As the House Agriculture Committee debated the 2018 Farm Bill on Wednesday in Washington, the most controversial component of the bill had nothing to do with agriculture, but rather, hunger.

Bay Area food banks and House Democrats said that the country’s most vulnerable populations would be severely hurt by Republicans’ proposed changes to food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program portion of the bill. House Republicans have proposed more stringent food stamp eligibility and work requirements, which anti-hunger groups say will lead to millions losing an essential but modest safety net that provides an average of $1.40 per person per meal.

“There’s no argument that this bill will put 1.6 million Americans off of SNAP, and that, Mr. Chairman, is quite honestly the purpose of your bill,” said Rep. David Scott, D-Georgia, during the Agriculture Committee meeting.

Congress is supposed to renegotiate the Farm Bill — a set of federal food and agriculture policies — every five years, and the current bill expires Sept. 30. Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway, R-Texas, presented the bill last week without the participation of Democrats, who refused to take part because of the proposed food stamp overhaul.

“I am hopeful Democrats will not hold the nation’s farmers and ranchers hostage in this process over the SNAP work and training requirements, which will provide SNAP beneficiaries not just a benefit, but a better future that only a job can provide,” said Conaway in a statement after Republicans passed the bill out of the committee. The next step is for the House to vote on the bill.

The Farm Bill proposes shifting billions of dollars away from direct benefits to job training programs and expands work requirements to include those age 50-59 and parents of minors over age 5. The changes would lead to a decrease of $20 billion in direct benefits over 10 years, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a research and policy institute that focuses on programs serving low-income communities.

Bay Area food banks expressed outrage at the proposed changes.

“These cuts will mean that people will go hungry,” said Paul Ash, executive director of the SF-Marin Food Bank, which is licensed to help low-income residents apply for CalFresh, the name for the food stamp program in California. The SF-Marin Food Bank also provides free groceries at neighborhood food pantries and ingredients to soup kitchens. “This is a partisan bill that seems to be trying to save money at all costs, even at the risk of taking money from an effective program.”

Food stamp benefits make up a majority of spending under the Farm Bill, costing $68 billion in 2017, when it served 42 million people, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s down from a historic, post-recession peak of almost $80 billion in 2013, when enrollment reached 47 million.

Republicans disagree with the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities’ estimates, arguing that the nutrition portion of the bill will be budget-neutral, as the Congressional Budget Office has reported. Republicans argue that the stricter work requirements are necessary, estimating that out of the 3.5 million households receiving benefits with a family member who should be required to work under the current rules, only 30 percent actually do.

“This is exactly the time when we need to pull people out of poverty, off of welfare, into the workforce so they can get good careers, so they can get livelihoods,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said last week in support of the bill.

Under current rules, able-bodied adults — those who are not disabled or pregnant — between the ages of 18 and 49 who do not have dependents are required to work or receive job training for 20 hours per week. The new bill raises the age to 59 and does not exempt those with children over 5. A parent of a 6-year-old wouldn’t be exempt even if they couldn’t get after-school or summertime child care, for example, in order to work at least 20 hours.

The eligibility changes could hit Bay Area residents particularly hard because of the higher cost of living, as the bill also changes rules around the income cutoff required to qualify for benefits. California residents who earn up to 200 percent of the poverty level, $49,200 for a family of four, currently qualify for benefits. The new bill would drop the income cutoff to 130 percent of the federal poverty level, $31,980 for a family of four. If someone started to earn slightly more, they would no longer qualify.

“If I’m a working family and I go out and I improve my income, and my SNAP benefits get taken away, then I actually get poorer,” said Sue Sigler, executive director of the California Association of Food Banks in Oakland.

In Alameda County, an estimated 110,000 residents are enrolled in CalFresh, 60 percent of them children, said Stephen Knight, director of policy and partnerships at the Alameda County Community Food Bank.

“It’s outrageous to make this kind of proposal just a few short months after giving massive tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations,” said Knight, referring to the $1.5 trillion in tax cuts passed by the Trump administration in December. “We need to strengthen this program, not to cut it.”

Tara Duggan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tduggan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @taraduggan