Lawmakers can reduce hunger, food insecurity statewide
New Mexico’s Legislature convened last week for its 2024 regular session. That will be happening as poverty, food insecurity and hunger are increasing.
As it works to meet the otherwise-unmet food needs of New Mexicans, the state’s nonprofit network of food banks and food pantries is facing “a perfect storm” threatening the network’s ability to fill the meal gap. The increased number of New Mexicans who came to depend on the network for food during the pandemic has not receded. Food contributions by producers and retailers have diminished as they work to reduce overproduction and waste.
After a wave of generosity during the pandemic, cash contributions have tapered off. And prices of food the network purchases have increased significantly during the past two years.
Hoping to avoid reaching a point where it cannot meet the needs of all who seek its help and must turn some away, The Food Depot in Santa Fe is asking legislators to provide several kinds of critically needed assistance: Enabling purchase of additional food:
◆ Repeat the 2023 $1.1 million appropriation for food banks to purchase fresh produce.
◆ Appropriate $25 million for food banks to acquire enough shelf-stable food to meet New Mexicans’ projected need this year, and make the appropriation recurring.
Reduce food insecurity by increasing direct assistance (all proposals included in the governor’s budget):
◆ Increase to $150 state augmentation of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits New Mexico’s 26,700 senior citizens receive.
◆ Extend SNAP eligibility up to a family income of 200% of the federal poverty level, helping an additional 67,700 struggling households.
◆ Pilot a grandparent/kin-raising-children SNAP supplement benefit, providing an estimated 30,000 guardians with $75 a month per child.
◆ Establish a SNAP Restaurant Meals Program to allow an estimated 153,000 older adults, people with disabilities and people experiencing homelessness to use their SNAP benefits to purchase prepared meals from participating restaurants.
◆ Launch a Summer Nutrition Program to provide 252,000 New Mexican children and their families’ food benefits when school is closed.
Remove barriers to helping New Mexicans:
◆ Food assistance New Mexicans are eligible to receive does no good if it fails to reach them. Sharp increases in the number of people needing and qualifying for assistance have overwhelmed the personnel and resources of state agencies administering assistance programs.
Inability to deliver federally funded benefits also prevents New Mexico’s economy from profiting from them. The Legislature should provide the personnel and resources human services agencies need to properly administer assistance programs.
◆ There are numerous differently targeted state and federal food assistance programs, with administration scattered among several state agencies. Many of these programs depend on nonprofit organizations, including food banks, to deliver the food they supply. It is time-consuming and expensive for the nonprofit organizations to interact with all these agencies and meet their disparate requirements.
Small nonprofits in low-population areas often cannot manage this, thus depriving poor families there of assistance. The Legislature should assign administration of all federal and state food assistance programs to one state agency.
Don’t tax food!
◆ The Legislature saw that applying the gross receipts tax to food reduced the ability of food insecure New Mexicans to afford and obtain the food they need, thus increasing hunger — so it removed the GRT on food. It is crucial that food remain GRT-exempt.
The nonprofit food assistance network is depending on the Legislature to help it prevent hunger in our state. We hope you will urge your state legislators to consider the need and act boldly to help meet it.