Originally posted to foodrecoveryregina.substack.com
Hunger has been a persistent issue across all administrations throughout our history as a nation. We were all born into a world where food insecurity exists, and those rates are alarming in the United States. Throughout my time at Food Recovery Network (FRN), I have consistently met people who lacked sufficient food. We have been working to end hunger for years. It's a policy decision to allow for hunger, and now it's a policy decision to deliberately not track the effects.
It is crushing news that the USDA will discontinue the regular collection of data to provide Household Food Security Reports; to be willfully uninformed. I assure you, FRN will continue to work alongside the communities most affected by hunger. Hunger is present in every single ZIP code; that’s a reality we all recognize.
Albert Einstein once wrote: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” The people in the United States who do not have consistent access to food should be counted; they matter.
FRN has a proven framework for identifying communities in need of food, and we will continue to utilize it to support these areas of most need by doing everything possible to feed people. We rely on data to understand the overall health of individuals in the United States. This data has historically helped us pinpoint communities where food assistance is necessary. By leveraging data to drive our impact in areas of greatest need and engaging with college students and local partners, we design and implement effective food recovery and food access programs tailored to each community.
Will removing household food insecurity data make things harder for FRN? Yes. But will we ever stop? Absolutely not.
Maya Angelou wrote, “Just like moons and like suns / With the certainty of tides, / Just like hopes springing high,/ Still I'll rise.” And together, we will continue to work to correct the indignity and injustice of hunger; we will rise.
We will continue to collaborate with peer organizations to access data to make informed decisions about providing communities in need with the food they deserve. Moreover, we have the voices of thousands of individuals across various communities in the U.S. — rural, urban, and suburban — relaying their experiences with hunger and inconsistent access to food. We hear daily from our partners that hunger is on the rise. We are proud to have college student chapters in over 200 higher education institutions, providing meals for thousands of individuals each day, and we hear from them, too. Young leaders at FRN have been very vocal: hunger should not exist in the U.S. and they are willing to do something about it.
Without an official accounting number of rising hunger, we will still hear from our partners. We have experienced extreme difficulties: recessions, inflation, high unemployment, a global pandemic, a recent federal budget that has cut food aid for people in the U.S., and now an attempt to not face the result of our ongoing policy decisions through data. At Food Recovery Network, our connection and commitment to our communities is unwavering in spite of this most recent decision.
We will continue to value lived experiences, which are vital to our partnerships. We will continue to fight hunger and food waste, expanding our footprint in the U.S. and strengthening our partnerships to achieve our mission.
We rise / we rise / we rise.
This year, we are already collaborating with new companies and adding new events that have never had food recovery programs. They are joining us because they recognize their ability to give back in this very easy way, and they see how many people are hungry in their communities. It just makes sense to donate your surplus, precious food. Events like the recent One Bite Pizzafest in New York had never participated in food recovery efforts before. In total, thanks to a partnership with Medium Rare, the One Bite Pizzafest donated 1,914 pounds of perfectly good surplus food, including pizza, shredded mozzarella cheese, Parmesan cheese, flour, and salt, from various vendors. All of that food was donated to a conglomerate of low-income housing facilities near the Bronx, managed by the NYC Housing Authority. Those individuals at that housing facility may no longer be counted with this most recent decision, but to FRN, they count.
FRN works to mitigate food waste and increase food access across the U.S., while also building grassroots support for food recovery initiatives. And we will continue to do just that.
Data tells us people need food; our hearts tell us people deserve food.
One Bite Pizzafest in New York