The History of Food Stamps

The Food Stamp Program began as a Depression-era effort to help poor Americans and to sell surplus foods purchased by the government to prop up crop prices. Today, it is neither a food stamp program in practice or in name. Paper stamps have long been replaced by an ATM-like card system and, in 2008, the program had its name replaced by a snappy new acronym.

Origins

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Stamp Program, or FSP, was created on May 16, 1939, with stamps that came in two colors: orange for any food product and blue for surplus. The orange stamps had to be purchased, but for every dollar of orange stamps bought, the buyer received 50 cents of blue stamps for free.

Mabel McFiggin of Rochester, New York, was the first American to buy the stamps. According to a Sept. 14, 2009, Time magazine feature, the 70-year-old McFiggin's historic purchase consisted of surplus butter, eggs and prunes.

The program ended in 1943, "since the conditions that brought the program into being--unmarketable food surpluses and widespread unemployment--no longer existed," explained the program's first administrator, Milo Perkins, according to the USDA website.

Reborn

The food stamp program was revived on Sept. 21, 1959, when Congress authorized the USDA to run the program through Jan. 31, 1962.

Nothing happened, however, until President John F. Kennedy took office. On Feb. 2, 1961, Kennedy announced a food stamp pilot program, making good on a campaign promise he had made in West Virginia. Under the new version of the initiative, the stamps still had to be purchased. But surplus foods were no longer part of the program.

On Jan. 31, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson asked Congress to make the Food Stamp Program permanent. The result was the Food Stamp Act of 1964.

Food Stamp Act of 1977

The major development of the Food Stamp Act of 1977 was that it eliminated the requirement that food stamps be purchased. This change went into effect on Jan. 1, 1979, and according to the USDA, FSP participation jumped 1.5 million from the previous month. By the end of the year, participation had passed the 20 million mark.

Electronic Age

In 1984, the FSP tested its first Electronic Benefits Transfer program, or EBT, in Reading, Pennsylvania. Under this program, participants were given a sort of debit card that they used to withdraw their benefits from a federal account. This and subsequent pilot programs proved to be more efficient than the previous, paper-stamp version, and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of Aug. 22, 1996, required all states to switch to EBT systems.

Name Change

In 2008, nearly 70 years after the first food stamp was circulated, a new farm bill changed the name of the Food Stamp Program to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and changed the name of the Food Stamp Act of 1977 to the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008. The idea was that the term "food stamps" had a certain stigma attached to it, and the government wanted people to feel comfortable relying on the program during the current economic crisis.

According to the USDA, FSP participation rose from about 17.2 million in 2000 to 29 million in August 2008. Time magazine, using USA figures, reported that 35.1 million people used the program in June 2009, up 22 percent from the previous year.

References

• USDA Food and Nutrition Service
• "A Brief History of Food Stamps," Time Magazine