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If you’re among the fortunate who never have to think about where your next meal is coming from, bless your heart. But if you think there aren’t people living among us who wonder if they will get food today, you’re wearing blinders.

It’s hard to think about someone in need when you’re sopping up gravy with skillet biscuits at your favorite breakfast joint, or wolfing down a large order of fries, unfolding your dinner napkin at a good restaurant while eating out, or just sitting down to a delicious home-cooked meal. But the statistics don’t lie, nor do the good Samaritans among us who work so hard to help feed those less fortunate than you or me.

One Polk County statistic helps tell this sad story. Nearly 20 percent of our children live in poverty. When a child doesn’t eat, or eats poorly, they suffer. Their mental, physical, and emotional development is beaten like a slab of meat being tenderized, and they are pushed to the margins of our society. They may lag behind academically. They become angry, and why not? Every kid, every family, should be able to eat enough nutritious food even while living in poverty.

Government programs have been the heartbeat of many of our feeding efforts for decades. Local people who volunteer in the daily struggle to get enough food to the needy are reading the handwriting on the wall these days as they watch the rollout of a national government effort to squeeze the life out of the food pipeline with budget cuts to a variety of programs.

Groups such as Share Thy Bread, a Tryon food pantry, and Outreach Ministries, a Columbus program, serve Polk County, helping families and individuals who need food, heat, and housing. Rutherford County is also similarly served.

Helping those and other agencies are many volunteers who don’t have blinders.

Mike Silverman of Tryon is among them. He was a special education teacher and principal for 32 years before retiring to volunteering. He’s worried that those in need are going to suffer even more in the future and that government cuts will jolt not only the children but also our local institutions, such as rural hospitals and farmers.

“The cuts I’m talking about are SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) and the funds to farmers to provide food for our pantries,” Silverman said. “Also, 21 percent of our (Polk County) citizens are on Medicaid. The cuts to Medicaid will hurt St. Luke’s (now AdventHealth Polk) funding source and hurt all citizens of Polk County.”

Some 11 percent of Polk County’s 19,600 residents receive SNAP benefits. In Rutherford County, where poverty is somewhat higher, SNAP benefit recipients have been growing every year since 2019. The total now is about 15,000 out of 65,000 residents.

One of the biggest fears among the tiny army of Good Samaritans like Silverman today is that government programs providing food to school students will be slashed or completely eliminated.

Farmers like Jon and Brittany Klimstra provide food for these programs. The Klimstra family supplies apples from their TK Family Farm located on the Rutherford-Polk line.

That, too, is threatened by budget cuts.

Farmers. Hospitals. Schools. Families. That right there might be the whole enchilada.

Larry McDermott is a local retired farmer/journalist. Reach him at hardscrabblehollow@gmail.com