Suddenly hungry
Systemic inequities, stigmas and maintaining awareness focus of Iowa Stops Hunger panel discussion
“Giving out food does not solve hunger, it solves hunger for a day.”
That was one of the messages shared during a recent Iowa Stops Hunger panel discussion.
It was the third virtual panel discussion of the Iowa Stops Hunger initiative, launched last summer by Business Publications Corp. and its publications the Business Record, dsm Magazine and ia Magazine.
The March 11 discussion, titled “Suddenly Hungry,” featured five panelists: Nalo Johnson, director of the division of health promotion and chronic disease prevention for the Iowa Department of Public Health; Deann Cook, executive director of United Ways of Iowa; Mike Miller, president and CEO of River Bend Food Bank in Davenport; Rebecca Whitlow, food pantry network director for the Des Moines Area Religious Council; and Clint Twedt-Ball, executive director of Matthew 25 in Cedar Rapids.
The discussion was moderated by BPC President Suzanna de Baca and Michael Crumb, a senior staff writer for the Business Record.
The hourlong discussion touched on several topics revolving around hunger, including how food banks and food pantries have had to be resilient and adapt to the increased need for food during the pandemic while coping with fewer volunteers and resources; challenges that lie ahead as the effects of the pandemic continue; and the stigma that is often associated with seeking help when a person is food insecure.
Here are some of the highlights:
Who are the new people using the food pantry and food assistance systems?
Miller: Whatever your stereotype is of someone who is hungry, just please come and meet them. Volunteer at a food bank or food pantry or any food distribution site, just meet people, pass out food, and you’ll find they’re just regular people, just like you and me. It’ll change your life forever.
Whitlow: They’re your neighbors, they’re the families struggling because their kids are not receiving school lunches, their hours have been cut. Most were managing their lives perfectly fine, and all of a sudden they have to find a new way of making ends meet and feeding their families.
Twedt-Ball: Everybody should make it a personal goal ... to have a real relationship with a kid or an adult that’s hungry because once you have that face that you connect with, that story you connect with, it changes your motivation and pushes you further than you would otherwise go.
Focus on policy
Cook: Giving out food does not solve hunger, it solves hunger for a day. We have to get involved at the policy level to say, “Why are so many people hungry?” It’s because they don’t have opportunities. If they had opportunities to support themselves and go to the grocery store and buy and choose what they want, that would be their first choice. So how do we move toward that world?
Johnson: We have seen about 14,000 brand-new people to our network, which is a real concern for us. They had jobs. They were able to take care of their needs previously and now they need food assistance. But we’ve also seen an ebb and flow related to SNAP benefits. When those benefits increase we see fewer people needing assistance. When stimulus checks go out. If people have money to buy their own food they usually choose to do that, but we’re concerned when all the stimulus, the increased SNAP benefits, all go away, that additional 14,000 people we see on top of our regular clientele will continue to need assistance.
Future of food insecurity post pandemic
Cook: Looking at our 211 counts, the last 90 days of calls and how many of those were related to food insecurity, it was double the prior-year period. It’s still significantly higher than it was before the pandemic in terms of people reaching out to either find a food pantry or to find assistance with purchasing food.
Whitlow: I do have concerns that people will in general think everyone is immunized, the pandemic is over and everyone is back to normal. During the recession of 2009 we saw our level of need went up and it never went down again. I’m hoping that isn’t the situation, but it would not surprise me. I think it’s going to take one to three years for our economy to recover from this.
Miller: Had COVID not happened, we probably would have called a press conference at the beginning of 2020 to announce that for the first time since the Great Recession food insecurity had finally reached below 2008 levels. It had a big jump in 2009, and then we’ve been whittling away and finally got 10 years later to below 2008, and then COVID happened and went higher than any of it. Even if we were all immune tomorrow, we could be in for another 10 years of this. What gives me hope is there is greater awareness than ever before, and our job is to sustain that awareness following COVID.
Hunger and system inequities
Twedt-Ball: We’re all starting to feel a little better and more hopeful, so I think there’s going to be this huge psychological push to feel like we’ve returned to this great place and things are good … and we won’t necessarily want to deal with all the systemic inequities that remain. We in the nonprofit world and the policy world are really good at talking about things in nice voices and problems in a way that slowly moves to incremental change. But I think we’re going to need to remain engaged at the level of the streets activity we’ve seen in the past year where people have just said enough of system inequity, things need to change, and the only way this will continue to be spotlighted is the average ordinary citizen says we want this to change.
Johnson: It speaks to the interconnected nature of other social determinants and poverty in our community. We can’t just be discussing hunger and expect to see that all our community needs are going to be met. This is a multilayered, multisectorial discussion.
Miller: This really ties into the equity discussion that’s taking place nationwide. Black Americans are 2 1/2 times less likely to have enough food than white Americans, and there is nothing about the color of someone’s skin that should determine whether they have enough food. So somewhere, as part of addressing this whole food insecurity and hunger issue, whatever it is that is broken in our society that causes that to be true is central to fixing the hunger issue.