Advocate: Use Your Voice for Hunger-Relief on Long Island

A strong nutrition safety net is essential to a future where no one goes hungry. Island Harvest Food Bank advocates for policies that protect individuals and families from hunger. Raise your voice and let your elected officials know that you support hunger-relief programs.

Guest Essay from Randi Shubin Dresner and Rachel Sabella of No Kid Hungry New York

https://www.newsday.com/opinion/commentary/guest-essays/food-insecurity-hunger-yte5q4zn

The affordability crisis is pushing tens of thousands more Long Island families closer to the breaking point. Feeding America estimates 221,000 people on Long Island live with food insecurity. Many of our neighbors rely on federal programs to help make ends meet.

But lifeline programs that give kids healthy food options and help families here put food on the table are under attack in Washington. The urgency cannot be overstated.

The administration just canceled $1 billion in local farm purchases for school meals and food pantries that promote access to fresh fruits and vegetables while supporting small farmers. Congress has passed a budget resolution that calls for a staggering $230 billion cut to programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps families afford groceries. The pending five-year farm bill could see the full slate of federal food benefits severely curtailed.

The ripple effects will mean kids go hungry, parents don’t make ends meet, and small businesses, supermarkets, local grocers, food producers, and farms across Long Island lose vital dollars. The economic implications are severe.

In a closely divided House of Representatives, we need our Long Island members to be our firewall to protect families. The responsibility is immense; they need to stand up for common sense in this polarized environment.

Every year since the pandemic, No Kid Hungry New York has polled families statewide about the cost of food, how they balance their budgets, and how food insecurity affects their families. But even by post-pandemic standards, this year’s results were startling.

This is the first year our annual poll has shown a higher proportion of Long Islanders reporting challenges affording food than their neighbors in New York City or across the state. Some 58% of Long Islanders took on additional debt over the past year to cover the rising cost of food — the state’s highest proportion.

The reasons are plain to see. Housing costs on Long Island are through the roof. The price of groceries has shot up faster than paychecks. Tariffs will cause further spikes. Not having enough food is becoming a more common result of the affordability crisis.

It is troubling that as the crisis deepens, Congress could pull the rug out from under families that rely on food assistance, hurting Long Island’s jobs and small businesses, too. Most, if not all, emergency food program funding flows to America’s agriculture sector. Programs like SNAP, by design, require benefits to be spent in the communities where our neighbors live. The proposed cuts will cause direct harm to people who may not even realize how connected they are to the emergency food ecosystem.

In our recent poll, 55% of Long Islanders opposed any cuts to SNAP and other food assistance benefits people use at grocery stores and farmers’ markets. The reasons go beyond Long Islanders’ concern for their own families and neighbors: Two-thirds of Long Islanders believe these programs benefit the state’s economy, and three of four believe they benefit local businesses.

Long Islanders see the big picture: Food assistance is funneled back into local economies. Food security is farm security and small business security.

Our bipartisan House delegation represents the balance of power in Congress. This is not a partisan issue, but a matter of ensuring the well-being of our communities. Our members should oppose these shortsighted cuts and protect our children, parents, veterans, and local businesses.

This guest essay reflects the views of Rachel Sabella, director of No Kid Hungry New York, and Randi Shubin Dresner, president and chief executive of Island Harvest.

Sign Our Petition to tell Governor Hochul and New York State Legislators to Fully Fund Hunger-Relief Programs

  • Island Harvest has joined the Healthy School Meals for All NY Kids coalition, led by our friends at Hunger Solutions New York and Community Food Advocates. Healthy School Meals for All is a proposal to restore free breakfast and lunch for all New York state kids. Those of us with school-aged children during the height of the pandemic are already familiar with how this worked; the federal government funded free breakfast and lunch for all students but ended that program last summer. We estimate that $200 million per year provides free breakfast and lunch for more than 726,000 students across the state, including 240,000 students on Long Island.

Sign Our Petition to Give Every Child in NY Breakfast & Lunch at School!

Become An Advocacy Volunteer

Learn more about the policy issues affecting hunger relief.

Key Issues:


SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as “food stamps.” SNAP provides a monthly benefit to qualified, low income consumers to purchase food. SNAP benefits are provided via an electronic benefits transfer (EBT) card. To qualify, a household must have gross monthly income less than 130 percent of the federal poverty guidelines (currently $24,600 for a family of four), monthly net income of 100 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, and assets of less than $2,000.

CEP is the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). CEP is a non-pricing meal service option for schools and school districts in low-income areas. CEP allows the nation's highest poverty schools and districts to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications. Instead, schools that adopt CEP are reimbursed using a formula based on percentage of students categorically eligible for free meals based on their participation in other specific means-tested programs such as SNAP.

The Farm Bill is legislation authorized every five years by Congress that shapes national agricultural and food policy. Within the Farm Bill are programs critical to agricultural interests, such as crop insurance, commodities, conservation, and farm subsidies. There are also programs important to the hunger community, such as the programs listed above as well as a few other smaller programs. The nutrition programs authorized by the Farm Bill are critical to Food Bank clients and Food Bank operations. SNAP helps many of Island Harvest clients purchase food that supplements what they can receive at Food Bank Partner Agencies or purchase with their own income. CSFP provides nutritious food boxes to our senior population.

Our collaborators in improving health and nutrition:
Feeding America
Feeding New York State
Food and Research Action Center (FRAC)

Federal Policy

Island Harvest is committed to protecting the funding and structure of the federal nutrition programs that form the backbone of our nation’s response to hunger. We are urging Congress to protect and defend these programs, especially the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as well as other critical anti-hunger programs such as: the SNAP Nutrition Education and Obesity Prevention Grant Program (SNAP-Ed), The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP).

SNAP
SNAP benefits and eligibility must be protected. Without a strong SNAP, the charitable response to hunger will not be able to meet the need. Negative changes to its funding or structure could result in millions of meals lost over the next decade. SNAP responds quickly to changes in need, growing in response to increases in poverty and unemployment, and declining as unemployment falls. The program is effective, provides a path out of poverty and hunger, and leads to improved educational outcomes, productivity, and health.

SNAP-Ed
Nutrition Education plays an essential role in improving health, lowering health care costs and breaking the cycle of poverty. Food banks rely on SNAP-Ed dollars to educate families, seniors and children about eating nutritiously on a budget. The program is highly efficient, has well-documented outcomes at program- and state-levels, and is structured to ensure funding for the most competitive projects in each state.

CSFP


State Policy

Island Harvest Food Bank works closely with the New York State Legislature during session, providing testimony in hearings, serving as an expert resource and advocating for policies to make our state hunger-free and healthy.

For questions regarding Advocacy, please contact:

Gregory  May, Government & Community Relations Director

gregory@islandharvest.org / 631.873.4775 x256