Here's a great opinion piece posted on the Albany Times Union blog, The Observation Deck. the post highlights the rising need for food assistance in the Capital Region and how the Farm Bill can help.
Food for thought
December 4, 2011 at 6:00 am by TU Editorial Board
Our opinion: The needy and the hungry are more dependent than ever on others’ help. Food pantries are only a short-term solution.
This is what it’s like in the trenches of the battle to spare the hardest-hit victims of a horrible economy from outright misery. This is a story of trying to feed people.
In Schenectady, the word comes from a food pantry that the reality of the need that arises in an era of stubbornly high unemployment, mortgage foreclosures, escalating consumer debt and, yes, soaring food prices goes beyond the emergency provisions that charities can provide.
“Food pantries have become a fabric of our emergency safety net, and we deal with people who have chronic emergencies,” says the Rev. Phillip Grigsby, director of the Schenectady Inner City Ministry. “People don’t have enough money to live on.”
So he and his colleagues at similar entities employ the logical remedies. They are increasing, yet again, the number of times people can come to receive emergency food allotments designed to last all of three days. It used to be four times a year. Come January, it will be once a month.
Such anecdotes and examples reverberate across the Capital Region. So what can be done to help people who literally lack enough to eat, let alone maintain a healthy diet?
The availability of emergency provisions, funded statewide to the tune of $29 million a year, is at once essential yet incomplete.
There is a solution. Congress will be taking up the farm bill next year. Legislation that’s renewed just once every five years is an opportunity to reduce hunger and improve public health.
About 70 percent of what’s tentatively budgeted at $98.1 billion goes toward the food stamp program. The increased frequency of visits to food pantries is ample evidence that even $70 billion isn’t enough.
This is what it’s like in the trenches of the battle to spare the hardest-hit victims of a horrible economy from outright misery. This is a story of trying to feed people.
In Schenectady, the word comes from a food pantry that the reality of the need that arises in an era of stubbornly high unemployment, mortgage foreclosures, escalating consumer debt and, yes, soaring food prices goes beyond the emergency provisions that charities can provide.
“Food pantries have become a fabric of our emergency safety net, and we deal with people who have chronic emergencies,” says the Rev. Phillip Grigsby, director of the Schenectady Inner City Ministry. “People don’t have enough money to live on.”
So he and his colleagues at similar entities employ the logical remedies. They are increasing, yet again, the number of times people can come to receive emergency food allotments designed to last all of three days. It used to be four times a year. Come January, it will be once a month.
Such anecdotes and examples reverberate across the Capital Region. So what can be done to help people who literally lack enough to eat, let alone maintain a healthy diet?
The availability of emergency provisions, funded statewide to the tune of $29 million a year, is at once essential yet incomplete.
There is a solution. Congress will be taking up the farm bill next year. Legislation that’s renewed just once every five years is an opportunity to reduce hunger and improve public health.
About 70 percent of what’s tentatively budgeted at $98.1 billion goes toward the food stamp program. The increased frequency of visits to food pantries is ample evidence that even $70 billion isn’t enough.
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