In Oklahoma, more than 15 percent of households are food insecure, meaning they have limited access to adequate nutrition. With 59 percent of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, many people are one bad break away from experiencing uncertainty regarding where they will find their next meal.
Take John Cleator, who worked at a livestock trailer manufacturing company for 16 years. One day, a 32-foot trailer fell on him, resulting in a brain injury and soft tissue damage to his neck and spine. The accident forced him to retire.
Or, listen to the story of Ashley Buck, who earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Oklahoma in 2005. Buck began working as an insurance claims representative and had her first child five years later. Not long after, her husband’s kidneys failed, and she assumed the role of caregiver — supporting her husband while he received dialysis treatment became her first priority.
Cleator and Buck both became reliant on food assistance programs, and they still are today.
“Consistent access to affordable, quality food — it’s not something we’ve ever experienced as a family,” Buck said. “My husband and I have been married for 20 years. This October, my kids will be 12 and 15. Their entire lives have been food insecure.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Oklahoma has the fifth-highest rate of food insecurity in the nation, surpassing the national average rate of 13.5 percent.
Despite the high proportion of Oklahomans who receive food assistance, Cleator said he feels the community often goes unseen.
“We tend to be pretty invisible,” Cleator said. “We don’t stand out. You can’t tell meeting someone on the street if they are having difficulties or not, unlike our homeless people who tend to, unfortunately, stand out.”
Cleator, who uses Social Security disability benefits, said he grew up worrying about food. Often scraping by financially, Cleator said he learned tricks to help manage, such as boiling bones and vegetable scraps for soup.
“It’s just little tricks that I learned from my grandparents who came up through the Depression,” Cleator said. “A couple of times, I brought home some roadkill.”
Food insecurity is also known to increase the prevalence of chronic diseases such as diabetes, kidney disease, hypertension and obesity, per data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
During their time depending upon food pantries for assistance, chronic diseases have plagued Buck’s family. Buck became pre-diabetic, while her husband and oldest child were diagnosed with diabetes. Now, her youngest is showing preliminary symptoms. Eventually, Buck avoided needing insulin — an accomplishment she credits to the food pantries she visited for implementing grocery store-style programs.
“We know it’s not a lack of education — it’s not ignorance,” Buck said. “We know what to eat and what to avoid.”
Oklahoma to receive a nearly 40 percent cut in SNAP funding
President Donald Trump recently signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” into law, outlining sweeping changes and cuts to taxes and federal programs. One such program set for reductions is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is used by 686,800 Oklahomans, or roughly 17 percent of the state.
SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, provides food-purchasing assistance to low-income persons, aiming to help them adequately maintain nutrition and health.
Alongside food pantries, Buck greatly relies on SNAP benefits to feed herself and her family. Buck said the idea of losing benefits while still having to pay medical costs is terrifying.
“We will likely be dead — that’s the God-honest truth,” Buck said. “I’ve been not thinking about that part and really just praying, because at this point that’s all I’ve got left. I don’t have any agency or ability to make these changes.”
An analysis from The Commonwealth Fund shows that Oklahoma is set to receive America’s ninth-highest relative reduction in SNAP funding, totaling to $628 million, or 39.3 percent of the federal program.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill” will not only cut billions from federal SNAP program funding. It also poses a potential a share of program costs by state governments, a change that marks the first time states would bear any cost of SNAP benefits.
Beginning in Fiscal Year 2028, per the Food Research and Action Center, states will be required to contribute toward SNAP benefit payments based on error rates, which measure the accuracy of each state’s eligibility and benefit determinations. U.S. Department of Agriculture FY 2024 data list Oklahoma as having a 10.87 percent error rate. If a state’s error rate persists over 10, it must match 15 percent of federal funding allocated to the state’s program.
April Doshier is the head of Food and Shelter, a nonprofit organization in Norman that aims to find solutions to homelessness and hunger. Doshier said qualifying for SNAP in Oklahoma is already challenging, even before changes from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” will be implemented. When changes take effect, Doshier said she thinks it will devastate communities, specifically in rural areas throughout Oklahoma.
“Places like Norman, where two or three good-sized food pantries can step in, we can help ease that burden on folks that no longer qualify for food stamps,” Doshier said. “But in rural Oklahoma, where there are no services and no support, those folks will starve.”
Connections Food and Resource Center serves people in western Oklahoma. Based in Weatherford, the center serves 15 smaller rural municipalities and provides a taxi service to help transport people. The organization also operates a Senior Servings Program, which allows those aged 60 and older to receive up to 12 frozen meals a month. Despite serving around 120 families per month, the center knows federal funding cuts are jeopardizing the program, according to Eddie Bennett, the center’s assistant director.
Bennett said a fundraising effort is underway to maintain the program.
“We’d like to see federal, state or local funding for food sources for these folks in towns that just don’t have it, especially out here in rural Oklahoma,” Bennett said.
‘It has been a growing number every month’
Alongside federal programs, Cleator and Buck utilize initiatives offered by Food and Shelter in Norman. Food and Shelter operates two food assistance services: a dining room service and its Share Center.
The dining room services provides guests with two hot meals daily, regardless of housing status. Open four days of the week with differing hours, the Share Center is a free grocery store for those in Norman, Noble, Lexington, Slaughterville, Little Axe or McClain County.
“You can pick out the things you know your family will eat so that there’s not waste going at the end of getting food from a food pantry,” Doshier said. “(You can) get what’s unique to your diet, what your kids will eat, and take it home and cook for yourself.”
Buck has gone to Food and Shelter for the past 15 years, with the nonprofit becoming her family’s main source of food around 2013. She said those who work with the organization truly care and are welcoming to people in need of assistance.
“There were times when I felt invisible in the world, and they made me feel seen, remembered who I was, remembered my story, and thought about me or included me in their headspace,” Buck said. “It was as if I was worthy of consideration or worthy of just being.”
According to Feeding America, one in every four children in Oklahoma faces hunger. Additionally, 45.2 percent of households receiving SNAP benefits have children. Doshier said the demographic that Food and Shelter serves most is children, specifically because parents are shopping for their families.
“People always talk about, ‘What can we do for children and protecting children?’ But helping parents be stable is the best way you can help children be safe and stable,” Doshier said. “No mother is happy because she can’t feed her kids.”
Over her 15 years as director of Food and Shelter, Doshier said the nonprofit has increased its footprint to serve more people. Additionally, Doshier said dining room service now serves around 300 people per day, compared to the approximate 100 it served years ago. Doshier also said the number of Share Center users has consistently grown since the program opened in 2023.
“It has been a growing number every month,” Doshier said. “We see 30 to 50 new families that have never shopped at the Share Center or a food pantry before, and that number seems to be pretty steady.”
‘The cost is rising, but the income is not’
According to Hunger Free Oklahoma, 187,000 Oklahomans live in rural low-income, low-access communities.
“We have a big issue with economic times now where everything is costing more,” Bennett said. “The cost is rising, but the income is not.”
Compared to more populated areas of the state, rural Oklahoma communities do not have as many major employment sources, which Bennett said also contributes to a need for food assistance.
“It’s difficult for some of our employees, some of our neighbors, to be employed simply because there’s not a job market that’s available for some of them,” Bennett said.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Bennett said the need for food assistance from his organization dropped. He attributes that to increased SNAP benefits, tax refunds, stimulus checks and other federal aid approved by Congress during the pandemic. Since the pandemic ended, however, Bennett said the numbers have surged again.
“We’ve had several (people) that may have not been here for two years,” Bennett said. “They’ll come in, and the common statement I hear is, ‘I tried to do this, but I just I don’t have the money to make it work now, so I need some assistance.’ And we’re starting to see a lot of new clients that are coming in that have found out about us.”
‘Most of us are people who just had a turn of bad luck’
Amid rampant social stigma regarding homeless people and those receiving federal benefits, Cleator said he wishes every Oklahoman understood that people needing food assistance are not “freeloaders.”
“Most of us don’t want this — it is something that happened to us,” Cleator said. “The way some people look at those who are dealing with food insecurity or homelessness, I wish that those people would be able to experience it for a very short time. (…) Most of us are people who just had a turn of bad luck.”
Buck shared the same sentiment, saying she is not food insecure out of ignorance or a lack of effort.
“They are one dandelion blow away from being right there,” Buck said. “One illness, one accident, an insurance claim on their house — they are just one emergency away from being in the same position.”
