Officials have been scrambling to get some food stamp, or SNAP, payments to people after the government shutdown caused that money to start drying up over the weekend. This affects millions of Americans.

Now, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says a method to get food assistance out to people could be worked out by Wednesday of this week. This news comes after federal courts said the administration has to tap into emergency funds to get this done. 

But food insecurity was already a major problem prior to this past weekend. To hear more about the sort of demand food banks are seeing, we checked in with Sylvia Blain, CEO of the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance.

“Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio asked her how that network of food banks and other food security organizations is coping. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Sylvia Blain: Well, we are going to do what we've already been doing. The Charitable Food Network in Arkansas, which is six Feeding America food banks that cover all 75 counties in the state of Arkansas, as well as our nearly 600 pantry and feeding site members across the state, have already been seeing a huge rise in the need because of the federal shutdown and the furloughed employees. And so SNAP provides nine meals for every one the Charitable Food Network is able to provide. And I don't see us being able to rise to meet that need, in spite of how much we would like to.

David Brancaccio: Yeah, I'm just sitting with that statistic for a second here: a 9:1 ratio. I mean, your network can't go out and find that much food and build the logistics networks to replace SNAP.

Blain: Right. I mean that would take expanding our warehouses, expanding our food storage capacity, refrigeration, freezing, transportation capacity, and doing that on a dime at a time when most of the nonprofit world has been facing budget cuts.

Brancaccio: Taking a look more broadly at the demographics of hunger, what are some of the largest groups that are eligible for benefits? I would start with probably people with children, right?

Blain: Certainly, so more than 70% of the people in this state receiving benefits are households with children. And I'd also like to point out that it's above 73% of the people receiving SNAP benefits in the state of Arkansas are also employed.

Brancaccio: More urban or more rural?

Blain: No, it's across the board. We are No. 1 in food insecurity. So we have a good amount of food insecurity in our urban and our rural populations, and we have food deserts in every single county.

Brancaccio: How do you think it's going to be playing out in the coming days, if they don't resolve this government shutdown? I mean longer lines at food pantries?

Blain: Yes. The longer the lines, the more a chance we risk of running out of food to be able to meet this need. And I think it's also important to remember that we're facing this going into the holiday season, and so many of our food banks are currently distributing the food that they typically stockpile for the Thanksgiving and Christmas season. So unless we're able to get this resolved and resolved quickly, we could be looking at a pretty bleak holiday season.