The Missions Committee of United Methodist Church of Mount Vernon held a forum on hunger and food insecurity in the region Sunday, April 28.
Advocacy and direct support for the agencies who fight against food insecurity were the steps needed most to help the issues facing food pantries and other organizations across the state.
SELCC director Nicole McAlexander and representative for the Iowa Hunger Coalition, spoke about the need at the state level.
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program remains one of the most utilized ways across the state to get access to people who need resources to deal with food insecurity.
“It’s the largest hunger relief program offered in the state,” McAlexander said.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that the system is abused, that resources go to people who do not need them. McAlexander said that isn’t the case.
Currently, only 226,178 people are enrolled in SNAP due to the requirements tightening at the beginning of this year, the lowest number that has been enrolled since 2008. Enrollment in SNAP in 2008 was 131,980 households across the state.
Only 38 to 53 percent of Iowans eligible to use SNAP are participate in the program currently.
While SNAP enrollment has decreased with the new restrictions, however, increased usage at food pantries and food banks across the state have increased.
“Hunger isn’t something that just happens, it’s a result of the policies we enact that causes hunger,” McAlexander said.
In the State of Iowa, a lot of the issues have arisen due to the increasing of more red tape to access SNAP programs or rejection of federal programs that would benefit the state.
Many in the state who deal with food insecurity are working full time jobs. Their salaries are just not keeping up with the cost of living increases.
The Iowa Hunger Coalition has utilized a lobbyist to advocate on food insecurity and hunger issues at the state level.
McAlexander said the best way to help the iowa Hunger Coalition was to take simple actions, whether that is signing a petition or joining the organization’s newsletter.
Kim Guardado of the HACAP Food Reservoir said the organization is one of six food banks in the state that serves food pantries across the state.
HACAP serves roughly 289 different partner agencies in it’s seven county region with the goals of equitable access to everyone who requires assistance.
“People don’t ask for food if they don’t need it,” Guardado said. “Our goal is to help anyone who asks.”
Through those many partner agencies, Guardado said they serve 8,000 families a month.
Alongside the work with supporting food pantries, HACAP also helps with mobile food pantries, backpack programs in area schools and food pantries at schools and area colleges.
She said mobile food pantries have proven to be a very beneficial program started during the COVID pandemic that they have continued.
“People like the privacy those drives provide,” Guardado said.
The agency also focuses on getting healthier foods in the hands of more people in the state through their partner agencies.
When it comes to uniting people via HACAP, Guardado said one of the points they advocated for this year was the creation of a program to buy local foods that would benefit pantries statewide. The measure, Iowans Feeding Iowans, passed the Iowa House and Iowa Senate and is waiting for Gov. Kim Reynolds to sign it into law. It will provide $300,000 in it’s first year, but be a line item that could grow in future years.
McAlexander again spoke about the utilization of SELCC in our communities. Roughly 38.8 percent of people who utilize the food pantry at SELCC are Mount Vernon Citizens, 43.9 percent are Lisbon residents and 17.3 percent reside in other communities.
“Those other communities might be someone who works here, someone whose children attend school here or someone from other communities who just finds our hours beneficial for their use,” McAlexander said.
In order to raise a family of four in Iowa, the two working adults need to be making $18.70 an hour as their wage.
Another area of increase for SELCC has been the number of senior citizens who are utilizing the pantry. In 2021, the number of senior citizens identified as food insecure was 5 million, and McAlexander said that number has only increased.
Barriers people, especially in rural areas face, include lack of transportation, lower incomes and discrimination. SELCC tries to lift some of those barriers.
Alongside the food pantry, are items like hygiene item drives. Personal hygiene items can not be purchased with SNAP benefits.
Locally, SELCC distributed 63,351 pounds of food in 2023 and served 1,150 people from 400 different households.
The costs for the pantry, however, have risen significantly. Over the past five years, McAlexander said that the cost of food purchases from grocery stores or HACAP have increased by roughly 500 percent, which means the same amount of food can not be purchased.
“We know how important the food pantry is to the community,” McAlexander said. “We know times are tough and we will work with our partners to find ways to provide food to those in need.”
When it came to the help locals can provide – advocacy on these issues to elected officials is extremely important, as is supporting the agency.
Jennifer Hoffman with UMCMV was encouraging other churches to think about supporting the food pantry in quarterly food drives the way UMCMV has done to better support the food pantry.
McAlexander said those targeted monetary drives help the agency buy the foods necessary for the pantry. She said the other food drives, like Scouting for Food and those conducted by schools and others, are also very beneficial in raising awareness for the pantry.
Allison Dix of UMCMV said the reason the missions committee identified this was the cost of rising foods is requiring more assistance for the food pantry, and wanted to draw attention to that to the community and encourage more to help the pantry moving forward.