Mountaineer Food Bank director: Community the antidote to volatility

Yahoo

27-04-2025

Apr. 26—MORGANTOWN — Statewide, 600 households with senior citizens—including 300 in the Mountaineer Food Bank coverage area—are no longer eligible for the state's Senior Food Box Program.
In the 48 counties covered by the Mountaineer Food Bank, $1.7 million used to purchase fresh food from local farmers has been lost.
In recent months, the truckloads of food distributed by Mountaineer Food Bank to local pantries and feeding initiatives through the federal Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TFAP, have been cut by 15 % to 30 %.
"It's just very volatile right now, " Mountaineer Food Bank Executive Director Chad Morrison said when asked how recent federal spending cuts are being felt locally. "It's one thing one day, and it changes the next day."
What doesn't change is the need.
Right now, about 15 % of West Virginia's population—one in seven people—is struggling with hunger. Among the most-impacted are children and senior citizens.
Last year, the network of food banks and feeding programs aligned with Mountaineer Food Bank distributed nearly 29 million pounds of food.
"And this year, it's definitely been marred with a lot of uncertainty, " Morrison said, noting the TFAP program was hit hard by a $1 billion reduction in federal support for feeding programs. It has historically provided about 35 % of the food distributed by the Mountaineer Food Bank.
"We are trying to fill the gaps from some of those cutbacks, but, you know, the funding is just not there to fill those gaps completely, " Morrison said.
In the short term, pantries and nonprofit feeding programs need their communities to rally behind them, he emphasized.
"They need that additional support because they're working hard to try to fill that need, and the more volatile it is, the harder it is to plan and adjust. But we also have to be timely in filling those gaps because people are hungry and hunger doesn't wait, " he said. "We can spend a lot of time trying to forecast and predict what will happen, but at the end of the day, we must figure out ways to put food on the plates of our neighbors."
In the long term, Morrison said, people in West Virginia and across the country dealing with food insecurity need advocates.
"As Congress is looking at federal nutrition programs for things to get stronger or things to get weaker, it's really important that we have a strong federal nutrition program because that's what funds programs like SNAP. A lot of people don't know, but for every meal a food bank or food pantry provides, SNAP provides 10. It's tremendously important for food security, " he said.
"We have to figure out a way forward, whether that's through the community-based organizations or through state resources or federal resources, or, most likely all of the above. We've got to find a way forward ... Because one setback—a doctor bill, a car breakdown, your heat pump goes bad—one little thing like that can set a family back years. It's hard for those families. We see it in our pantries. There are a lot of people struggling, right on the edge."