Last week, I was at Iola’s Elks Lodge as they rushed to prepare 250 bags of food for local children. Their urgency was the knowledge that when school’s out for spring break, children go without school meals. The data bear them out; an estimated one in every five kids in America face hunger, according to Feeding America.
It’s something many of us don’t think about, but research shows school meals are the most nutritious ones American children eat. Here in Iola, students eat breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack at school. Important nutritious standards help keep those meals healthier than the popular alternative: empty calories from convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.
Sure, kids for time eternal will complain about school lunch. But we can all agree that kids need nutritious food.
This helps explain my anger to discover the U.S. Department of Agriculture is ending two programs that provided more than $1 billion for schools and food banks to purchase food from local farmers.
Here in Kansas, that means more than $10 million that would have been used to buy fresh produce from Kansas farmers, and then used in Kansas schools and food banks, is just gone. Poof.
Almost $8 million would have gone to Kansas via the Local Food for Schools program, which works with schools and childcare providers. The Local Food Purchase Assistance program would have provided $2.6 million to Kansas food banks. All the food purchased would have come from Kansas farmers.
Karen Siebert, advocacy and public policy advisor for Harvesters, a regional food bank operating in Kansas and Missouri, viewed the cancellation as a huge loss. She worked closely with local food banks and the Kansas Department of Agriculture and praised the program’s efficacy.
“This was a great program, a true win-win proposition,” she told me. “High-quality food produced on Kansas farms went to feed their neighbors. It was a great investment, and its disappearance will be a huge loss.” Families are struggling. Food costs have gone up since 2019. As we see more people coming into our pantries, we now have less food give them.Karen Siebert, public policy advisor for Harvesters
