25 Tons of Food

Yesterday, a press conference at Wagner College was held to celebrate a joint partnership between Wagner, ShopRite Grocery Stores, and the Staten Island Advance, the Island's only daily newspaper. The celebration stemmed from successfully meeting an important but seemingly daunting challenge: collecting 25 tons of food over about a 5-month period to be distributed to Project Hospitality - Staten Island's largest service provider for the hungry and homeless. Tremendous credit goes to Wagner Athletics led by Coach Walter Hamelin and his Assistant Director Mike Miller, as well as the many students who worked so tirelessly to collect, transport, and donate the food. Wagner's President, Richard Guarasci, inspired everyone to work their hardest and Kevin Mannix, President and owner of the two Staten Island ShopRite stores participating, deserves kudos for his generosity and community spirit. This is a great project and it enjoyed so much success that the leaders of the partnership decided to hatch a new plan - to shoot for an even more ambitious target of 50 tons of food to be collected over the course of the calendar year. Everyone is betting on this remarkable partnership to once again meet its goal.

There is no question that the food being collected is helping thousands of people to stave off hunger and consume the nutrition they need to work, study, and get on with life. Emergency Food Programs, like the ones coordinated by Project Hospitality, feed thousands of food insecure people every day and are essential parts of any community, especially those suffering from economic deprivation. At the same time, we must never think that soup kitchens, food pantries, and other emergency food programs can, by themselves, solve the problem of hunger in America. There are a 1000 emergency food programs in New York City alone, feeding about 1.3 million people every day, and yet many adults and children cannot be certain about the source of their next meal.

So what can solve this problem? No one knows for sure. It is too complex and there are too many shifting trends and influences to definitively untangle the quandaries associated with the challenge of hunger. But here a few things that we know can help. First, increasing the minimum wage puts more money in people's pockets, so that they can afford the food they need and the other necessities of daily living. A minimum wage to lift people out of poverty would have to rise to about $13 an hour, but such an increase is justifiable for the suffering it would relieve and the boost it would give to local economies. Second, funding for Food Stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, should go up, not be threatened with cuts. Food Stamps are great because they put money for food directly into people's hands and are also spent immediately, which simultaneously gets more money circulating in the economy. In fact, at least one reliable source has said that food stamps worth $1 actually generate $1.74 in economic activity.

For those who think that Food Stamps are too often wasted on luxuries, rather than used to purchase basic food, the evidence is overwhelming that abuse of this kind is rare. SNAP helps everyone, including the millions of children threatened by hunger, who need the basic nutrition that comes from this program to learn and be successful in school. Finally, with respect to children specifically, we know that universal school meals can make a difference. In New York City, breakfast is already universally available without bureaucratic applications and red tape and without the stigma of having to declare oneself poor enough to qualify for a free meal. Now, if only we could accomplish the same thing with lunch in New York, and with both breakfast and lunch all over the country, we would be going a very long way toward ensuring that most children have enough to eat. That would be a huge victory and lead to a level of food security never before achieved in this country.