CRC’s Seyfried travels to DC to represent food pantries in Michigan
Walking to the meeting place at the Senate Dirksen Building: (L-R) Patti Price, Laura Seyfried, Geraldine Powell, Markell Miller, Aubrey Patino, and Derrick Miller. Photo courtesy of Seyfried.
A few weeks ago, Manchester had the honor of having a very special representative in Washington DC for 24 hours. On Wednesday, September 12, Laura Seyfried, director of the Community Resource Center was one of seven food pantry representatives from the state of Michigan invited to fly out to DC for a Farm Bill Fly-In to meet with U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
The event was sponsored by Feeding America, a national food policy advocacy group with the goal of ending hunger by working with food banks across the country. For this event, Feeding America brought in food bank representatives from each state to meet with a legislator on the Farm Bill Conference Committee in order to reinforce the importance of keeping help for the hungry in the reconciled version of the Farm Bill.
Seyfried was invited by Markell Miller, the community relations person for Food Gatherers, our regional food bank provider, who also attended. Food Gatherers is under the umbrella of the Foodbank Council of Michigan, who sent a representative as well. Also attending from Michigan were the Avalon Housing executive director, Community Action Network’s executive director, and volunteers for two church food pantries, Grace Fellowship and House of Solutions.
While they were scheduled to meet with Senator Stabenow in person and Stabenow was in Washington DC earlier in that day, she was leaving to fly back to Michigan so Seyfried and the other representatives met instead with three of her staff members who are serving as her top advisors on the Farm Bill.
Senate staffers were initially most interested in how food banks will receive food from producers, who will get subsidies to offset loss from the new retaliatory agricultural tariffs sparked by the administration’s international trade policies. For example, the staffers wondered how food banks might best receive pork from a specific pig farm in Coldwater, given that the pork was no longer economically viable as an international export. But eventually they did move on to other aspects of the Farm Bill and the food pantries present.
Seyfried described Manchester and the Community Resource Center and food pantry. She talked about how help can’t be one-size-fits all and that while 5 pound bags of frozen pork from the Coldwater pig farm may work for a large family seeking help from the food pantry, most likely an 80-year old man who lives alone and probably doesn’t cook will pass that up for a can of tuna. She was also able to leave information with the staffers.
Hanging over the whole encounter was the impending landfall of Hurricane Florence. Seyfried explained that people were trying to leave the city to their home states ahead of the hurricane, in case flight travel was disrupted. She described the atmosphere as that of waiting in Michigan for a forecasted big snow storm to hit.
Overall, Seyfried described it as a really cool experience and states she would definitely do it again even though it was a very full 24 hours. “It felt like we got to say something that would maybe make a difference,” she stated. “There was a glimmer.”
Methodist church sign on the way to the meeting place, signifying support for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, ie. food stamps). Photo courtesy of Seyfried.
After the briefing in the cafeteria of the Senate Dirksen Building watching the committee hearings and reviewing their speaking points. (L-R) Laura, Geraldine Powell, Patti Price, Derrick Miller, Aubrey Patino, Kait S., and Markell Miller. Photo courtesy of Seyfried.
After the meeting with Sen. Stabenow’s staff outside the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee hearing room(s) (L-R) Jay (from Feeding America), Laura Seyfried, Derrick, Geraldine Powell, Patti Price, Aubrey Patino, Markell Miller, and Kait S. (from Food Bank Council of Michigan). Photo courtesy of Seyfried.
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