The price of diesel again hit a new high last week, adding another challenge to area food banks.
“We spend a lot of money on diesel,” said Dana Yost, president and CEO of Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico. “Everything we do is costing more money, just as it is for you.”
Yost was speaking at an event recently, hosted by his organization and the Coalition to End Hunger in New Mexico. “We saw almost a 50% cut in federal food coming into New Mexico for all the food banks,” said Yost to the assembled crowd, who were there to hear from the candidates vying to become the state’s next governor.
In a session moderated by KUNM News Director Megan Kamerick, Democrat Deb Haaland responded to questions about food security in front of a live audience. Due to a scheduling conflict, Republican Gregg Hull was unable to attend and so answered the same questions in a separately recorded interview.
Below is an excerpt in which both candidates responded to the following question from the Coalition to End Hunger.
Food insecurity and poor health often go hand in hand, especially in rural New Mexico. With impending Medicaid cuts and ongoing healthcare access challenges, what strategies would you support to improve access to nutritious food through healthcare and other community-based programs?
Deb Haaland: Right. So, of course, food is medicine. I think that's incredibly important. I think it's awesome that you can prescribe healthy food, and it fixes some of your ailments. Sometimes, you know, it's sad to think that people don't have access to that healthy food when they need it.
You know, one of the things, and I'll just mention this now because it seems to go along with the idea that a lot of people are struggling right now: I've spoken to people who tell me when they were paying $500 for health insurance on the marketplace, it's now $2,000. And then they tell me, “But I'm not paying $2,000 a month because I could never afford that.” No kidding. I could never afford that, either. That's completely outrageous. And that's why I want to work on a public option so that when you go on the marketplace, you see the public option there—that's a state insurance program that is affordable—that will help people to have the health insurance that they need so that they can.
I mean, you don't ever just see a doctor when you're sick. You see a doctor to stay well. And so I think that good nutrition is intertwined with good health care, and so I'm committed to that as well. But certainly, the food is medicine. You know, prescriptions to say,‘You need this healthy food in order to, you know, get well,’ I absolutely support that and whatever the state can do, if I'm the next governor, that's what I'll do.
Gregg Hull: Well, that is a great question. Once again, this is an area where the state has become extremely dependent on federal resources. And this is a program that we're going to have to look at for how we—as a state—can fund these programs and make sure they're funded, and prioritize these programs to make sure that we're providing the needs that people need, especially in rural communities.
When you think about healthcare, healthcare is going to be front and center over the next four to eight years because we had a lot of doctors that fled the state because of policies that allowed them to be, you know, basically limitlessly sued.
Now, fortunately, in the last legislative session, HB 99 put caps on punitive lawsuits and put some restrictions in place, which was a good first start. Now we have to start figuring how we're going to bring some of those medical professionals back in. So, health plays a multiple role: Food is one side of it, but then making sure that people have access to physicians that can help, you know, make sure that they're on the right dietary path, that they're eating the right things, that they're eating healthy food, that they're not just going for, you know, calories as opposed to looking at nutrition.
Links to full interviews:
Food Security Forum with New Mexico Gubernatorial Candidate Deb Haaland
Food Security Forum with New Mexico Gubernatorial Candidate Gregg Hull
