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Food Bank of the Rockies facing challenge of meeting highest food insecurity level in a decade
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State

Food Bank of the Rockies facing challenge of meeting highest food insecurity level in a decade

By Jen Schumann | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice "On the Western Slope, one in eight people — our neighbors — are food insecure. For children, it’s even worse: one in seven kids is unsure where their next meal will come from," shares Sue Ellen Rodwick, director of the Western Slope Food Bank of the Rockies. "Statewide, the numbers are slightly better, but still troubling. One in nine Coloradans face food insecurity." The Food Bank of the Rockies (FBOTR) is spearheading the response to this growing crisis. It serves 417,317 people a year. The U.S. Census puts the state's population at 5,877,610. This is the largest food bank area in the contiguous U.S., covering Colorado and Wyoming. It serves a region of more than 150,000 square miles. It has three distribution centers ...
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Colorado received close to $12M in pandemic-era funding to help food banks buy local produce, but the money is running low
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State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado received close to $12M in pandemic-era funding to help food banks buy local produce, but the money is running low

By Parker Yamasaki | The Colorado Sun On Wednesday evenings at the edge of a wide parking lot in Aurora, there is a forest green pop-up tent with five large, scraped-up coolers stacked nearby. The coolers hold 27 bags of fresh produce, harvested that morning at Switch Gears Farm in Longmont.  The arugula gets picked first, Vanita Patel, co-founder and co-owner of Switch Gears explained. The farmers chop the spicy leaves down early in the morning while the air is still cool, soak them in cold water for an hour then spin them dry, rinse again and bag it all up. The potatoes and shallots are pulled straight out of the ground and thrown into the bags — the dirt on their skin helps them keep fresh longer. There are heirloom tomatoes and two shades of beets. There are also a couple of...
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Colorado is so behind on processing food assistance benefits that it’s under a federal corrective action plan
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State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado is so behind on processing food assistance benefits that it’s under a federal corrective action plan

By Jennifer Brown | The Colorado Sun Colorado is so slow at processing applications for food assistance that it ranks in the bottom five states and is now under a corrective action plan with the federal government. While some counties in the state are meeting federal requirements, others are far behind, which means Colorado’s average processing times for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are among the worst in the country.  Arapahoe, Denver and Weld counties are processing more than 90% of new applications within required timeframes, but El Paso and Jefferson counties, for example, are seeing success rates around only 50%, according to data obtained by The Colorado Sun.  When it comes to processing renewals on time, Pueblo and El Paso counties ar...
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