Federal agricultural officials visited with food bank organizers this week in Augusta to discuss long-term efforts for fighting food insecurity amid ongoing Hurricane Helene recovery.

U.S. Deputy of Agriculture Secretary Xochitl Torres Small participated in a roundtable at Golden Harvest Food Bank, highlighting the nonprofit’s work providing food and support to local families in Augusta and surrounding communities.

“At USDA, it is our job to get as much help as quickly as possible to as many people as possible in the wake of this storm,” Torres Small said in a news release. “I applaud the work of our local partners on the ground, such as Golden Harvest Food Bank, which is working tirelessly to support their neighbors and ensure that those experiencing the impact of Hurricane Helene get the food they need.”

Lack of access to sufficient food to live a healthy life, or “food insecurity,” is a significant problem nationwide and locally, especially for children. The latest available data shows that 13.5%, or 18 million, of households in the U.S. experienced food insecurity last year.

Amy Breitmann, executive director of Golden Harvest Food Bank, said child hunger in Augusta and surrounding areas had already reached crisis levels before Hurricane Helene left its destructive path through Georgia on Sept. 27, but the storm has likely worsened the issue.

“As an organization, we had one in four children that were food insecure before this disaster in our service area, and one in seven individuals. That was the highest rate of food insecurity in 15 years, prior to the disaster,” Breitmann said. “So we don’t know what these new numbers are going to look like, but data is simply a story of the pain of our community.”

In a Facebook post, Breitmann also said the discussion during Torres Small’s visit was “yet another reminder” of the national scope of Hurricane Helene’s devastation.

“At times you could hear a pin drop,” Breitmann said as she further described the roundtable. “The power in the room of collaboration, sharing collective pain and grief, stories of what we’ve been seeing and what we need to continue to support our neighbors was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.”

How the food bank is lessening the pain of Hurricane Helene

Last year, the food bank provided 14 million meals and 3.7 million pounds of fresh produce for more than 557,000 families, according to a 2024 impact report provided by the nonprofit. But during the first two weeks after Hurricane Helene, the food bank distributed over 600,000 meals and 1.3 million servings of water to communities affected by the storm.

Breitmann is worried about the layers of problems in additional expenses brought about by the hurricane and how that would hurt vulnerable families and low-income earners, the residents most susceptible to food insecurity.

“When you’ve got one in four children hungry to begin with, and then you add on top of this people that have lost everything in their refrigerators and freezers, many have lost their homes, many don’t have fences and backyards, and they have major expenses to remove trees,” Breitmann said. “We have a wide swath of our service area that still does not have electricity, and especially those folks in rural counties where they may be on well water, then they don’t have water as well.”

But Golden Harvest Food Bank’s community support efforts have been bolstered by Feeding America, a hunger relief network serving more than 200 food banks nationwide. Numerous food bank partners have sent food and staff to assist in the Augusta area, including the Atlanta Community, Chattanooga Community, Georgia Mountain, North Georgia, and South Carolina’s Harvest Hope food banks, among others.

Local partnerships with United Way, the YMCA and the Community Foundation for the Central Savannah River Area also have played a key role in supporting Golden Harvest’s recovery efforts.

“We came up from Atlanta, brought down a couple of truckloads of food, and we go wherever they need us,” said Mendez Baker with the Atlanta Community Food Bank. “I just got word that we’re going to Tampa Bay in a couple of weeks, too.”

More: Here’s how Golden Harvest Food Bank is expanding to fight the growing hunger problem

Staff for the food banks said that, in response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the Feeding America network had deployed at least 166 truckloads across seven states as of Tuesday.

Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, CEO of Feeding America, said that long-term relief efforts will need the combined coordination of community resources along with assistance from federal, state and local governments.

“With food insecurity on the rise before the storms, people in impacted areas are under immense strain and food banks are struggling to meet the rising needs of their communities,” Babineaux-Fontenot said. “It will take continued support from USDA and FEMA to ensure people have access to nutritious food as they begin recovering from the storm.”

In the meantime, Breitmann knows that the road to recovery in front of Augusta will be a lengthy one. She told The Augusta Chronicle that 110 mph winds swept through her backyard the morning the hurricane hit, something “that just doesn’t happen in Augusta, Georgia.”

“There was so much devastation in all 24 of our counties that we serve,” Breitmann said. “My husband is currently with a chainsaw in my daughter’s backyard, trying to clean up the damage there. And my story is no different than thousands of stories across our area.”

The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service announced this week that an estimated 982,930 households in 50 Georgia counties could potentially qualify for the department’s Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or “D-SNAP.”

The USDA also has issued flexibility waivers for various nutrition programs in Georgia so that emergency meal providers reach more people more quickly. Such flexibilities include automatically replacing SNAP benefits for households in areas where many lost food, allowing households to purchase prepared foods with SNAP benefits where the hurricane has left many without a place to prepare food, and allowed local organizations to provide meals to children while schools were closed.

More: Here’s how Augusta residents can check eligibility for Hurricane Helene relief funds

“USDA is committed to making sure that families, farmers and communities impacted by recent hurricanes get the support they need, including help with grocery expenses as people grapple with significant disruption to their lives,” Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said in a statement Tuesday. “The Biden-Harris Administration, including USDA, will do everything in our power to help you respond, recover and rebuild — no matter how long it takes.”