New local food legislation is coming out of the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health.
At a recent online meeting for the White House’s ongoing Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, I learned that the Appalachian Region of the United States — includes 27 states stretching from New York to Mississippi — has some of the highest rates of food insecurity in the U.S. The statistic resonated with me because I grew up there.
Food insecurity is when a person is at risk for hunger and malnutrition, a determination made by asking people if they worry about running out of food before they have more money to purchase food again, or if the food they purchase typically doesn’t last until the next pay period.
I lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania most of my life. It is “the Paris of Appalachia.” I lived a little northwest of the city, more rural. My high school had a riflery club, and we had the “Big Knob Fair” every late August. We picked up our milk from the dairy and apples from the orchard.
Sometimes I knew too much about the meat on our plate: I stopped eating beef once mid-bite when my mom shared the cow’s name. Thank you, “Betty” — and yes, we did bless the gift she gave, but it was all a bit too familiar for my 10-year-old self.
As I child, I could tell when the adults got paid because the grocery store was packed and the shopping carts were full. I have experienced government food boxes and free school lunches (the excitement of very mild but real cheddar cheese and the disappointment of a large silver can of “beef”). I’m glad schools don’t have color-coded lunch tickets anymore (thank you for the stigma, school accounting office). I wonder, how common was my experience?
Pockets of northern Michigan — for example, the northern counties of the Lower Peninsula — mirror Appalachian food insecurity rates.
In pre-pandemic 2019, Clare County’s rate was nearly 72% higher than the national average. I bet their grocery stores are busy on payday, the way my childhood grocery was.
One out of every eight of Michigan children is hungry, and when you are hungry, you miss opportunities to think or care about nutrition.
Being hungry takes all your energy, and you don’t have room in your brain to think of much else, like math or social studies.
The current federal legislative session offers an important opportunity to boost the amount of healthy locally grown food going to school kids and families.
A new bill titled The Expanding Access To (EAT) Local Foods Act (S. 3982), or the “EAT Bill,” would provide permanent funding to purchase and distribute locally grown and produced foods to vulnerable communities and provide tailored technical assistance to help growers scale up production.
Please join me and advocate for this and other priorities by using the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition action tools (sustainableagriculture.net/take-action), and if you would like to get involved with the movement to end hunger and learn more about what’s happening around the country, go here: impacthunger.org.