When disaster strikes, hunger follows. But food insecurity doesn’t begin with the disaster — it begins long before. A recent webinar hosted by the Center for Disaster Philanthropy (CDP), Hunger in the U.S.: How Disasters Disrupt Access to Food, brought together experts to explore how disasters impact hunger, why prevention matters, and what actions can be taken today.

What Does Food Insecurity in America Look Like?

Tanya Gulliver-Garcia, Director of Education and Advisory Services at CDP, opened the conversation with a powerful reminder: Hunger in America is a crisis. In 2023, 47.4 million people faced food insecurity — including 14 million children. And hunger doesn’t affect everyone equally. Gulliver-Garcia noted that children, communities of color, rural communities, women, people with disabilities all face higher rates of hunger.

When disasters strike—hurricanes, floods, wildfires—food insecurity gets worse. Vince Davis, Senior Director of Disaster Services at Feeding America, shared that after every disaster, the organization sees a surge in need. People who weren’t hungry before suddenly are, and those already struggling often face even greater barriers.

Hunger Before, During, and After Disasters

Feeding America plays a key role in disaster response — feeding people before, during, and after a crisis through a network of 200 food banks. Davis emphasized the importance of supporting resilience efforts before disaster hits: “Donors do more to provide relief…they can change outcomes. And when you invest in resilience, things like pre-stage food and water, mobile outreach teams, and community-led disaster hubs, we're not just responding to a crisis, we're responding to suffering before it begins.”

But it’s not just about food banks. Salaam Bhatti from the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) spoke about the critical role of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). The program serves 42 million people monthly and has up to a $1.80 return on every dollar spent during economic downturns. Yet new federal proposals threaten to cut the program by over $300 billion — the largest cut in its history. Behind the cuts is a change in work requirements, increasing the maximum age for those requirements from 54 to 64 years old. Under the new requirements, people ages 18 to 64 are required to work 80 hours a month to receive SNAP benefits. Bhatti said that the changes would remove millions of people from the program and strain local food systems even more. He underscored the challenge by explaining, “It’s not removing 3 million people who no longer need the program. It's going to remove 3 million people who especially need the program.”

On the frontlines of those food systems are farmers. Kavita Koppa, Co-Executive Director of RAFI-USA, explained how farming is built on risk. “Farmers are extremely reliant on debt in some form in order to be able to do their jobs,” she said. Every season a farmer has to purchase what is needed for the season, hope weather and markets cooperate, and wait until their harvest is sold to receive their investment back. Disasters make that fragile system even more unstable. She called for flexible, long-term funding to help farmers rebuild infrastructure and access new markets — especially when institutional contracts are pulled.

How to Help People Affected by Hunger and Disasters

So, what can be done?

Three actions anyone can take:

  1. Support local food banks — through donations, volunteering, or helping them prepare before disaster hits.

  2. Advocate for SNAP — tell elected officials that food is not optional. SNAP works. Cutting it will hurt families, communities, and economies.

  3. Invest in farmers — fund efforts that support small, local, and BIPOC farmers with infrastructure, training, and disaster recovery resources.

Building a more resilient future is more possible when communities thinking differently, not just about how to respond to hunger and disasters, but how to prevent them. The path forward isn’t one-size-fits-all. It begins with listening, learning, and asking new questions. What role can each of person play in strengthening the systems that feed and support our communities — before, during, and after the storm?

This article was written with the assistance of ChatGPT