Bernard: Farm Bill roundtable addresses Oklahoma hunger crisis

Oklahoma is one of the hungriest states in the nation.

570,000 of our neighbors are food insecure, costing Oklahoma $1.4B annually due to increased illness and lower academic achievement. To make matters worse, our state ranks dead last in fruit and vegetable consumption, a fact that contributes to our higher-than-average rates of diabetes, obesity, and cancer.

This reality was top-of-mind when I recently attended an agriculture stakeholder roundtablehosted by Senators James Lankford of Oklahoma and John Boozman, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee. The Senators gathered a group of Oklahoma agriculture leaders to discuss the upcoming Farm Bill, a comprehensive piece of legislation that shapes the nation's food and agricultural policies. The Farm Bill is a multi-year law renewed every five years that governs a wide range of programs, from crop subsidies to nutrition assistance to rural development. The current version is set to expire in September.

The process of drafting and passing a new bill is already underway, and this hearing was one of the many ways our elected leaders gather the information needed to make good policy. As the only spokesperson for food assistance programs invited to the table, I shared about the success of Double Up Oklahoma (DUO) a statewide healthy food incentive program that supports Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients’ ability to buy fruits and vegetables at participating local farmers markets and grocery stores. DUO empowered Oklahomans to purchase $8.1M worth of produce providing local food systems, farmers, and grocery stores with crucial financial support. External research also shows that participants on average consumed more fruits and vegetables per day than the national and Oklahoma averages. Further, data shows that fruit and vegetable consumption continues to increase as customers take part in DUO for longer periods of time.

This is great news for the people in our state, hence one of Hunger Free Oklahoma’s Farm Bill priorities is for Congress to increase funding for the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP), the federal program which covers half of the cost of DUO. We are not alone in this. Our public polling tells us that 82% of Oklahomans, from every corner of the state, both sides of the aisle, and across demographics, believe that Congress should be doing more to address hunger.

I am excited to share that both Republicans and Democrats are advocating for increased spending on GusNIP incentives. The plan from the Republican-led House Agriculture Committee, released by Chairman Glenn Thompson, and the plan from the Democratic-led Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman, Debbie Stabenow, both include increased funding and enhanced program efficiencies.

In the coming weeks, I will continue to share Hunger Free Oklahoma's priorities for the Farm Bill. I chose to start with an initiative that enjoys bipartisan support, though not all our priorities may. For the sake of the health and well-being of our fellow Oklahomans, I earnestly hope this spirit of bipartisan cooperation continues.

Chris Bernard is the founding CEO of Hunger Free Oklahoma, a nonprofit created in 2016 to bring a unified, statewide voice to the issues and solutions to hunger. HFO bridges the gap between policy and practice to ensure all Oklahomans have enough food every day.

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