"At our food bank, we do our best to stock items that fit the way our guests actually cook and eat," says Nadya Sanchez, family engagement coordinator at Segue Blackstone Valley Pantry. "People often think of canned goods first, and those help, but things like rice, corn flour, pasta, beans, lentils, and oil are what most families reach for right away."
Everybody is bracing and everybody is worried, and rightfully so. Not having SNAP is going to make a difference to a lot of families in our area and in our city, and any projected cuts that might come from the past budget are also going to impact our families,
After the California Department of Social Services notified counties across the state on Monday that the government shutdown could stall the state's food stamps program CalFresh, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Wednesday he will set aside $80 million in emergency funding to support food banks and deploy the California National Guard to assist in food distribution. "Trump's failure isn't abstract - it's literally taking food out of people's mouths," wrote Governor Newsom in a press release on the ongoing shutdown's impact on food assistance.
Last year, Harrison Bardwell, the farm's ninth-generation proprietor, was selling thousands of pounds of cucumbers at a time, transportable by pallet and forklift. By this summer, he was struggling to move twenty-pound boxes of the same product. When he realized that he couldn't recoup the costs of picking, packing, and washing the cucumbers, he stopped. He also gave up pulling from his cabbage field. Gleaners from a local anti-hunger group harvested some of the crops to donate to nearby food banks and shelters.
