Food Insecurity Article
What is also impactful is addressing the food we are feeding the hungry, the homeless and the food insecure, those who do not have a consistent source of food. I literally was in tears bringing my first harvest to a food pantry not because of the affect I knew I had on the local families I shared the good food with, but because of the sky-high piles of unhealthy, processed, sugary and salty foods being provided to an impoverished uneducated population as donations. It made me truly cry for them. It is not acceptable to me. I am glad to be in the position to provide what we do, but policy-wise we can't accept these donations as acceptable to feed our poor if they are items we don't consider healthy. It is not ethical. 

Just today I had a meeting with a leading Pastor in our area, rural Clermont County. We discussed the problem of food insecurity and how there are now being developed programs to help bridge gaps for these individuals and trying to also address the types of foods being provided.  With my donations I have made it an effort to provide a recipe and a nutritious component so that everyone understands the benefit of the good fruit/vegetable they are getting the joy of taking home with them.

Today we also discussed how there are categories of individuals who are not in the radar of government programming and when most of the voting public considers things "being taken care of" they are not truly considering the unmet needs here.  There are many in the population, which by no fault of their own have ended up uninsured in this country and are also ineligible for benefits. Forget not making benefits work. The problem is so much greater than the scope of a small blog article can address. But it's great to begin the conversations, to network with those in positions of power, community leaders, etc. to influence and affect change and to propose effective solutions to make it happen.  Let's not see these things happen and just say it needs to change. It's our job to make it happen!