Volunteers piled boxes of food into trunks in a warehouse in Rock River in southcentral Wyoming. The line of vehicles stretched down the street. Each person had a story, like Susan Griffin.
“As soon as I lost my husband, I lost my health, and I ended up on disability. And so I've kinda had to have help since then,” Griffin said.
And Lea Cheney.
”We actually had a pretty big life-changing experience right before we moved here,” she said. “We live in our RV full-time. Our old RV burnt down. So going through that, it's still not paid. Funds are tight.”
Federal cuts to The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have made it harder for food banks to address growing hunger in the state. Danica Skveta, the director of the Food Bank of Wyoming, said that, yet again, Wyoming has seen an increase in food insecurity, making it the twelfth most hungry state in the U.S.
Skveta said DOGE cut the amount of commodities her organization receives from the federal government, leaving her to seek more of their food from Walmart and other local donors.
“It means that we're not putting less food into the community. It means that we have to make up that difference to make sure that the food is there,” Skveta said.
She’s had to make hard choices, like canceling or reducing shipments, even as programs like Rock River’s have seen more people in need.
Ellen Freeman drove 38 miles here from Hanna to pick up boxes to take back to her community. Freeman manages a food pantry in Hanna. She’s still seeing impacts reverberate from last November’s government shutdown.
“My numbers almost doubled when the debacle in November [2025] happened,” Freeman said. “ With the [federal government] shutdown, they stopped the SNAP benefits. All of a sudden their SNAP was gone. They were panicking. They were terrified. And then they started coming in and using the pantry, too.”
The Food Bank of Wyoming canceled a mobile food truck to Hanna as well, since the town has the brick and mortar pantry. That’s even as Albany County, where both Hanna and Rock River are located, has some of the highest food insecurity in Wyoming, over 18%.
“ When I'm looking at my budget, and I have X amount of dollars for the whole state of Wyoming and the whole mobile pantry program, we have to make hard decisions,” said Skveta. “So unfortunately, Hanna was one of our hard decisions.”
She said she also had to cancel a mobile food delivery to the community of Wright in Campbell County. That community also has a pantry, though, as well.
“Every year, year over year, we have more people facing food insecurity. It isn't hunger necessarily, although there are situations in communities where that is happening in Wyoming. It's terrible for a family to have to make the decision whether mom's not going to eat dinner so she can feed her kids,” Skveta said.
Over 100 people picked up boxes at the Rock River mobile food delivery in September, driving in from towns across the county to receive food.
