September 21st, 2024
Photo Credits: FARSB
Local and national legislation is crucial in securing necessary funding for food bank operations like FARSB. With policies and procedures that aim to ensure our neighbors have sufficient food, bills like AB 1961 actively combat food insecurity and strengthen hunger-relief legislation.
Originally drafted in January 2024, AB 1961 aimed to establish a task force to recommend comprehensive strategies for ensuring access to healthy, culturally relevant food for all California residents.
AB 1961 Overview
This Assembly Bill would require the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) to appoint the End Hunger in California Master Plan Task Force. This group would recommend strategies to ensure access to nutritious, culturally relevant foods. This task force would ultimately find long-term, sustainable solutions to feed all Californians.
The end goal of the task force is to create systems that help feed more people nutritious food while rescuing food from going to landfills—ensuring widespread change for the entire state. Food rescue is essential since it prevents food waste and ensures that quality food reaches families' dinner tables instead.
What the Bill Says
This bill aims to save taxpayer dollars in the long run by giving access to healthy, nutritious, culturally relevant food to our community. This bill works to change the food insecurity rates in California and cut down on annual healthcare spending, which is over seven billion.
Many of the issues that people struggle with stem from food insecurity and lack of access to healthy foods. More affluent families can support themselves and purchase healthy, non-processed, sugar-free versions of prepared foods. Families living paycheck-to-paycheck can't afford to buy healthy options, or they rely on food banks to make up the difference, but food banks do not give clients the choice of what they are given.
These issues are preventable but must be addressed at the root. Fighting the root causes of hunger provides more people with adequate nutritious meals. The taxpayer cost may appear large at first, but it will be worth the lower cost of healthcare in the future.
This bill also states that one in five Californians are food insecure and that even one incident of hunger can affect a child's mental state, causing lasting negative effects. The lasting effects of continual hunger and food insecurity can lead to lifelong issues across all areas of life, especially concerning nutrition. Addressing hunger and its effects is the start of fixing the root causes.
Important Dates
This piece of legislation was introduced by Assembly member Wicks in January 2024 and has moved through amendments from March to July. The last amendment was made on July 3rd, 2024. Now, the bill will need to be voted on by a majority to take effect on January 1st, 2026.
Wrap-Up
FARSB supports bills that aim to help eliminate hunger and continue our mission of ridding the IE of food insecurity. AB 1961 is a bill that offers meaningful solutions to food insecurity in California. Supporting additional bills that help feed our community members will lead to significant milestones in the fight against hunger across America.
If you want to stay updated on legislation being passed that affects FARSB's mission, please visit: FeedingIE.org/advocacy
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