Statewide Iowa — Officials say over 400-thousand Iowans are food insecure and demand at Iowa food pantries and the six food banks around the state remains 50 percent higher than it was before the pandemic.
Linda Gorkow, executive director of the Iowa Food Bank Association, says food banks provided 60 million meals to Iowans last year — almost double the volume of food provided in 2019.
The governor established a Feeding Iowans Task Force in April of last year and the group issued a final report Wednesday to provide a tally of the food it rounded up and the government funds spent on the effort. Lieutenant Governor Adam Gregg was the group’s leader.
Some task force members will be added to the state team that develops plans for emergencies.
Lori Williams of the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management says, for example, the task force arranged for volunteers to take bulk purchases of rice, oatmeal and pasta and repackage it for distribution at food pantries. That effort was expanded in August to repackage food that didn’t have to be refrigerated for victims of the derecho.
The lieutenant governor says the state will soon distribute another five-and-a-half million dollars to the state’s smaller food pantries.
