Oklahoma has the highest rate of households with very low food security in the nation; 7.5 percent of the state’s households reported being hungry at times during the year because they could not afford enough food.  This six minute video from the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma discusses the increasingly precarious nature of food security in the state and interviews individuals struggling to feed their families.  For additional information on hunger and food insecurity, click here for the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma or click here for the food bank that serves eastern Oklahoma.

View other clips from OKPolicy’s “Watch This’ video series:

The Economy Bowl

What is an IDA?

Elderly parole

Long term unemployment, 1967-2011

Packed Oklahoma prisons, rising costs

In September, the US Department of Agriculture released its annual report on household food security. For the 3-year period from 2008-10, an average of one in six Oklahoma households, 16.4 percent, experienced food insecurity. This means that “at times during the year, these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for foods.” This was the 6th highest rate in the nation, up from 14.6 percent for the period from 2004-06. Nationally, 14.2 percent of households were food insecure in 2o10.

Given Oklahoma’s population of 3.75 million, and assuming that households experiencing food insecurity are the same size as the average of all households, some 607,000 Oklahomans live in households that struggle with access to adequate food.  Imagine that on a Saturday afternoon this fall, the population in households that experience food insecurity in Oklahoma were all invited down to Norman and Stillwater to attend the football games.

The food insecure could fill OU’s Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium (capacity: 82,122) AND OSU’s Boone Pickens Stadium (capacity: 60,218)  four times over… with enough people left over to fill University of Tulsa’s H.A. Chapman Stadium (capacity: 30,000).

To find out ways to help fight hunger and food insecurity in Oklahoma, contact the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma or the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma.

May everyone have a joyful and healthy Thanksgiving holiday.

Note: This is an updated version of a blog post we first ran in November 2010.

OK Policy had the pleasure of meeting with Sara Amberg recently, an advocate for the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma (CFBEO).  Food banks across the state, including the CFBEO and the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma and its affiliates, work tirelessly to feed and inspire families facing food insecurity.  Food insecurity – defined as “limited or uncertain unavailability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods” – affects thousands of Oklahomans.  One in seven Oklahoma households, or 14 percent were food insecure in 2008; the national average is 12.2 percent.

The economic downturn continues to strain family food budgets and increase demand on both private charities and public programs for food assistance.  Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program) increased by 44.9 percent between February 2008 and February 2011, adding 187,506 participants.  Programs like SNAP not only serve a social welfare role by providing families with food, they also have a significant impact on Oklahoma businesses, pumping millions of dollars each month directly into the grocers, markets, and convenient stores of local economies. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past year, one of the high points for me each week has been the hour I spend early Wednesday mornings in the kitchen of Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Tulsa helping with basic food prep tasks for the Iron Gate soup kitchen. As Iron Gate Executive Director Connie Cronley wrote in this guest blog, Iron Gate is a 26-year old organization with a simple mission: To feed people. As a kitchen volunteer, I’ve known that the food I help prepare goes to the roughly 1,500 to 2,000 guests who receive a hot meal at Iron Gate each week. This past Tuesday, Election Day, I decided to finally spend a morning with those Iron Gate serves – and to take some notes for the blog .

I arrive at the Church at 8:30 just as a line-up of some 75-100 people is being led through the outside doors to the medium-sized dining room. Iron Gate actually serves two meals each morning: a breakfast at 8:30, followed by a lunch starting around 9:00 (on weekends they serve a single morning meal). The guests – as they are always called – eat well at Iron Gate. I am quickly put to work dishing out large helpings of  Cream of Wheat and biscuits for the first meal, which goes along with sausages and applesauce. Once the sausages run out, the second meal quickly materializes – chicken pot pie, a green salad, and a croissant, along with fruit salad and a donut for dessert. Their food comes from a variety of sources – baked goods and fresh produce from Reasor’s, canned goods from the Food Bank, meat and other supplies from donations. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: Over the past eight months it has been my privilege to spend one hour a week doing food prep at Iron Gate, one of Tulsa’s largest and most active food assistance programs. I invited Connie Cronley,  Iron Gate’s Executive Director, to discuss their work.

Iron Gate is a soup kitchen and food pantry in downtown Tulsa. It was started 26 years ago by parishioners of Trinity Episcopal Church who made sandwiches for the downtown homeless. The food was handed out in the church’s cloister garden which had a decorative iron gate.

The word quickly spread: If you’re hungry, go to the church with the iron gate. The name stuck.

The organization is still located in the basement of Trinity, but it has grown into a separate 501 ( c ) (3) nonprofit organization.

Our mission is simple: We feed people. Read the rest of this entry »

From time to time, we use the OK Policy blog to post submissions we receive from Oklahomans who have interesting perspectives on important policy issues for the state. This entry is from Sara Waggoner, Executive Director of the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma.

I have been in Food Banking for 28 years and just finished my 20th year as executive director of the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma. I have never seen the need for emergency food programs so prevalent or the increase in requests so high.

Emergency food programs were originally established to provide food for a short period of time to families who temporarily lacked enough money to meet all of their basic needs. Providing food allowed them to use their resources to pay a utility bill, put gas in the car to get to work or buy medicine. Families usually needed help two to four times per year, occasionally six times. Over the last two and a half years, not only has the number of people requesting help increased by 40 percent in the 24 counties served by the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma, but, more and more families are relying on these emergency food programs to make it through each month. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I had the pleasure of being invited by the Oklahoma Food Security Committee to give a presentation on funding for food and nutrition programs in the stimulus bill.  The meeting featured a superb overview from Liz Tate of the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma on food insecurity in Oklahoma and the programs that help to supplement the food needs of individuals and families (you can also read the 2007 report of the Oklahoma Task Force on Hunger). Food insecurity – defined as “limited or uncertain unavailability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods” – affected more than one in eight Oklahomans in 2007. Oklahoma’s food insecurity rate of 13.0 percent is significantly above the national average of 11.1 percent.

The economic downturn is creating added pressures on family food budgets and leading to unprecedented demands on both private charities and public programs for food assistance. As we’ve noted in our monthly Numbers You Need bulletins, participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program) has increased every month over the past year and has now reached an all-time high, with 450,000 Oklahomans having received SNAP benefits in March 2009. The Committee was reminded that programs like SNAP not only serve a social welfare role, but also have a significant impact on Oklahoma businesses and communities by providing families the resources to buy food at local grocery stores. SNAP payments in Oklahoma exceeded $48 million in the month of March; since then, the stimulus bill provided a 13.5 increase in monthly SNAP benefits.

Children are especially affected by hunger issues, and several programs focus on trying to ensure that children in economically disadvantaged families are adequately fed. The largest is the free and reduced-price school lunch program, which provides meals to children in families with income up to 185 percent of the federal poverty level. Just under 425,000 Oklahoma school children participated in the program in FY 2008, while just under 200,000 participated in the school breakfast program.

Read the rest of this entry »