: $5.3 million to 15,123 households totaling 30,102 people.
• Madera County: $6.5 million to 16,866 households totaling 35,328 people.
• Merced County: $11.6 million to 31,700 households totaling 62,629 people.
• San Joaquin County: $22.3 million to 64,523 households totaling 114,471 people.
• Stanislaus County: $16.8 million to 50,170 households totaling 92,660 people.
• Tulare County: $24.6 million to 63,064 households totaling 84,715 people.

Those collective figures amounted to an average monthly benefit that ranged from $334 per household ($181 per person) in Stanislaus County to $391 per household ($187 per person) in Tulare County.

But those average monthly benefits in the Valley fall well short of what the USDA estimates as the monthly cost of $994.50 to feed a family of four (an adult man, adult woman, and two children between the ages of 6 and 11), based on the Thrifty Food Plan averages for June 2025. That calculates out to about $10.93 per meal for the family, or $2.73 per person.

An Urban Institute analysis based on cost-of-living modeling, however, calculated the cost of an average meal county-by-county nationwide, and estimated that even the maximum SNAP benefit falls short of covering the meal cost by 51 cents in Kern and Kings counties, 55 cents in Tulare County, 58 cents in Fresno County, 75 cents in San Joaquin County, 78 cents in Stanislaus and $1.09 in Madera County.

By January 2025, the number of CalFresh beneficiaries in the state had grown to more than 954,000, according to the state Department of Social Services, which oversees CalFresh.

Which retailers accept CalFresh or SNAP?

The electronic benefit cards that carry a family’s CalFresh or SNAP benefits are accepted for food and groceries at a wide range of retailers numbering almost 4,400 across the eight San Joaquin Valley counties. They include convenience stores, farmers markets or farmstands, grocery stores, restaurants (primarily fast-food places), specialty stores such as butcher shops or take-and-bake pizza places, supermarkets, large superstores such as club warehouse stores, and others including chain drugstores and dollar stores.

Across the eight Valley counties, there are almost 4,400 food sellers authorized to accept CalFresh/SNAP benefit cards, according to data from the USDA:

Fresno County: 1,014 outlets (476 convenience stores, 15 farmers markets or farmstands, 122 grocery stores, 104 restaurants, 35 specialty stores, 63 supermarkets, 57 superstores, 142 “other” stores).

Kern County: 969 outlets (441 convenience stores, five farmers markets or farmstands, 130 grocery stores, 163 restaurants, 13 specialty stores, 51 supermarkets, 53 superstores, 113 “other” stores).

Kings County: 131 outlets (66 convenience stores, 1 farmers market or farmstand, 16 grocery stores, six restaurants, three specialty stores, 11 supermarkets, eight superstores, 20 “other” stores).

Madera County: 179 outlets (76 convenience stores, three farmers markets or farmstands, 23 grocery stores, 29 restaurants, 10 specialty stores, 10 supermarkets, seven superstores, 21 “other” stores).

Merced County: 288 outlets (136 convenience stores, four farmers markets or farmstands, 29 grocery stores, 24 restaurants, 16 specialty stores, 20 supermarkets, 22 superstores, 37 “other” stores).

San Joaquin County: 715 outlets (332 convenience stores, eight farmers markets or farmstands, 80 grocery stores, 113 restaurants, 17 specialty stores, 55 supermarkets, 38 superstores, 72 “other” stores).

Stanislaus County: 601 outlets (270 convenience stores, four farmers markets or farmstands, 61 grocery stores, 92 restaurants, 21 specialty stores, 36 supermarkets, 41 superstores, 76 “other” stores).

Tulare County: 487 outlets (237 convenience stores, two farmers markets or farmstands, 56 grocery stores, 45 restaurants, 13 specialty stores, 28 supermarkets, 34 superstores, 72 “other” stores).

— Tim Sheehan is the Health Reporting Fellow and a senior reporter with the nonprofit Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. The fellowship is supported by a grant from the Fresno State Institute for Media and Public Trust. CVJC research assistant Marisol Herrera contributed to this report. Contact Sheehan at tim@cvlocaljournalism.org.