The SNAP crisis shows our need to innovate for food security | Opinion

As I type this, our nation wavers on whether 42 million Americans will continue receiving the food benefits they depend on through SNAP.

As a CEO in emergency food access, I find myself deeply uneasy about the future. A temporary safety net of 50% of benefits paid through the month of November has been announced, for which I am momentarily thankful. What troubles me most is that nearly all the conversations at the local, state and federal level are all about short-term triage, and almost none are about long-range solutions.

The real emergency is not a single political standoff. The real emergency is the emergency food system itself.

At least a third of Washington families at risk of losing SNAP are working families. Yet our charitable food system is built around midday access. Working families are working during the day.

Furloughed public servants are still reporting for duty around the clock. Lines at foodbanks open at noon. Doors close by three. Many pantries are open only one day a week.

An uncomfortable truth: The social safety net is funded largely by the tax dollars of working people, and yet we have an entire food system not available to those same people when they need it the most. Food insecurity is at its most intense level in recent memory. Only bold innovation and new operating models will move the needle. But this requires courage to stop funding the status quo, to challenge legacy thinking and to invest in systemic solutions beyond election and budget cycles.

The next decade will decide whether we maintain a 50-year emergency or finally build the food system that ends it. The question is no longer. “Can we innovate?” but, “Will we?”

I have spent five years building GoodRoots Northwest with my team, developing a refrigerated locker network that delivers convenient, healthy food across a 250-square-mile region of Pierce County. No lines. No stigma. No come back tomorrow.

Each locker has the practical impact of a 3,000-square-foot grocery store in the very neighborhoods that need it most. Instead of construction that costs millions, this equipment costs about $65,000 and has a ten-year lifespan. That is real, durable infrastructure communities can afford.

In the last year, our network saw 64,503 visits because access finally matches the modern life of a household on the edge of financial collapse. This project has been a journey and an exercise in patience for a food system not ready for new ways to approach a very old problem.

Along the way I learned some uncomfortable truths. Innovation is rarely treated as an asset in the social sector. At first, this was utterly baffling to me. In a previous career, I managed supply chain and finance at a Fortune 500 high-end online retailer that was obsessed with customer experience. We measured every click, every friction point, and redesigned until customers could get what they needed without confusion or delay.

Then I entered the social sector and saw the opposite. Confusing hours. Long lines. Subjective eligibility. Families asked to fit into our schedule rather than the other way around. I watched an expensive, never-ending loop of crisis management that never advanced the goal. Even after historic levels of investment in food insecurity relief, we seemed to lose traction rather than gain it.

But we keep pouring money into models that don’t work for most of the people who need them.

Another uncomfortable truth: The USDA reports a staggering 3,700 farms lost in Washington since 2017, including 260 in Pierce County. That is not just acreage gone. It is livelihoods lost, stewardship interrupted and community wealth drained. We keep prioritizing the hauling of corporate food donations that are often ultraprocessed and nutritionally thin, while nearby farms till perfectly good produce back into the ground because access to market has been cut off by these same national chains. For too many growers, this becomes a slow death. Meanwhile, people go hungry and a local supply chain sits largely untapped.

Imagine a food system that stops this loss in its tracks. Picture fresh food vending machines at the neighborhood scale, refrigerated lockers that hold locally grown produce, dairy and proteins for pickup after work and on weekends. Imagine a common good distribution network where the sale of food pays for the nonprofit distribution itself. This model would keep dollars circulating nearby, stabilize the farm economy, and reduce waste. If we redirected even a portion of the resources we use to haul big box rejected goods, we could change the local food landscape for generations to come.

Here is my ask to public and private partners: stop grading proposals on how familiar they feel. Grade them on whether they remove the barriers we already know by name. Make after-hours access a baseline, not a bonus. Fund nonprofits that are activating with innovation and hold us to outcomes: minutes saved for families, miles not driven, food waste reduced, and local procurement that keeps farms alive. Notice the 30% of households losing SNAP who are working. Notice the 64% blocked by schedules, disability or transportation. Design for them. Invest in infrastructure that ends emergencies before they start and uses public dollars to close every gap. This is the moment.

Stacey Crnich is CEO of GoodRoots Northwest.