Twenty-one jobs. $1.8 million of funding. Boots on the ground in every county. That’s what will likely be lost in Wyoming when a federal nutrition education program comes to a close this September.
Pres. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will eliminate funding for the education arm of the Supplemental Nutrition Association Program, more commonly known as SNAP-Ed. The federally-run and state-administered program has created learning opportunities for low-income folks in the Cowboy State for over three decades.
SNAP-Ed helps educate people on how to stretch food dollars, improve their health and increase nutritional security. In Wyoming, it’s administered through the Department of Family Services and run by the Cent$ible Nutrition Program at the University of Wyoming Extension.
“ In addition to direct education, we also did a lot of community interventions and worked with community partners,” said Cent$ible Nutrition Program Director Mindy Meuli.
According to Meuli, 392 partners, to be exact. That includes food pantries, gardens, schools and a partnership with First Lady Jennie Gordon’s Wyoming Hunger Initiative called Grow A Little Extra.
“ It's hard to see that [the program is] stopping right when we were really connecting and having a synergistic effect, and that now we're gonna have to wind back down and pull it back,” said Meuli. “I really felt that we were really on the verge of changing the Wyoming landscape.”
Feeding America’s “Map the Meal Gap” project found that about 15% of people in Wyoming were considered food insecure in 2023.
According to its 2024 report, Cent$ible Nutrition’s programming has had measurable impacts on young people and adults in the state, increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables on students’ plates and upping physical activity.
Meuli emphasized that it also had a tangible impact on people’s wallets last year.
“ There was a $53 per month savings on food, which is something I think that is really important, particularly with today's food prices and the cost of food,” she said.
SNAP-Ed funding makes up about 90% of Cent$ible Nutrition’s budget, with the remainder coming from the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP). Federal funding for that program remains intact, but its smaller budget of around $280,000 means Cent$ible Nutrition will have fewer educators and less of a statewide reach.
“ We're hoping to still provide a newsletter and support to food pantries with recipes when we know what's going to be in the TEFAP [The Emergency Food Assistance Program] food boxes,” said Meuli. “We're hoping to still provide some of that indirect education to our partners, but it's going to be a much more limited capacity.”
In addition to cutting funding to SNAP-Ed, the Big Beautiful Bill narrows the definition for who is eligible for SNAP benefits.
The new act raises how long someone must remain in the workforce to qualify to age 64. Being a veteran also no longer exempts an application from the workforce requirements for eligibility.
