Identifying goal first step in reaching it

Editor,

The organizers of the World Food Program remind us that hunger is a problem that has plagued humanity for millennia and it continues to haunt us. But just because it persists does not mean that we can’t be the generation that ends hunger. According to the World Food Program, one in eight people in the developing world goes to bed hungry each night; in Maine that number is one in five. Based on statistics gathered by the US Department of Agriculture, Maine now ranks seventh worst in the nation for food insecurity, falling from its previous position as ninth worst. When it comes to what is called “very low food security”–that’s real hunger–we are third worst in the nation.

That means that over 200,000 Mainers are struggling to access enough nutritious food.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the farm bill that is currently before the House would cut SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamps) benefits by $17 billion over 10 years, according to Bryan O’Connor, Vice President of Finance and Administration at the nonprofit Good Shepherd Food Bank. Feeding America, the Food Bank’s national partner, estimates that this would result in 9.2 billion meals lost for Americans struggling with hunger over the 10 year period.

According to O’Connor, the Food Bank will move 26 million meals this fiscal year in Maine.

Good Shepherd Food Bank has developed an awesome (in the best sense of that word) network of sourcing and distributing nutritious food, connecting with other programs such as Meals on Wheels and Full Plates, Full Potential, United Way, and hundreds of programs run by churches and schools and civic minded businesses and people (such as the National Association of Letter Carriers and their National Partners). By leveraging the capacity of this network and food donations from farms and retailers, the Food Bank has been able to provide a nutritious meal for just 25 cents per meal.

O’Connor goes on to explain that the meal gap, which is the number of meals Mainers can’t access through self-sufficiency and government supports like SNAP, is estimated to be 36 million meals, “so it will take 10 million more meals annually to close the gap.”

At first glance, one would conclude that an additional $2.5 Million raised annually (bringing the annual total needed to $9 Million) would allow us to end hunger in Maine if all the current good work continues and SNAP is funded at current levels.

There is a caveat, however. “We are retrofitting the facility we purchased in Hampden to accommodate more product, but we’ll need more hub partners across the state to help us distribute food more efficiently and reach the distant corners (and islands) of the state with perishable product, and our partner agencies need better capacity to store perishable product and the ability to serve more people more often if we’re going to fully close the meal gap. As such, the 25 cents/meal we’ve maintained for years probably won’t be sufficient as we grow to fully meet the need.”

We remain undaunted. Identifying the goal is the first step in reaching it.

While I’m not stepping up to the task of crowdsourcing, I would like to plant an idea that would cover all of the above. Over 700,000 Mainers filed taxes last year (some jointly). If each donates just $6 to the Good Shepherd Food Bank, Maine would become first in the nation to close the gap and end hunger by thus engaging our citizenry, but only if we continue to support and expand current heartwarming and creative efforts being carried out by the many who lead the way.

It is a civil and a divine right to have one’s hunger met first with charity, that is, an adequate amount of nutritious food, and then with social justice, that is, concerted efforts made through public policy actions to eliminate the causes of poverty.

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