Long Lines at Empty Shelves Ohio Hunger Response Network Hurts / Public News Service

New faces, longer lines and empty shelves: Ohio’s Hunger Relief Network is sounding the alarm as it faces unprecedented challenges.

At the Southeastern Ohio Food Bank in Logan, manager Rose Frech said that with inventory at around 15% capacity, they are facing severe food shortages. This forced them to make tough decisions, she said, such as canceling direct mobile food distributions.

“The real heartbreak is that people have come to rely on us to feed their families,” Frech said. “To no longer be available to people in need – it’s frankly devastating.”

West Ohio Food Bank CEO Tommie Harner said at the same time that there had been an increase in the number of people in need of food assistance.

“A lot of them are struggling with rising inflation, the cost of fuel, the rising cost of food,” Harner said. “And you go to the grocery store and many items are unavailable.”

Ohio has nearly $2 billion in funds remaining under the American Rescue Plan Act. The Ohio Association of Foodbanks requested $183 millionincluding $50 million for emergency food purchases, but the legislature suspended the summer without meeting demand.

Harner explained that a lack of product availability, price increases and higher transportation costs are putting pressure on federal products.

“Just in the past six months, we’ve had 48 USDA food shipments that were canceled,” Harner said. “And many times those USDA foods are our protein products.”

Local food donations are also down, but Frech noted there’s not much private donors can do.

“There are a lot of really generous people who care deeply about the community,” Frech said. “But there just isn’t the same type of wealth that you would see in other areas. So we will never be able to raise the funds to get out of a situation like this.”

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Local Bay Area nonprofits are fighting hunger in low-income neighborhoods by stocking convenience stores and “community fridges” around town with free healthy meals.

The HOPE collaboration in Oakland received a $5,500 grant to help with this effort, from Food Alliance for Health, Environment, Agriculture and Labor – known as HEAL.

Elizabeth Esparza – acting project director at HOPE Collaborative – said people think hunger needs have diminished as the pandemic has subsided, but that is not the case.

“There’s been a lot of increased support in 2020,” Esparza said. “And a lot of them started dwindling before the end of 2020, when the pandemic was at its worst. And so, that need is still there.”

HOPE Collaborative has partnered with nonprofits Cocina del Corazon and Third Eye Soul Kitchen to stock community fridges placed around the city and launched the Community Food Distribution Project with their partners Healthy Corner Store in March.

Navina Khanna, executive director of the HEAL Food Alliance, said the group is awarding $52,000 in rapid response grants to food justice organizations that work with communities of color.

“We’ve seen that going through a whole funding process is often very, very cumbersome,” Khanna said, “in terms of application and reporting requirements, and things like that. And that, by creating a pool of funds and by getting this to our communities, our communities could do what they need to do.”

Grants are designed to be flexible and can be used for many things – including broken fridge repairs, transportation, food and more. They benefited eight local BIPOC-led organizations across the country.

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A rural Missouri organization is getting a financial boost to empower meat processing plant workers, especially immigrants and refugees, and help them fight back.

The Alliance of Rural Community Workers(RCWA) based in Milan near the Smithfield plant, said it would use a new rapid response grant from the HEAL Food Alliance to organize workers, ensure they know their rights in the workplace and advocating for policies that hold corporations accountable.

RCWA executive director Axel Fuentes said wryly that many food industry workers struggle to afford to feed their own families.

“Even when you hear the companies they say, ‘Well, we charge high rates.’ explained Fuentes. “These contractors, they don’t necessarily pay the same rate as the companies say they do.”

Fuentes added that workers in meat processing plants also face a high likelihood of injury on the job. He noted that meat processing requires repetitive and strenuous movements, and there are no regulations on how many cuts employees can be expected to produce in a given period of time. He added that Missouri does not require companies to provide workers with breaks during the workday.

Fuentes argued that immigrant and refugee workers are often more susceptible to exploitation by their employers.

“What we’re doing is teaching them to come together as a group and deal with the situation, either by going to management, or by sending letters, or by complaining to government agencies and telling them. learning that they have rights,” Fuentes stressed.

Navina Khanna, executive director of the HEAL Food Alliance, said the COVID pandemic has exposed the long-standing fragility of the food system, and that agricultural workers, meat processing plant workers and BIPOC communities are more likely to face chronic food-related health problems. often the most affected.

“We really believe that the solutions that have the most impact, and the people who really know what the solutions are, are the people most affected by the problems we face,” Khanna said. “We intentionally aim to invest and build leadership from frontline communities in this work.”

Khanna stressed that flexible grants are important because it is not always possible to predict what the needs will be.

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Like textbooks and transportation, a healthy lunch is an essential part of a child’s school day and can contribute to academic success.

As of March 2020, the United States Department of Agriculture waivers enabled schools to serve free meals to all children, regardless of income.

Katherine Ungar, policy associate for the Children’s Defense Fund of Ohio, explained that this has proven to be an effective policy.

“We have seen an increase in the use of school meals as a result of these waivers,” Ungar recounted. “Indicating that these school meals are really important when we are thinking about child hunger and making sure our students are succeeding.”

Waivers expired at the end of the school year. Ungar said that means about 1.4 million children in Ohio will lose access to free school lunches. The Hunger-Free Schools Ohio Coalition is appeal to heads of state to use funding from the American Rescue Plan or other sources to supplement the cost of providing school meals to districts.

Ungar explained that without the waivers, there is a whole subset of struggling families who may be just above 185% of the federal poverty level, who will no longer be eligible for free or reduced-price school meals. They will either have to buy meals at full price or cook their lunch.

“Which is just going to put a huge strain on families’ budgets, not to mention the huge increase in food prices,” Ungar pointed out. “Grocery bills are outrageous now, and it’s really expensive when you think about feeding a family.”

She added that some of Ohio’s larger urban districts can use the federal community eligibility provision, which allows very poor schools to provide meals at no cost to all.

“What this shows is that it reduces the stigma, so some children get free and reduced-price meals and some children have to pay full price,” Ungar argued. “There’s no differentiation, and they’re seeing an increase in the use of school lunches.”

The coalition also calls on heads of state to encourage all eligible districts to continue provision and provide technical assistance to implement it.

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