Marin is not a place where the term “food insecurity” is expected to be raised.
But the reality is that many more local residents than expected face a hardship in providing enough food for their households.
That’s why the planned 2025 closure of two of San Francisco-Marin Food Bank pop-up pantries, one in Mill Valley and another in San Rafael, is troubling.
Their closure, due to expected governmental funding cuts, is going to make it harder for these households to get food.
The pantries were set up during the pandemic, but that funding from federal, state and local sources is expected to run out in two years.
The food bank, long a source of household food for Marin families, says it provides food to about 6,000 local households per week, year-round.
As a comparison, that’s a little more than the number of households in the city of Mill Valley, our county’s third-largest city.
As those grocery bills have risen over the past year, lower-income households’ struggles to put food on the table have also increased.
That’s why the predicted closure of the pantries is so troubling. The possibility of making it more difficult for households to get food from local pantries is not going to help them.
The food pantry provides food to agencies that have pantries for people in need. It is hoping to build on those partnerships to fill the gaps created by the planned closure of the two pop-up pantries.
The Conduent Healthy Communities Institute, a New Jersey-based provider of public health consulting and analytics, reported in 2021 that Marin had a food insecurity rate of 6.9%, which isn’t high compared to other California counties, but likely greater than one might expect and high enough if you and your family are going hungry or lack access to healthful meals.
Other community health surveys have listed Marin as the healthiest county in the state. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t families that are struggling.
The growth in their numbers has been significant.
Last year, the number of Marin residents receiving CalFresh food stamp benefits was more than 9,522, a nearly 50% increase since 2019.
In recent years, the number of agencies that have taken up the role to provide free food to those in need has quietly grown. Many rely on community volunteers.
Food insecurity is a reality, even in “rich” Marin County.
In many cases, these agencies provide the outreach while the food bank provides the food.
The planned loss of some of that outreach needs to be assessed and plans put in place to help minimize the actual impact on those families who have relied on the bags of groceries that were made available to them.
Access to nutritious food can be just as important as its cost.
