With Food Insecurity Rising, State Leaders And Advocates Call For Help

This article was originally published on ctnewsjunkie.com on April 28, 2026.

HARTFORD, CT — As food insecurity surges throughout Connecticut in communities of all income levels, lawmakers and advocates came together at the state capitol Monday morning to sound the alarm and brainstorm solutions to keep state residents fed.

The fourth annual Food Insecurity Day was held at the state Capitol, co-hosted by Rep. Moira Rader, D-Guilford, and Rep. Dominique Johnson, D-Norwalk. The event featured a panel discussion moderated by the representatives, during which advocates and professionals working on food insecurity issues discussed the challenges facing the state and what can be done to mitigate them.

“The most recent data, and a lot of you probably know this, is that we have over 500,000 people right here in our little state of Connecticut who you would deem food insecure, and 120,000 of them or more are children,” Rader said, citing data from Connecticut Foodshare’s most recent annual report. “Just let that sink in for a minute. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions around what it looks like to be food insecure.”

Johnson said misconceptions about food insecurity are often directed at Fairfield County, where her hometown is located.

“You don’t think there’s food insecurity in a place as wealthy as Fairfield County, but oh, we know there is,” she said. “And not only that, we are seeing some of the biggest spikes in the state in Fairfield County. So food insecurity, as we know, does not look the same in every part of our state. So I’m really grateful for us being together in conversation across our state today.”

Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, D-Avon, also spoke about how food insecurity has struck in her part of the state. She said the Farmington Valley has significant numbers of ALICE families, a term coined by the United Way to describe households that are Asset Limited, Income Constrained, and Employed. These families often don’t qualify for food stamps or other need based assistance, she said.

“I am so grateful that this event was put together today because we constantly need to be re-educated by all of you who are experiencing this in your communities, so that we understand that there is no one-size-fits-all solution and so that we can do whatever we can to ensure that none of our neighbors are going hungry,” she said.

Legislators were hopeful that one anti-hunger initiative — universal free school breakfast — would make it out of the General Assembly this session. Rader said she believes the bill will make it over the finish line in the next week and a half.

As the panel discussion got under way, advocates offered both warnings and solutions regarding food insecurity in Connecticut. Tina Kramer, co-founder and co-president of Filling In The Blanks, a Norwalk nonprofit that provides weekend meals for children in Fairfield County, discussed the growing need for food assistance and its knock-on effects.

“Our enrollment over the past five years has grown 260%,” Kramer said. “These are school-aged children from preschool through college. And families are not only losing the accessibility to fresh food, but they’re also losing accessibility to health care, financial information, utilities, insurance, and basic health and wellness opportunities.”

To fill this need, other nonprofits have shifted their priorities. Mendi Blue Paca, president and CEO of Fairfield County’s Community Foundation, said that her organization has pivoted away from trying to influence structural change to providing basic needs such as food – a strategy it hasn’t employed since the pandemic.

“There’s a bit of a perfect storm happening now that looks quite different than the pandemic,” she said. “The last time that food need was urgent in the same way, that was the moment. And government funds were flowing. Private individual giving and philanthropy was up. Public philanthropy was up. Corporate philanthropy was up. And right now we’re seeing the exact opposite. So we’re seeing the need and the demand explode beyond the levels that existed then, but we’re seeing the retraction of all those things.”

Looming over the conversation are changes to food stamps and other assistance programs as part of the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed by Congress last year. Additional recertification and work requirements threaten to kick thousands of state residents off of food assistance programs, and as the panel noted, Connecticut is already the most food insecure state in New England, overtaking Maine last year.

Christian DuBorg, a food and nutrition policy analyst at the Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity and Opportunity, said Connecticut needs to close the gap on some of its neighbors – specifically New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Vermont. DuBorg said those four states spend more per capita on their three biggest anti-hunger programs than Connecticut spends on all of its anti-hunger, farm, agriculture, and food system programs, including grants and line items that are related to food in the state budget, combined.

“One thing that we think would help is having a food and nutrition special fund in the state budget that guarantees that year in, year out that Connecticut has money that can only be spent on making sure our people eat,” he said.