I’m guilty of being oblivious. You?
You see, I don’t necessarily know where my next meal will come from, but I am relatively sure I will eat.
And I take that for granted. By taking that for granted, I am allowed to pursue other work and play. I get to focus on a higher level of activity because I’m pretty sure my basic needs of food, shelter and safety will be accommodated. At the worst, I will need to hit a drive-thru or pick up food “to go” from a restaurant on my way home. This level of “food security” is part of what has made America great – we have been able to accomplish great things because of our tremendous abundance of food. In fact, we help feed people in other countries because we produce more than we need.
Not everyone in our city is feeling that abundance or has the ability to just hit the drive-thru on the way home. In fact, more of our neighbors than I realized must focus on that next meal as a singular pursuit. They can focus on nothing else until they know their children will be fed. They lack the level of food security you and I enjoy and take for granted three times every day. Statistics indicate 16 percent of our neighbors fall into that category.
Do you know anyone in that situation?
Me neither. We live in another world.
It’s been said a community will be judged by how it treats its children, senior citizens, disabled individuals and veterans. These also are the groups most susceptible to a food drought.
When the federal government shut down recently for two weeks, did you feel it?
Me neither. We live in another world.
But when our city’s director of public health told me we would soon run out of Women, Infants & Children funding, it got my attention.
When I heard there was a planned Nov. 1 cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, I began to wonder how big a problem that would be if the federal government suddenly decided not to fund SNAP and WIC?
As I researched, I learned more than $6 million of federal funding is pumped into our economy every month via the SNAP and WIC programs.
You might be saying, “I’m appalled. I want smaller government. We need to cut or eliminate these programs in order to cut the national debt.” To that, all I can say is it looks like we might be headed in that direction. Currently, Congress is debating the Farm Bill that includes an additional $40 billion cut to SNAP.
I began to wonder what our options are as a community if those programs are cut by 25 percent. Or 50 percent, even 75 percent? Maybe completely eliminated? How big of a problem would this be? How would we respond as a community?
What if a federal shutdown in early 2014 results in both programs losing 100 percent of their funding? Are we prepared to step up and donate an additional $6 million every month to feed our brothers and sisters? Or is that not our problem?
Since I didn’t yet know the scope of our food problem, I called a Food Summit on Nov. 6 and invited representatives from food pantries, Ozarks Food Harvest (our community’s food bank), homeless shelters and other organizations that deal with food production and distribution.
At one point during the summit, the food pantry managers were asked how much “abuse of the system” occurs. They unilaterally responded that there is very little actual abuse of the system. They also indicated the majority of recipients are the working poor who are typically in low-paying jobs, and many are working multiple jobs.
Later that same evening, I heard one of our congressional elected officials state on TV news the food programs would need to be cut because of the significant abuse of the system.
I guess I must surmise that one of these perspectives is correct, or at least one is more correct than the other. I have heard time and again passionate conversations from people insisting the majority of folks receiving food subsidies are sitting around in their homes wearing pink fuzzy slippers with their feet up while eating steak and bon bons, watching soap operas and laughing as they celebrate their successful cheating of the system. Then I read a report saying the average SNAP recipient is on the program less than one year. Less than one year? How do I rectify that with fuzzy slippers, bon bons and soap operas?
Now, I’m not so sure anymore.
I think I’ll lean toward helping those on the front lines, the hundreds of volunteers who are working their tails off to feed our neighbors.
I’m not hungry, and I’ve always been relatively oblivious to those who are hungry.
Not anymore.
Springfield City Manager Greg Burris can be reached at gburris@springfieldmo.gov.
