Facing a 'Perfect Storm'

In an e-mail to supporters at the end of September, Ari Herring, executive director of the Rio Grande Food Project, offered an impassioned message about the negative impact of SNAP cuts would have on the operations of non-profit organizations that provide food to people in need. 

Dear Friends,

Last month, Rio Grande Food Project had a seat at the table with nonprofit leaders from across New Mexico to discuss affordability and a growing crisis in the face of federal funding cuts. We were all pretty clear: cuts to federal food assistance like SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or “food stamps”) and TEFAP (The Emergency Food Assistance Program or “commodity foods”) and an indefinite discontinuation of EFSP (Emergency Food and Shelter Program) dollars that pantries use to purchase food, combined with the rising cost of groceries, utilities, health care, and housing, are creating a perfect storm that New Mexico’s charitable food system (that includes Rio Grande Food Project!) is just not equipped to weather.

 

SNAP provides nine times more meals in NM than our charitable food system can, and here at Rio Grande Food Project, more than a third of the food we distributed last year was federally funded. So, as SNAP assistance is stripped away from 120,000 New Mexicans, Rio Grande Food Project, and our sister organizations throughout Albuquerque, will see longer pantry lines. And we will have less to respond to the need.

 

We won’t be persuaded that food is not a human right though. I still know this. Our team still knows this. So, we’re sorely disappointed and concerned...because our community’s most vulnerable will bear the brunt of these federal changes.

 

But we’re also determined. Every week, Rio Grande Food Project provides nutritious food to around 1,100 people – our team hustles to source around 17,000 pounds of food every week to make that happen. And we will do absolutely everything we can to prevent a disruption in our critical food security services. We will tell our stories; we will pound the pavement. But it’s important that we also voice the fact that the nonprofit hunger-relief network cannot fill the coalescing gap.

 

Please partner with Rio Grande Food Project. Please continue to put your resolve on display through volunteerism and by contributing what you can. We’re so grateful. Please join us and continue to help our neighbors put nutritious food on the table every day.

 

In partnership and with gratitude,

Ari Herring
Executive Director