Addressing Food Insecurity

Post-pandemic hunger endures in Georgia, and this is a good time to consider helping those in need. According to Feeding Georgia, a network of food banks around the state, there are more than 1.5 million people facing hunger in Georgia, and 335,720 of them are children.

While food banks deal with the end of pandemic-era funding, changes in work requirements for social services have added a hurdle for people trying to get government assistance. Since July 1, the state has required more than 87,000 able-bodied adults without children to work 80 hours a month or participate in employment training to receive SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), formerly known as food stamps.

Georgia leaders declined to request that the USDA continue to temporarily waive work guidelines that were suspended beginning in March 2020. Those who don’t meet the work requirements for three consecutive months are cut off from SNAP and can’t reapply for another three years.

The USDA has also offered two-year exemptions for counties with over 10% unemployment, but Georgia lawmakers waived that as well. Georgia has a low unemployment rate, but around 20 counties have unemployment of 5% or higher, and the jobs just aren’t there.

The SNAP program was already complicated, and there may be recipients in Georgia who didn’t know they were being cut off or what to do about it. Rather than putting people to work, requirements may cause more indigence and homelessness. SNAP is a mandatory spending program under the Farm Bill, which expired in September. In November, lawmakers passed an extension of the 2018 Farm Bill, which expires in September of 2024.

Georgia’s refusal to ask for exemptions ignores the reality of ground-level resources available to the people affected. They often live in communities where nonprofits and social services are too underfunded to make much difference, and where access to technical and community colleges crucial to job training may be hampered by inadequate transportation and distance. Policies restricting funding for social services – combined with rising property values – form a twin-engine issue perpetuating homelessness and hunger.

Fortunately, food banks across the state are ramping up efforts to deal with food insecurity, connected under the Feeding Georgia alliance and supported by the Department of Community Affairs.

In September, Augusta’s Golden Harvest Food Bank opened a new volunteer sorting and packaging center to serve 25 counties across east Georgia and South Carolina with an 8.8 million meal gap. Golden Harvest is also building a “produce rescue center.”

In Statesboro, a $2 million, 12,000-square-foot facility broke ground recently to expand the original food pantry to include classrooms and a dining hall. The nonprofit behind the expansion, The Food Bank Inc., has requested donations of leftovers from Ogeechee Technical College and Georgia Southern University to provide three meals a day to the needy. Around $800,000 is needed to finish paying off the project, which will give the charity a permanent home to address local needs.

Food Bank of Northeast Georgia received a $50,000 grant from Truist to expand its new facility’s sharing floor, which is similar to a grocery store, allowing 211 partner agencies to hand-pick food and distribute it in the 14-county region. The Truist grant will help increase distribution capacity by more than 42%.

Demand for Atlanta Food Bank services over the last six months is up 40%. At the Atlanta Apartment Association’s 36th annual Food-A-Thon, the group donated hundreds of pounds of food. The association says in the last year, it collected over 40,000 pounds of food products and raised over $1 million in cash, enough money and donations to provide 6.2 million meals for Georgians in need. In Southwest Atlanta, Kroger helped put a food pantry in Benjamin Mays Elementary as part of its Zero Hunger/Zero Waste Foundation.

In Chatham County, where an estimated 36,000 residents need food assistance, America’s Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia (ASHCG) opened a 143,000-square-foot facility in 2022, with warehouse space, a Kids Cafe, commercial kitchen, administrative offices and training space. ASHCG was a 2022 Bank of America Neighborhood Champion and received a $50,000 grant.

These brick-and-mortar resources are a real start to stabilizing service entities that are themselves in trouble. But we should take a deeper look at the problem of food insecurity as issues mount and politics stymies progress.