The Herald, Sharon, Pa.

Local News

July 11, 2012

State reduces food aid

Need here is up, local official says

By Courtney L. Saylor Herald Staff Writer

MERCER COUNTY — Fifteen percent of Mercer Countians go hungry to some degree and the state budget takes money for food assistance off the table.

A 22-percent cut in funding will mean 5,685 fewer meals for hungry Mercer Countians next year, Community Food Warehouse of Mercer County Executive Director Lori Weston said.

“This is going to hurt,” Weston said.

Warehouse Public Relations Coordinator Mimi Prada said they’ve seen at least a 20 percent increase in people looking for help in the last couple years.

“The new face of hunger is the working poor,” she said, noting that agencies have clients who work two or three jobs and just can’t make ends meet as prices for everything keep going up.

In fact, so many people are in crisis Prada said there’s a new term among agencies – “emergency emergency food assistance,” or a double emergency.

Mercer County’s slated to receive $134,000 in State Food Purchase Program funding in 2012-2013.

That’s $40,000 less than the warehouse received this fiscal year to help 34 area agencies provide food for more than 17,600 people, about 30 percent of whom are children.

State aid is just a portion of the warehouse’s $550,000 budget, much of which comes from public donations.

Weston said they hope to fill the shortfall with money raised by the third annual “Race to End Hunger” Aug. 5 in downtown Sharon.

Runners and walkers raised about $35,000 last year and in the past the warehouse has used that money to buy extra food and give it to agencies for free.

The State Food Purchase Program, which provides cash to counties to buy and distribute food to residents in need, has a budget of $12.3 million – a $3 million drop from 2011-2012.

The reduction in money for the program is because the state set aside funds to address “ongoing shortfalls in federal funds to pay administrative fees” related to the Emergency Food Assistance Program, according to information given to the warehouse from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

To ensure all the emergency entitlements are used, some costs had to come from the other program, the department explained. The department will keep $5 million of the total $17.3 million SFPP budget to pay for “county and distributor costs associated with USDA commodity,” the letter states.

“They’ve robbed Peter to pay Paul and now it’s time to pay up,” Weston said.

The department noted that food banks get a greater value for their money with the emergency program because products are bought in mass quantities at lower prices.

National agency Feeding America estimates the average cost of a meal in Mercer County in 2010 was $2.24 and the state average was $2.53 per meal.

This funding decrease is not the only blow the state’s dealing to low-income Pennsylvanians. The House Agriculture Committee is set to vote today on a farm bill that would cut SNAP benefits for 1.8 million people.

The Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program is commonly known as food stamps and if the bill passes as is, Weston said 500,000 households could lose $90 a month.

Learn more at the warehouse website’s link to Feeding America’s “Map the Meal Gap” report.

For more information: 724-981-0353 or www.foodwarehouse.org

 

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