In our community, one in every five children are food insecure. We met with volunteers from the food pantry at Grace United Methodist Church in Sioux City as they prepared for their first day of the Healthy Kids Iowa program, a summer food program designed to provide families with food while school is out.
In January of 2023, the food pantry at Grace United served 106 households. Presently, they serve 231 households, more than doubling in the past two years.
Food pantries like the one at Grace United rely on food banks, such as the Food Bank of Siouxland, that can source and provide food at a lower than market price. Both food pantries and food banks are part of a much broader and complex system that delivers food to those in need in our communities.
Up to now, the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has been an important part of this system, providing 9.5 billion meals annually. Uncertain of where those 9.5 billion meals could come from, food banks, food pantries, and people concerned with the hunger in America are raising serious concerns as Congress acts to cut SNAP funding.
Under the Trump Administration, the federal government is approaching SNAP and other programs as fiscal issues, arguing that they are wasteful. Volunteers at Grace United's food pantry, however, see it differently. As pallets of food came in and hungry people waited patiently in lines and in their cars, Trudy Rants told us that there is no reason for people to go hungry in our community, especially kids, who have no control. She, like many of the volunteers, believes it's a moral issue.
