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White House Conference Puts Spotlight on Hunger Relief

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For months, Catholic Charities of Southeast Texas has had to waitlist families hoping to join a food pantry program, as the nonprofit and other charities have struggled to meet soaring demand amid rising food prices and the end of federal pandemic relief aid.

The families who frequent the food bank, which is stocked like a grocery store with a wide range of nutritious food, are often already struggling to pay for housing, health care, and other expenses. So when they’re turned away from the pantry, they often seek out cheaper food or other food banks with fewer healthy options.

“If somebody is hungry and there isn’t anything else to eat but a honey bun, a honey bun is going to hit the spot,” says Carol Fernandez, president of Catholic Charities of Southeast Texas.

As the country’s food charities struggle to keep up with rising inflation and demand, the White House will host a conference on Wednesday. For several months, the Biden administration has hosted listening sessions with hunger and nutrition groups, corporations, and federal agencies to help find ways to end hunger by 2030. It’s an ambitious goal that would transform operations for nonprofits like Catholic Charities and the foundations that help feed the one in six Americans seeking food from nonprofits every year.

While few details have been released on the conference’s specific policy priorities, and questions abound over the political likelihood of big changes, nonprofits and foundations have found reasons for optimism. They hope the conference will be a launching point for sweeping change.

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Food banks, which millions of Americans rely on when federal assistance is not enough, are not a long-term fix to the nation’s hunger problem, nonprofit leaders say. Instead, new approaches are needed that take into account how food is made available to those in need and how other factors, like high rents and low wages, affect hunger.

“The truth is that we throw away more food in the United States than is necessary to end hunger,” says Vince Hall, chief government relations officer at Feeding America. “This is not a question of lacking resources — it’s a question of lacking resolve.”

The last time the White House held a conference on hunger and nutrition was more than 50 years ago. The 1969 conference, called for by President Richard Nixon, promised to “put an end to hunger in America for all time” and led to several landmark policy changes, including school lunches and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.

Such federal programs typically provide low-income Americans with direct assistance for purchasing food.

But foundations and nonprofits say that because hunger is related to other social and environmental challenges, including low wages and poverty, climate change, and racial and gender inequities, they have been focusing on addressing those issues.

Yet the federal government has not embraced that approach, hunger experts say.

“Food insecurity at its heart is caused by inadequate income,” says Lisa Davis, senior vice president of Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign. “And we know that when families have incomes that don’t cover all their basic expenses, food is often the first thing they cut.”