Brooklyn Pantry Struggling to Help Fill Gap Left by Federal Cuts to Food Stamps
By Patrick McGeehan Published: November 25, 2013
Summary:
Since $5 billion dollars were cut from food stamps, many New Yorkers had to turn to the local food pantries. Because of this the Brooklyn pantry was running low on food so they needed to call in help. 19 skids come to stock up the pantry over night. They handed out over 1000 turkeys for Thanksgiving but they ran out, leaving chicken and ham as substitutes. Many people in the area are very thankful for the pantry.
Opinion:
I know that if we want to make a dent in our debt programs need to be cut but it's really hard to hear about all these people suffering for this reason. But now that there has been a cut made to food stamps these people need to get their food from somewhere because they don't have the money to pay for it. The food pantry is the obvious answer. Now the items at the food pantry are in such high demand that the pantry almost ran out of supply. The staples are going fastest which shows how inelastic core foods are because there aren't really substitutes for them. I hope that people keep reaching out and donating to the food pantry to help all of these people.
I would tend to agree that philanthropic endeavors are important to the food pantry. That's obvious. I also think that it's sad that people have less food than before if they were impacted by the cuts. What I also think is sad is that we are in the situation where so many people rely on food stamps. 14% is the last statistic I saw in regards to percentage of people on food stamps. 71.8 billion dollars are spent on food stamps by the government annually. That's a lot of money.
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