Washington County supervisors proclaim hunger action month

The Washington County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to recognize September as hunger action month during its regular meeting Tuesday.

“We ask all of our authorities to sign proclamations for the month of September,” Hawkeye Area Community Action Program (HACAP) CEO Jane Drapeaux said. “We thank you for doing this. It’s going to take all of us working together to solve our food insecurity issues we have in our areas.”

The issue is a prominent one. According to the board’s proclamation, nearly 10% of Iowans “struggle with hunger.” In Washington County specifically, the document said more than 1,900 individuals relied on HACAP aid annually.

Drapeaux said HACAP had been growing fast since its first appearance in Iowa.

“About 12 years ago, we were distributing 100,000 pounds of food, and we thought that was a tremendous amount,” she said. “Last fiscal year it was over 12 million pounds of food. We have grown, the need has grown and we’ve been able to respond to that.”

Drapeaux said the organization could stretch donations further than most: a single dollar donated to HACAP has about $7 of buying power.

“We’re able to purchase large volumes of food,” she said. “When you think about distributing 12 million pounds of food, that’s a lot. So when we buy food, we buy a semi load worth of food to distribute. When you buy a semi load instead of a grocery bag worth of food, your buying power is much greater.”

Despite its best efforts, Drapeaux said demand for HACAP was rising.

“According to Feeding America, we’re meeting the pounds per person, we’re getting that distributed,” she said. “But the fact that you still have food insecure households, that means that you’re not meeting the demand, that there’s still hungry people.”

The reasons for demand to keep rising were myriad, according to Drapeaux.

“There was the derecho, some people haven’t recovered economically because of the pandemic,” she said. “Some people haven’t been able to return to jobs for whatever reason … it’s hard to say how much or what the reason is because every day there’s more demand for food.”