The number of food insecure adults are on the rise in Ulster County. According to the state health department, 24,432 residents self-reported food insecurity due to limited economic resources in 2023, an increase of 2,478 people over 2021. Given the more than $1 billion in cuts already announced by the US Department of Agriculture for programs for those faced with getting enough to eat, elected officials and local food advocates are on high alert.
“Local food for schools and child-care programs seems like a reasonable thing to fund,” said Kristin Kessler, City of Kingston food and nutrition lead, speaking at a food insecurity roundtable at the Rosendale Theater on Thursday, April 17. “But no. The federal government just canceled $660 million. That was $660 million to purchase food from local and regional farmers.”
A $10-million farm-to-school grant going into schools and daycares to ensure children were having nutritious foods was also canceled.
The community eligibility program used to decide whether schools qualified for reimbursement for the free meals they provide has also been stretched out on the chopping block. Currently a school serving free meals may be reimbursed if a quarter of the students came from families with low incomes.
Kingston’s at around 37 percent, said Kessler. The federal proposal is to increase that threshold to 60 percent for the school to offer free meals to all students.
Food banks, the warehousing centers which distribute food to food pantries and soup kitchens are also going under the knife. Announced cancellations include the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, which paid $500 million annually for food banks and $500 million in cuts to The Emergency Food Assistance Program, known as TEFAP, a nutrition program that buys food from farmers and sends it to food pantries.
Cutting critical programs
To draw attention to and decry the cuts, congressmember Pat Ryan held a press conference in the Regional Food Bank for the Hudson Valley in Montgomery on April 21, where he stood before a glass window looking out on the 50,000-square-foot warehouse floor to highlight the number of shelves left empty as a result of fewer trailer trucks delivering food.
Dutchess, Orange and Ulster counties are on track to receive two million fewer meals in 2025, Ryan said, if the cuts weren’t beaten back.
He had extended an invitation to federal agriculture (USDA) secretary Brooke Rollins, so she could see the results of her agency’s cuts. Rollins had denied on Fox News that the cuts which were announced had actually been announced and that the halted shipments had actually been halted, calling both “fake news.”
Pat Ryan disputed Rollins’ take.
“We actually invited her to come, which, of course, she didn’t,” Ryan said. “But, you know, it’s pretty outrageous to lie about something like that. This is already happening, as you heard from the CEO of the food bank. Go look at these shelves. That’s not fake news. This is happening right here, right before our eyes.”
While Hudson Valley Republican congressmember Mike Lawler declined Ryan’s invitation to attend, Republican state assemblymember Brian Maher did not. Maher stood firmly on the side of the food bank.
“When you make cuts, you can’t just take an axe,” said Maher. “There needs to be more precision … to have that true conservative, limited government role we need to identify those essential services that even limited government is responsible for.”
Speaking to reporters after the speeches, Ryan gave his read on the cuts to essential emergency food services.
“The Trump administration wants to pass unprecedented tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations,” Ryan said, “and the only way they can pay for that is to cut critical programs like food assistance, food banks, Medicaid — which they’ve talked about — potentially Social Security and Medicare. That’s what’s happening here.”
Rising food insecurity
In the United States today 47 million people are food insecure. It’s hard to imagine that there was ever a time in the country when food insecurity did not exist.
But there was a decade-long window of ample provision for every citizen in the 1970s. A special hour-long CBS documentary anchored by journalist Charles Kuralt, “Hunger in America,” managed to shock the national conscience when it reported that ten million Americans faced hunger every day.
Kuralt said things like “Man can manage to live without shelter, without clothing, even without love, but man can’t remain alive without food,” and “In this country, the most basic human need must become a human right.”
President Richard Nixon, supported by Democratic leaders, found the political will to expand a food-stamp program, increase feeding programs for the elderly, and implement a school breakfast program.
“Back in 1970, when Family of Woodstock started, “one of the problems we did not have to address was food. People needed clothing,” said Paul Rakov, the agency’s deputy director. “They definitely needed housing and they still need housing. But food wasn’t one of those issues.”
But food insecurity returned during the Ronald Reagan years, when drastic tax cuts paired with increased military spending resulted in cuts to social programs like food stamps. By the end of Reagan’s two terms, 20 million Americans reported food insecurity.
That number had risen to 30 million during George H. W. Bush’s tenure. After Bill Clinton’s eight years the number rose to 33 million, and under the stewardship of George W. Bush, 49 million. The Obama years saw a drastic decrease to 15.6 million. The downward trend continued through the Trump and Biden administrations until shooting back up in 2023.
Stepping up to help
Charitable and non-profit organizations have stepped in to deliver services to people in need, as evidenced by the proliferation of food banks and charitable food services.
The night of the round-table, Stone Ridge Orchard owner Elizabeth Ryan was in the Rosendale Theater audience. She described herself as one of the army of people who have spent their lives trying to turn agriculture back to a local food system.
“We’ve had a sharp régime change,” Ryan said. “We know that we’re experiencing staggering cuts to all of these programs …. It’s going to be up to local self-reliance community action. That’s where I think we’re going to have to be focused for the next four years, or longer. I think that we can expand these gleaning programs, these food capture programs. I think growers want to be part of it.”
County legislator Chris Hewitt, executive director of the Hudson Valley Current, a non-profit economic development organization, touted Tilda’s Kitchen and Market in Kingston as an example of how third sector actors are stepping in to fill the void.
“Tilda’s has free soup every day, free rice and beans every day, free pay-forward meals every day, and the last Tuesday of every month is free breakfast and lunch all day. My goal is to have every Tuesday become free in order to show that the rules can be changed on what food is.”
Abundance, said Hewitt, was the watchword. It was the natural state of things, “and if we don’t try to profit off food, we don’t have to compete to make money off each other …. There’s plenty of food to go around.”
Rakov pointed to the abundance of food pantries as proof the community was coming together. “We have 52 food pantries in Ulster County,” he said. “This is free food. You don’t have to qualify for anything. You just have to walk up to the door.”
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