Already alarming, hunger in Oregon is set to worsen due to Trump administration actions

Food banks across Oregon are seeing record numbers of people coming in through their doors. Ever since the pandemic, the rising cost of living has been making it harder for families to afford food. 

And now, at a time when there is a hunger crisis going on, actions by the Trump administration and Congress threaten to make matters worse – far worse.

In this episode of Policy for the People, we examine the dire state of hunger in Oregon. Our guest is with Andrea Williams, President of the Oregon Food Bank. Andrea discusses what food pantries in Oregon are seeing, the actions by the Trump administration that have cut support for food bank networks across the country, and the risk that Congress may weaken the nation’s most important nutrition program.

We also talk about the kinds of policy changes that can take us in a better direction, including Food For All Oregonians, a policy that would ensure that all young children in Oregon, regardless of their immigration status, have access to nutrition assistance. It is a policy proposal premised on the recognition that food is a human right.

Transcript

Food banks across Oregon are seeing record numbers of people coming in through their doors. Ever since the pandemic, the rising cost of living has been making it harder for families to afford food.

And now, at a time when there’s a hunger crisis going on, actions by the Trump administration and Congress threaten to make matters worse, far worse. In this episode of Policy for the People, we examine the dire state of hunger in Oregon. Our guest is Andrea Williams, president of the Oregon Food Bank. Andrea discusses what food pantries in Oregon are seeing, the actions by the Trump administration that have cut support for food bank networks across the country, and the risk that Congress may weaken the nation’s most important nutrition program.

We also talk about the kinds of policy changes that can take us in a better direction, including Food For All Oregonians, a policy that would ensure that all young children in Oregon, regardless of their immigration status, have access to nutrition assistance. It is a policy proposal premised on the recognition that food is a human right. 

Juan Carlos Ordóñez (host): Andrea, welcome to Policy for the People. 

Andrea Williams: Thanks so much for having me, Juan Carlos. It’s good to hear your voice. 

Juan Carlos: Andrea, can you share a little bit with us about the mission of the Oregon Food Bank and how you go about carrying out that mission? 

Andrea: Absolutely. So the Oregon Food Banks mission is to eliminate hunger and its root causes, because we believe that no one should be hungry. And I just want to elaborate a little bit on the root causes. Many people might know us for our food distribution, food pantries. You know, we distribute millions of pounds of food a year. And we also recognize that we’re not going to be successful in ending hunger unless we also address the reasons why people are coming to our food assistance sites in the first place.

And so that requires us to be involved in systems change, in policy advocacy, on things like affordable housing and health care access, because those are the drivers for why people are standing in line at our food pantries in the first place. So we believe that in order to end hunger, you gotta do both. You got to address food today and address the underlying systems that are causing hunger.

Juan Carlos: You became president of the Oregon Food Bank in October of last year, if I’m not mistaken. What made you want to lead this organization? 

Andrea: So, my career has been focused on mostly policy advocacy and social change. Straight out of college, I started working for an immigrant rights organization called Causa. And there I worked with our communities to organize and advocate and win on policy changes like driver’s licenses for all and protecting our 37-year old sanctuary state.

Oregon is the first state in the nation to pass such a statewide policy. And it was there that I saw how social services and civic engagement and policy change are all interconnected. At Causa we were both connecting people to resources to meet their basic needs, their needs of today, things like food and paying rent, while also organizing them to share their story and testify for a policy change.

And so that’s where I really gained a passion for how we can engage our communities in the changes that impact their daily lives. And at Oregon Food Bank, certainly, that is the path that this organization is on. It’s transforming the organization and going beyond just food distribution to building on that, to making a larger impact in our communities. 

Juan Carlos: Let’s talk about the state of hunger in Oregon right now. I wonder if you can share with us how bad the situation is when it comes to food security that our families are facing? 

Andrea: Absolutely. So I don’t have great news here, as you probably could have guessed. I’ll just share some numbers with you first so you can get a sense.

Last year, Oregon Food Bank and our network of regional food banks saw about 2.5 million visits to our food assistance sites throughout Oregon; 2.5 million visits to food pantries, to free food markets, to anywhere where we are distributing free food for individuals. When you compare that year-over-year, that’s a 31% increase from the prior year, a 31% increase.

That’s double the year before. The year before we saw a 14% increase. So this is a record number of visits for our network. We were hard at work. We were sourcing and distributing over 91 million meals. That’s about 110 million pounds of food. That’s a lot of food. And it was still not enough. Our food pantries, our regional food banks, even since last year, have been telling us that food is flying off their shelves and that they’re needing to ration and make choices.

So that started last year due to inflation, rising costs of food, rising costs of rent. Right. And today there’s about 1 in 8 people and 1 in 6 kids in Oregon and southwest Washington that face food insecurity. And that’s across the state from Ontario, Oregon to Portland, to Klamath Falls. So this means that so many of our neighbors and their kids don’t know where their next meal will come from.

Of course, that was a state of hunger before we saw the federal funding freezes and the various changes we are seeing at the federal level. So we anticipate that the state of hunger in Oregon will get worse. And we can talk more about that in detail. But, to give you a high level view: need has been rising since basically the pandemic. It’s not a good situation, unfortunately. 

Juan Carlos: I definitely want to come back to questions of federal policy. But first, let me just follow up and ask: you say we’re seeing hunger be a problem from one corner of the state to the other. Are there parts of the state that are doing worse, or are there certain communities that are having a harder time putting food on the table?

Andrea: Oh, absolutely. I mean, food insecurity impacts across the state, and there’s tons of research that shows that food insecurity in particular impacts rural communities more than others due to distance and access, you know, food deserts and things like that. But one of the things I want to really emphasize for listeners is that food insecurity disproportionately affects our communities that are already facing inequities. So historic inequities and systemic exclusions have created this reality where Black, Indigenous, communities of color, immigrants and refugees are facing higher food insecurity rates than white counterparts. Single moms and caregivers is another demographic that is disproportionately impacted by food insecurity. And in addition, trans and gender expansive communities are 2 to 3 times more likely to face hunger and poverty in our region.

And so this is part of the reason why the Oregon Food Bank has really focused on equity and addressing these disparities by building programs that have a universal impact, because our food is available to everyone regardless of your background, but are designed specifically to address barriers and disparities experienced by these particular communities. 

Juan Carlos: What do you hear from people who come to food pantries about the challenges that they’re facing? I wonder if you hear some common stories, from the people who walk in through the door. 

Andrea: Sure. I was just at a food pantry this morning. I was at the William Temple House, located in northwest Portland. I was packaging up to-go groceries. And, you know, when you look out at the crowd that was there waiting their turn to shop in the pantry and or to receive their delivery, it’s a mix of people. It’s families. I saw toddlers and babies. I saw our elders, many that were Mandarin speaking. I saw folks that are unhoused as well. The unfortunate reality is that because food supply has decreased because of choices at the federal level, I was not able to fulfill every order and every request, every need that came through that door.

We were having to make choices and pivot even at the micro scale of, okay, this person asked for beef. We don’t have any beef today. So I’m going to have to pivot to, you know, this lunch meat. It gets to that level where, oh, we ran out of cereal. Well, we’re going to have to pivot to what we have on hand.

That just breaks my heart. Yes, we are providing people access to food, but it’s not necessarily the kinds of food that they need or are requesting or that feels like home to them. You know, it’s just, the food supply in the charitable food system is sporadic. And it may not correspond with people’s dietary or nutritional, or cultural needs. And, that is one of the challenges that we face as a food bank network. I

Juan Carlos: Some weeks ago, speaking of challenges to the food bank network, the Trump administration announced cuts to a program that supplies food to food banks across the country, including the Oregon Food Bank. Can you talk about the impact of that action by the Trump administration? 

Andrea: Yeah, I’ll just say we are deeply concerned about the decision that has happened here. The United States Department of Agriculture has canceled payments to a set of programs called the Commodity Credit Corporation. It essentially takes away the most basic human right of accessing food from Oregonians who are already impacted by high rates of hunger and food insecurity.

Just to go a little deeper into what is Commodity Credit Corporation, it’s a subset of a larger program called The Emergency Food Assistance Program. We call it TEFAP for its acronym, and this provides millions of pounds of food to food banks. The US government, USDA purchases it from farmers and then redistributes it to food banks across the nation.

And then, Oregon Food Bank receives some of those orders and then we distribute that to our community. This cancellation will disrupt an essential food source and will, quite frankly, just worsen the already difficult situation that so many in our state who rely on emergency food programs are already on. 

To get really granular, for Oregon, what does that mean? Well, the USDA canceled 30 truckloads of food to Oregon starting this month. That’s a loss of 1.4 million pounds of food that we will not distribute to Oregonians. What kind of food was that? It was meat with protein, which is in high demand. It’s one of our most requested food items. It included dairy, eggs, and fresh produce.

These are all nutritious foods that we we simply will not have to distribute across the state. And additional bad news. We expect at least 60 more truckloads to be canceled this year. Overall, that equates to over $6 million worth of food that we will not be distributing to families. It means empty shelves. And so it’s felt it’s deeply felt.

Juan Carlos: There’s another threat to food security coming out of Washington. And in this case, it’s the budget plan put forward by the Republican majority, which threatens to cut more than $200 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program over the next decade. And this is what we used to call food stamps. If Congress actually follows through with this plan to cut Supplemental Nutrition assistance, what impact would it have on struggling families in our state?

Andrea: First of all, I just want to start by saying SNAP, or what we used to call food stamps, is one of our most effective anti-poverty, anti-hunger tools that we have. I mean, it’s been around for more than 50 years. There’s tons of research that shows how it helps families get out of poverty, has positive health outcomes, positive school-based outcomes. It is quite scary to think about this program being cut. It just threatens to make our hunger crisis worse, obviously not better. And in fact, we would argue at Oregon Food Bank that Congress should be strengthening support at this time. 

And so just to give you an example. So in Oregon there’s about 700,000 Oregonians that access, SNAP. Seven hundred thousand Oregonians. That’s quite a few people. And, yes, there are several proposals on the table to reduce SNAP benefits. So that includes things like taking away SNAP from working families by eliminating something called categorical eligibility and creating a harmful benefit cliff, meaning that earning over a set amount would cause a significant drop off of benefits. It includes things like ending the what we call heat and eat program, which helps people with high heating and energy bills qualify for additional support.

And it also includes imposing harsher time limits for people struggling to find full time work, despite clear evidence that time limits don’t work. And as I’m sure so many listeners have been aware, with the layoffs happening across our workforce, both driven by the federal government, but also larger corporations, one of these solutions help improve everyday people’s lives. And so, any change, any negative change, is going to drive more individuals to need to use the emergency food system that is run by food banks and social service organizations. 

One thing that Oregon Food Bank likes to remind people is that food banks were designed for emergency situations. Think a weather event, a flood, you know, a one time event. And unfortunately, the hunger crisis has now become prolonged. It is an ongoing crisis. And so we are having to take a system designed to be an emergency food system and make it people’s day to day support. And it’s programs like SNAP that help us avoid that. 

Juan Carlos: Let’s bring that conversation back to Oregon. And given the picture that you’ve just painted, what do you think the legislature ought to do to address hunger and food insecurity?

Andrea: There is so much that the Oregon Legislature can and is doing to address hunger in our state. Like I mentioned before, Oregon Food Banks sees addressing hunger as more than just food, right? It’s making sure that we have enough affordable housing. It’s addressing our houseless population. It’s reducing racial disparities. And Oregon Food Bank has also some very specific ideas for how we can go about addressing hunger in our state.

We believe that everyone in Oregon, including immigrant and refugee families and people seeking asylum, should have access to food and other essential resources. Yet thousands of Oregonians who are also taxpayers are excluded from food assistance simply because of their immigration status. And so, Oregon Food Bank’s priority bill this session is Senate Bill 611. We like to call it Food For All Oregonians.

And it really would be a historic policy for our state that would make food assistance available to Oregonians ages 0 to 6, who are currently excluded due to immigration status. So it would basically replicate SNAP. It would provide grocery money to families very similar to the federal SNAP food assistance benefits. You know, we’re talking about babies and toddlers that are not yet in our schools right.

There are several school based programs that provide breakfast and lunch to all school children, which is also under attack. So we can talk about that separately. But these are kids that are in preschool. I have kids this same age. I’ve got a two-year old, and I’ve got a five-year old. And as a mom, I’ll tell you, I know how important it is that they are regularly fed healthy foods. There is so much good public health information out there about how important it is that our 0 to 6 year olds have access to nutritious food. It just sets the full foundation for the rest of your life. I was just at OHSU where I was listening to research about the developmental origins of health.

And, the researchers were telling us, you know, in those first couple of years of life, it really sets up your chances of how likely you are to have chronic disease later on. And so this is making sure that all Oregonians have access to food early on. It’s not only the moral and right thing to do, but is also the best thing to do from a cost perspective, from a health perspective. I could go on and on, but the short of it is, we are asking our state legislators to prioritize food for our babies and toddlers, and we’re asking them to do that through Senate Bill 611. 

Juan Carlos: One of the things that I find really heartbreaking is the fact that farmworkers, those who grow and harvest the food that we eat, they’re paid low wages. And many times they have a hard time putting food on the table themselves. And yet a lot of them, because of their immigration status, are excluded from food assistance and their children as well, because of their immigration status. What do you make of this kind of inequity that we see out there? 

Andrea: Well, I mean, Juan Carlos, going back to your original question about why I’m involved in this work, this is one of my whys. You know, I come from three generations of farmworkers. I exist because of their labor and the sacrifices that they, my great grandparents, took. They immigrated from the Philippines and Japan to work in the sugarcane fields in Maui, Hawaii.

And there are so many parallels to the migrants and the farmworkers that we see today in Oregon. When we’re driving on I-5 and we look out our window and we see people picking crops out in the hot sun, it is, I think, a failure of our food system that the very people that are making it possible for you and I to go purchase fresh produce at the farmers market or at the grocery store, that we can buy it, but that the people that are picking it can’t.

These types of exclusions are ones that we need to remedy. And so Oregon Food Bank is deeply committed to that because we see it as a root cause of hunger. 

Juan Carlos: Where does the Food For All bill stand right now, and what will it take to get it through the finish line? 

Andrea: Yeah. So we are more than halfway through the legislative session. And the Food For All Oregonians bill has made it through the Human Services Committee. It is headed to the Ways and Means Committee, where it will be evaluated based off of its budgetary impact. And so now is really the time that we need our community to contact their legislators, to ask them to support food for all Oregonians. This is an uphill battle. As you’ve many listeners might have already heard, it’s a really it’s just such an uncertain time for all of us. The state receives quite a bit of federal funding to support critical bread and butter services, rental assistance, etc., that the state relies on to support its residents.

And so they’re having to pass policies in an environment where there is tons of uncertainty. And our job as advocates is to remind decision makers why food is a basic need, what we believe are solutions to addressing hunger. And doing that consistently. You know, whether or not we pass Food For All Oregonians this year or next year or the following year, Oregon Food Bank will remain committed to continuing, until we’re successful. In my work previous to Oregon Food Bank, I’ve been part of a lot of long struggles. It took us almost 20 years to pass driver’s licenses for all. It took over a decade to pass Cover All Kids, and then health care for adults.

It takes time and effort for the Oregon legislature to adopt inclusive policies over time. That’s because they cost money. It takes persuasion, and endurance. And, we’re here for it. So the main focus right now for Food For AllOregonians is contacting your legislator, and it’s not too late. Actually, right now, between now and mid-May, which is when the revenue forecast comes in, is one of the most critical times to have Oregonians contact their electeds to let them know that they support Senate Bill 611.

Juan Carlos: For Oregonians who may want to connect with the Food For All campaign, where can they go? 

Andrea: You can visit our website at foodforallor.org, and you can sign up and receive more information. 

Juan Carlos: Andrea, any final thoughts you want to share with us regarding the state of hunger in Oregon and what we can do to address that critical problem?

Andrea: You know, times are feeling heavy, and I will admit that sometimes I struggle to stay positive and I struggle to have the energy to continue on. But what I do for myself, personally, is find those ways to contribute locally to my community. And, you know, this morning was a great example. Getting out there, connecting with people experiencing hunger, volunteering.

Seeing people face to face. It gives me hope because you hear their stories. You see how much of a difference even a day’s worth of food makes for them. And it shows you the resiliency of our communities. And so I would just encourage folks to get involved in whatever way they can. We have to continue being involved in our communities.

That’s how democracy survives. And, when we feel like there are existential threats, like with so many of us under the current federal administration, connecting locally and doing as much as you can in your community, I think, is one of the antidotes that we have. So thank you so much for having me, Juan Carlos. And I hope this was informational and helpful for your listeners.