By Eric Galatas
Posted Dec. 19, 2024
Colorado is distributing over $2.6 million to food banks and pantries to ensure that the state’s one in seven children facing hunger can access nutritious food.
Duane Gurule co-founded the Small Town Project in Rocky Ford, an area famous for its melons.
He said the $45,000 Community Food Grant will help families access a wide variety of fresh foods, including beef from local ranchers.
“Pinto beans, potatoes, eggs, poultry, chilis and tomatoes, asparagus,” said Gurule, “of course our melons, Palisade peaches, and Olathe sweet corn.”
The grants approved by the state legislature this year aim to help nearly 90 food banks and pantries across the state create local solutions to unique local challenges, in part by boosting local farms and ranches.
The program is administered by the Colorado Blueprint to End Hunger in partnership with the state’s Department of Human Services.
Food costs remain stubbornly high in the wake of record grocery chain profits and pandemic-related supply chain disruptions.
Sue Fegelein, executive director of LiftUp of Routt County, said people are also facing rising housing and other costs.
She said the new grant will help more neighbors, many of whom are seeking assistance for the first time, keep their heads above water.
“Our clients are working more than one job, and still unable to make ends meet,” said Fegelein. “And things happen where their rent jumps by a thousand dollars when their lease is up, or the cost of child care is as much as a mortgage.”
Gurule is also Rocky Ford’s mayor.
He said the grant’s economic impacts – much like those of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which create $1.50 in economic impacts for every dollar invested – extend beyond the individuals and families being served.
“The Community Food Grant, that’s an additional $45,000 coming directly down into this area that wouldn’t have otherwise,” said Gurule. “So that money is circulating, it’s helping keep our local grocers and our local producers in business.”
Eric Galatas is a Producer with Public News Service.
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