Food Stamp Program Essay

The Food Stamp program is credited to various people. The most notably are secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace and the program’s first Administrator Milo Perkins. A pilot program was introduced and began on May 29, 1961-1964, which was successful. So on “January 31, 1964, President Johnson requested Congress to pass legislation making the FSP permanent which resulted in the Food Stamp Act of 1964.” (United States Department of Agriculture). “The first recipient of the program was Mabel Mcfiggin of Rochester, New York”. (USDA)
The main purpose of the program was to strengthened the agricultural economy as well to provide improved levels of nutrition among the low income families. It was determined that you would only be able to purchase items
And the government came up with another Food Stamp act of 1977. Which basically was established to eliminate the purchase requirements, and raised the resource limit to $1,750. In the early days of applying for food stamps you would have to go into your local public aid office and submit an application, and after that they would mail you an appointment to come back into the office. At the time of your appointment you would have to bring in your source of income, may it be employment check stubs or unemployment papers birth certificates for all of your family in your household as well as their income. If you were approved you would go back into the office and pick up benefits, or in some states they would send your benefits to an agency that the government used as an outsourcing facility(Currency Exchange in most Mid-western states) and you would have to pick them up on the 1st or the 15th of the month and in many instances you would have to stand in line for several hours to receive them, no matter what your ethnicity was you would have to wait in that line, and everyone in that stood in that line knew your business. Back then food stamps were also presented to you in a paper form and was given to you in a coupon booklet format that was colored coded that consisted of $1(brown) $5(blue) and $10(green)and also there were plastic coins that were given out as change, which were colored coded as