Iowa Stops Hunger recap: Insights from a conversation with DMARC, Food Bank CEOs
by lisa rossi
Hard conversations are required in finding the answers to many community issues.
DMARC CEO Kathy Underhill said it’s time to have one about food insecurity and what role each sector plays.
“I think that we as a state, and frankly as a country, need to have very frank conversations about the scope of this problem and about what is the right role for government, federal, state and local,” Underhill said on the latest episode of the Iowa Stops Hunger Podcast. “What’s the right role for the business community? What’s the right role for the faith community? What’s the right role for individuals? That used to be much clearer. We, as a country, I feel like had a good, understood agreement on that. Those lines have continued to get mushier and mushier.”
Michael Morain, editor of dsm magazine, recently hosted a conversation with Underhill and Tami Nielsen, president and CEO of the Food Bank of Iowa, about food insecurity and efforts underway to combat it. The following are six insights from the conversation.
‘There’s just [a] constant record-breaking surge in need,’ Nielsen says.
People are having difficulty right now with gas and food prices, Nielsen said. Food that the food bank provided five to seven years ago was more emergency-based, she said.
“What we’re seeing is it is supplemental and necessary for folks to visit pantries every month, not just as an emergency need. We’re just in a state of emergency, really,” she said.
One of the biggest challenges to food insecurity is the passage of H.R.1.
“That is creating the largest, deepest cuts to the SNAP program in its history, and it is devastating for family budgets,” Underhill said. “It’s also potentially devastating to the state’s budget, because there’s cost shifts from the federal government to state budgets that have very serious implications. So, the benefits are lower, they’re harder to get. Some people are excluded and it’s going to cost the state more.”
In 10 years, the Food Bank of Iowa has gone from distributing 600,000 pounds of food a month, to about 2.6 million pounds.
“We’re seeing that it’s more working people now that just can’t make ends meet,” Nielsen said. “In fact, the majority of neighbors served are working and they’re doing everything right.”
Policy changes to SNAP have caused “a lot of uncertainty” for people, she said.
Another change is a decline in USDA support.
“Food Bank of Iowa is 100% donor-funded, we don’t get government funding. However, we do get government commodities in the form of USDA foods, and it’s the emergency food program, TEFAP [The Emergency Food Assistance Program], that is funded from the federal government, and about 18 months ago or so, that made up about 25% to 30% of our inventory at any given time. During the pandemic, there were periods of time where it made up over 50% of our inventory, and currently it’s about 10% of our inventory,” Nielsen said. “So we’re getting less USDA food at a time where we need more.”
Also, food has never been higher in cost, she said.
“We spend currently more per month on purchasing food than we did the entire year of 2019, and it’s just a really difficult place to be in, because the need has surged, and a lot of other things have shifted that make doing this work even harder, and getting the amount of food out to the people who need it,” Nielsen said.
Underhill says nonprofits should treat being a nonprofit as a tax status and not a strategy.
“Nonprofits don’t have that same motivation inherent in the business model, and so a lot of times I think we lose sight of who we’re there to serve and how, and really deeply listening to the customer or neighbor to understand what they need and how we can best deliver against that,” Underhill said.
At DMARC, leaders started an advisory council for people who use its south-side food pantry, known as DMARC-ket.
“They come once a month,” Underhill said. “We meet in the evenings. We provide dinner. We provide them with gift cards to honor their time and expertise. We co-create the agendas, and I knew it was going to go well when the second month a woman showed up, and she had a notebook with her with an entire list of items that she wanted to discuss, and so I was like, ‘All right, we’re onto something here.’”
The Food Bank of Iowa wants to create a food-is-medicine program.
Before COVID, the food bank was working with a big hospital system and looking to create a “food-is-medicine” program, “because we know that healthy nutrition is preventative medicine. Keeping people healthy is easier with nutritious food,” Nielsen said.
Then COVID hit and funding dried up and a lot of leadership behind the idea left their positions, she said.
“Now we have some where we’ll go to clinics or different areas where folks are getting healthcare, but we’re kind of on the cusp of really blowing that up again, and so really looking forward to helping people to invest in their health with the food,” Nielsen said.“If we had some state funding or federal funding that would invest in using healthcare dollars, investing in proper nutrition for folks who need that, that would just be such a huge game changer. It’s a dream, and we’re putting it into place at a smaller level, but we’re getting more and more into that.”
Hunger is like a Rubik’s Cube, if you turn the policies and programs in the right direction and in the right order, you can solve it, Underhill says.
“We have to create an environment where people have more breathing room, and so that’s either higher wages or lower expenses,” Underhill said. “The other piece is, who does what? Do we want the federal government or the state government to be more involved in the solution? Do we want charity to be more involved in the solution? The business community?”
Underhill said there are many options , but Iowa should pick one.
“Iowa needs to pick one, agree on it and aggressively work towards the goal, because at the end of the day, hunger is an everything issue,” she said. ν