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A roundtable discussion at Feeding Southwest Virginia, a nonprofit organization that distributes food to those in need, focused on food insecurity, a condition where people can’t access the food they need. People in urban areas who live more than a mile from the nearest full-service grocery store, and those in rural areas where the distance is more than 10 miles, meet the definition. About 11% of Virginians live in such areas, known as food deserts.
The rate is much higher in the region served by Feeding Southwest Virginia, where one in five children are deemed food insecure. “That means a lot of families might not be having the kind of Thanksgiving that we would all hope for and expect,” said Warner, D-Va. During a swing through Southwest Virginia on Friday and Saturday, Warner sat down with representatives from charities, social service agencies, local governments, health care systems and others to discuss the problem.
In 2021, he introduced legislation that aims to expand access to affordable and nutritious offerings in food deserts, in part by awarding tax credits to companies that construct new grocery stores and grants to food banks that build new structures. The bill has yet to pass the Senate, and it faces an uncertain future with Senate control flipping to Republicans and Donald Trump being elected president in the November election. “Under the new administration, where they are looking to cut so many programs, in many cases it’s going to be: how do we just preserve what we’ve got?” Warner said.
Part of the discussion focused on ways to push back against a possible move to make deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food benefits to low-income families. Earlier in the day, the senator toured the new Market on Melrose, which opened earlier this month in northwest Roanoke and offers fresh produce, a deli and nutritional education services, among other things. It is the first full-service grocery store to open in that area in years.
Goodwill Industries of the Valleys built the store using federal pandemic relief funds. It is part of a broader effort to develop an adult high school, banking services and a health and wellness center. “It is about as innovative a model as I have seen,” Warner said.
As part of his tour through Southwest Virginia, Warner met with communities he says need more federal relief for damage caused by Hurricane Helene and visited Blacksburg to celebrate Virginia Tech winning the Department of Defense’s Jack Donnelly Award for Excellence in Counterintelligence. He also spoke at Hotel Roanoke at an annual meeting of the Virginia Women’s Conference, whose members donated 127 pounds of food, equivalent to 940 meals, that Warner dropped off at his last stop to Feeding Southwest Virginia..
