Area food banks need us as food and gas prices drive families to the limitWith all due respect to mail carriers’ generosity and public spirit, something is deeply wrong when food banks have to rely on them as a key way of restocking their shelves.

With area food banks stripped nearly bare by hungry people, it is only things like the mail carriers’ annual campaign that have managed to patch things together.

At the same time it is wonderful to see neighbors helping neighbors in this fashion, it is appalling that this is far from a unique or isolated situation. Across our region and the nation, food providers of last resort are in the throes of an unprecedented run on their already meager reserves of provisions.

Food banks are the visible interface between vicious economic realities and real people’s lives. Basic dietary staples like bread and milk have shot up by around 14 percent in the past year, which quickly translates into additional $20s and $50s coming out of purses and wallets.

Painful though they are, these extra expenses for nourishment come at the same time many other costs also are soaring upward. In rural areas like ours, decent jobs often require driving between Naselle and Long Beach or between Ilwaco and Astoria. Each additional dollar it costs to fill the gas tank is a dollar not available for sustenance.

Demand for emergency food aid is expected to increase. Food stamp participation is climbing locally and regionally. By every available measure, rural Washington families are being painted into a grim corner.

It is said that nothing focuses your attention like a hungry belly, and as a society nothing should have a higher priority than making sure all our children – and their moms and dads – don’t suffer the pangs and indignities of hunger. There are children in local schools who obviously have had little to eat between their free lunch one day and their free breakfast the next. This is not acceptable.

Here are some things we can do:

? Take time this week to go through your pantry and drop off what you can at food banks in Ilwaco, Ocean Park and Chinook, along with any funds you can spare.

? Write our representatives in Congress and tell them to support policies that put food on tables, instead of subsidizing boondoggle ethanol schemes that have diverted major donations away from food banks.

? Contact the master gardener program to learn how to grow and preserve our own nutritious food: pnwmg@yahoo.com.

? Vote this November for candidates who have positions on food security for all.