Bob McCartney: This is Think Regionally, a monthly podcast sponsored by COG. I'm your host, Robert McCartney. The Capital Area Food Bank recently released a comprehensive report on hunger in our region based on a survey of more than 5,000 residents. It found that a third of households at some point last year experienced food insecurity, which is defined as being uncertain of having adequate food. That's more than a million people. The affected families are largely employed, educated, and middle class, three quarters have jobs and two thirds earn more than the poverty wage. A combination of rising food prices and reduction in federal benefits has hit hard. I talked to LaMonika Jones, director of the advocacy group, DC Hunger Solutions, which works to improve the nutrition, health and wellbeing of low income residents in the District of Columbia.

Bob McCartney: You think that the trend is definitely going in the wrong direction now?

LaMonika Jones: It is. As well as we're seeing the inflation pricing. When we go to grocery stores, the cost of food is going up. So, if our benefit level is not going up, but our price of food is going up, people aren't able to purchase as much, which is causing a problem.

Bob McCartney: The most dramatic change has been the reduction in the federal benefit known as SNAP, that stands for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, which used to be known as food stamps. The last omnibus federal budget bill ended as of March 1st and emergency increase in SNAP benefits that had been enacted during COVID Jones described the effect on what recipients receive each month.

LaMonika Jones: Many of our residents, especially our older adults, they went from about $281, so they were receiving the maximum benefit amount, and after those allotments ended they dropped all the way down to the local level minimum, which is $30.

Bob McCartney: And so about how many people saw that drop?

LaMonika Jones: We had over 90,000 residents that saw that.

Bob McCartney: There's also pressure on the WIC program for women, infants and children, which provides food assistance for almost 14,000 in the district.

LaMonika Jones: We know that we averted a crisis with the shutdown, but unfortunately, the funding that we needed to support WIC was not included for the FY '24 appropriations. So now for those residents that were looking to increase participation in WIC, we don't have the funding at the federal level to support that, so we're potentially looking at a wait list for WIC residents in the district.

Bob McCartney: In addition to advocating for greater federal funding, Jones' group is supporting a school food bill being considered by the DC Council. It would expand a program providing students with breakfast, lunch, and afterschool snacks.

LaMonika Jones: Universal school meals will ensure that all of our students in DC schools, so whether they return a DC public charter school or DC public school, that they will receive school meals, breakfast, lunch, as well as afterschool snack at no additional cost.

Bob McCartney: Fighting hunger is the responsibility not only of government, but of the private sector as well.

LaMonika Jones: I would also like to see expanded grocery store access across the district, and so noting that Ward Eight only has one grocery store for about 75,000 residents, making sure that we're taking intentional investments in the funding that's coming in from the district, that we are looking at our infrastructure. And that we are placing grocery stores in Ward Seven and Eight so that residents are not having to drive travel 25 minutes outside of their home for high quality, affordable groceries, but that we have grocery stores inside the district.

Bob McCartney: What's the role of philanthropy in fighting hunger? I mean, I know a lot of people go to food banks and food pantries in order to get help. What's the situation with that?

LaMonika Jones: Yeah, our food banks are still a great source. We work quite a bit with Capital Area Food Bank on various different avenues. There's such a great need when it comes to food, and a lot of the conversation that I hear from our community partners is, there's such a great need but we can only do so much. Even they are challenged and strapped with the capacity that they have, but they try to do everything that they can, but it's almost like it just keeps coming because there's so many people that are experiencing hunger.

Bob McCartney: People in urban centers aren't the only ones worrying about getting their next meal, well off suburbs are affected too. Here's Heather Bruskin, director of Montgomery County's newly created Office of Food Systems Resilience.

Heather Bruskin: In Montgomery County, while we're often historically known in the region and nationally as one of the wealthiest counties on average, in the county we actually have tremendous levels of food insecurity.

Bob McCartney: Many of the households struggling with hunger have incomes that fall roughly between 50,000 and $100,000 a year. That's too much to make them eligible for SNAP or other benefits, but too low to cover the comparatively high cost of living in Montgomery County for a family of four.

Heather Bruskin: So we have many, many families, tens of thousands, that are living in that gap that we call the self-sufficiency gap.

Bob McCartney: That's about 150,000 people. As elsewhere in the region, the burden falls most heavily on communities of color.

Heather Bruskin: Pre-COVID metrics showed that our Black and brown high school students were five to six times more likely to be food insecure, according to the Maryland Youth Risk Behavior Survey. There was a recent re-administration of that survey that showed that those disparities have only increased and Black and Latino students in high schools in Montgomery County are now on average more reporting more than 10 times food insecure levels in their lives. And so I think that means that we have a lot of work to do in terms of addressing a lot of the root causes of food insecurity, which include institutionalized racism and inequities in wealth distribution.

Bob McCartney: Montgomery has launched several projects to increase availability of food and expand markets for the county's farmers. Under one, people can double the value of their SNAP benefit if they use it at a farmer's market. The program originated in Long Branch near Tacoma Park. Heather Bruskin: The Crossroads Farmer's Market was the first market in the country to, for every dollar that a resident spends using SNAP, they get a match so that their dollar is stretched twice as far. It means that they can support the local economy while also getting fresh, nutritious foods. And so, that actually has grown into a national program.

Bob McCartney: Several other programs help local residents grow their own food.

Heather Bruskin: Our Parks Department runs 12 community gardens throughout our county, and so residents can apply for a plot and use that to grow whatever they would like to. And often that's a terrific tool for residents, particularly who've immigrated here or who have cultural preferences for products that are difficult to find in grocery stores to be able to grow them on their own.

Bob McCartney: A separate grant project supports residents who want to grow food on land that private owners make available. Finally, the county wants to increase its reliance on locally grown food. That's partly in response to disruptions in delivering food during the pandemic.

Heather Bruskin: When all of a sudden a couple of trucks couldn't get where they were supposed to get and there was no food on the shelves. I think our industrial supply chain for food in our country has become so streamlined and so efficient that if anything breaks down anywhere along the way, there's no backup or secondary option to support us, if that first one breaks down.

Bob McCartney: The county is thus pushing more of its farmers to produce food that goes directly to people's tables. Most are growing commodity crops like corn or soybeans or turf for lawns or raising horses. Heather Bruskin: We have a third of our land in Montgomery County that set aside an agricultural reserve, and that is land that was wisely preserved for agricultural activities. But we have, of our 500 farms, I would say less than 100 of them are actively producing table crops. And so if we want to be more resilient in the future to be able to be self-reliant for our food sourcing, we need to increase local production.

Bob McCartney: Finally, let's return to Jon Stehle, chair of COG's Farm Policy Committee. It's the council's youngest committee created just four years ago. It works to raise awareness of and cooperation around issues related to the entire agricultural system, from field to dinner table. It also advocates for improvements in the Federal Farm Bill, such as to increase SNAP benefits and reduce bureaucratic red tape that makes them difficult to obtain and to support farmers' markets in conservation. A big priority right now is food for school children.

Jon Stehle: I think a big element that that's just important to foot stomp left and right is the ability of universal free meals for those in school. It's critical. The ability to address hunger through our school system, we learned a lot in COVID about what worked and free meals works. We know that students perform better when they are fed. When they are focused they're able to have a better learning experience.

Bob McCartney: COG wants to shorten the distance that food travels before reaching your plate.

Jon Stehle: I think one of the biggest eye-openers for me in the DC region is where does our food come from and what other markets does it serve? And that really has opened the conversation up for micro farming, for more urban farming, for thinking about who does farming.

Bob McCartney: To put it in very simple terms, it sounds like one of the main goals here is to produce more food that we eat in the region, produce it here in the region.

Jon Stehle: Spot on. And that idea of when you think about the larger impact of climate, you think about the larger impact of transportation, the cost of food, the more you can be local, the healthier it is. There is a difference between a strawberry picked off the vine and one that shipped across the US, you can taste it. And so there's a value to that entire process.

Bob McCartney: One way to increase local food production is to protect land that's best suited for it.

Jon Stehle: The value of land preservation, that's a key element for us talking across the region. There are certain soils that you really shouldn't build houses on because they're really good for food. And if you get rid of those then you're losing the ability to manufacture food that you need in our own region. We have a housing shortage, but we can't take all of our farmland and turn it to housing because then we'll have that food problem. So it's the balance. It's the nuance. It's really understanding the holistic picture that we have the opportunity to do here in the Farm Committee.

Bob McCartney: Now, I'll share some of my own thoughts. During COVID, when millions of people lost their jobs and income, America took aggressive action to strengthen food security. The federal government increased benefits on an emergency basis. Schools provided many more meals. Local farmers and food banks received extra support. Such efforts prevented what could have been a national hunger disaster. They also demonstrated that it's possible to keep the population fully and healthily fed if we have the political will to do so. Now that the pandemic is behind us, however, we've slipped back to a status quo that ought to be unacceptable in the world's wealthiest nation. It's a scandal that the people suffering most from spending cutbacks include children and seniors. Washington area elected officials are right to push the federal government to restore or even expand the lost spending on nutrition programs. Meanwhile, local governments can improve conditions through a variety of steps, particularly to promote local production from our many existing farms as well as private gardens. They can support farmers' markets and food pantries that reach people who may live far from a grocery store. Feeding everyone is a mission that can unite all sectors of the community. Here's Stehle once more urging cooperation.

Jon Stehle: It's also an issue that isn't impacted by whether you live in a downtown setting or out in a suburban area or even out in a rural area. You eat every day. And it's a unifying space for us, and people understand the concerns of not having enough food or not knowing where your next meal comes from. This is a space we should be able to come together on, and this is a space we should share, we should literally break bread together. It is a good thing for us to do.

Bob McCartney: I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. We welcome your feedback. Please email comments to thinkregionally, one word, @mwcog.org. This podcast is produced by Lindsey Martin, Steve Kania, and Amanda Lau. This is your host, Robert McCartney, urging everyone, as always, to think regionally.