Gov. Pillen’s plan prevents 150,000 children from receiving supplemental nutrition funds

Adequate nutrition is crucial to a child’s physical and mental health, cognitive and social development, and academic performance. Unfortunately, food insecurity is a common problem in Nebraska, and many children have inadequate daily food intake.

As defined by the Nebraska Legislative Research Office (Food Insecurity, September 2020), food insecurity is the “lack of access to enough food for an active, healthy life for household members and limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods.” Food insecurity exists in both rural and urban Nebraska communities and is more common in rural areas.

In 2018, this same legislative study found that 18% of Nebraska’s children were members of food insecure families, ranging by county from a low of 12.5% to a high of 26.7% of children. They noted that food-insecure children “experience 2-4 times as many health problems as food-secure children,” “are at increased risk of falling behind both academically and socially,” and have “lower reading and math test scores.” In 2016, “almost $258 million in additional health-care costs were associated with food insecurity” for Nebraska families (Legislative Research Office 2020 report.)

So, how do we reduce food insecurity for Nebraska’s children? By improving a child’s access to adequate food and nutrition. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) supports low-income households with funds to purchase food, and school lunch and breakfast programs provide free or reduced-price meals to low-income children, and weekend school backpack programs provide additional food to supplement a child’s nutrition on weekends. But when school is out each summer, these programs stop.

Nebraska does participate in the USDA Summer Food Service Program to provide some children with a daily meal during the summer. Such meals are provided at participating sites, and children must be able to get there to receive the meal. Not every Nebraska community participates in this program, so access is limited by both location and by the need for travel.

In my review of the USDA Food and Nutrition Service Summer Meals Site Finder for Nebraska, Lincoln and Omaha have the most participating sites. In rural Nebraska, there are 10 sites in towns south of Interstate 80, 16 sites in communities along I-80 and 26 sites in towns north of I-80. Thus, lunch sites in rural Nebraska are few and sometimes far between.

As noted in the Nebraska Examiner, Congress authorized a new program to reduce food insecurity for children beginning next summer. Children who receive free or reduced-price school meals are eligible in the summer to receive $40 each summer month ($120 total) as an electronic benefit to be used by their families only for grocery food purchases. This program would bring $18 million to the state annually to feed more than 150,000 Nebraska children and reduce their food insecurity. Yes, it will cost Nebraska $300,000 annually to administer the program with a 60-fold benefit to improve the health of children.

But Gov. Jim Pillen has turned down the federal money because of the additional cost. His spokesperson says that summer meals are already available from the USDA Food and Nutrition Services Summer Meals program. As I noted, with only 52 rural meal sites, Nebraska may not be meeting the nutritional needs of rural children. Even in urban programs, children must be able to travel to a site each day to receive a meal. The new program that supplements family grocery purchases would let the families of 150,000 children simply go to their community grocery store and bring food into the home for their children.

Turning down these additional funds does not make sense in a state where as many as 18% of our children may be going to bed hungry every day. I hope Nebraskans contact Gov. Pillen and ask him to sign Nebraska up for the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 child nutrition program by Dec. 31, 2023.